The Climate Revolution: A Tale of Something Lost

By Brian Khaneyan                

 

As a 12-year-old boy I disliked change. However, the choice to move out of the house that I’ve lived in all my life was not mine, and it wasn’t something I could have had any influence in. I have fond memories of my old house. These memories are tied to moments and experiences I’ve had throughout my life. I would play badminton with my sister in the small concrete backyard, using a slim, long wooden dowel that divided up the concrete as an imaginary net. I would look at the plants my grandfather liked to plant in the little garden that we had. I have fond memories of washing off sticky hands after playing basketball outside, a result of the tall green trees dripping their sap onto the floor, and sticking onto the ball. I loved spy movies; I always wished that my house had a secret passageway. As a kid it seemed as if there were endless places to explore. I remember learning that the boiler closet was connected to a compartment in the kitchen. The red carpets were my lava, the couches a safe haven. All of this disappeared when I moved onto my new house. I realized that all of these memories, all of the reminders I would have of these memories, would be lost, and I was incredibly angry. I knew if I had the power, I would fight for the house that created all of these memories, but I was powerless, I could only watch as it slipped away.

The sense of nostalgia that I experienced when I was a kid is a natural response to remembering something that one lost a long time ago. However, the description of nostalgic items is incredibly special. There’s a strong emotion tied with the item that is lost. This emotion may have not even been felt when one had the item in the first place. It may have seemed at the time like an ordinary item, not something one loved dearly. This is the power that nostalgia has on us. The memory of what we’ve lost is far greater than the thing itself. This idea is described in Chapter 3 of Communicating Nature by Julia Corbett. She points out that residence is a key factor in forming environmental ideologies: "Some have concluded that this may be due to the fact that urban residents' orientation is less utilitarian." Where you live matters. The feeling I felt about my house perfectly depicts this. I loved the trees in my house, the garden. If I didn't have those things, maybe I would have a lesser interest in nature. As shown in both my experiences and Corbett's excerpt, nostalgia plays a big role. This feeling is incredibly powerful, and is present in various works of environmental writing, media and film.

Wendell Berry’s piece The Making of a Marginal Farm focuses on the story of Wendell and his wife building a farm, and reclaiming the land. Interestingly enough, the introduction to his piece starts out the same way as mine. He describes a scene from his childhood:

"Standing there, I was looking at land where one of my great- great- great- grandfathers settled in 1803, and at the scene of some of the happiest times of my own life, where in my growing-up years I camped, hunted, fished, boated, swam, and wandered-where, in short, I did whatever escaping I felt called upon to do."

This is a very complex piece of text, and by breaking it down we can see how he’s conveying this sense of nostalgia. He say that this place was the scene of some of the happiest times of his own life. This in itself is nostalgic. It makes me think about my house, it makes me think about the floors being lava, the sap on my hands, it brings back old memories when the sun was shining bright, and everything was just perfect. He speaks about where he did his growing up, his fishing and other activities, which are all normal things for a kid to do. Again, he's invoking these intrinsically happy memories, he loved that time of his life! However his next line is that that’s where he did his escaping. The rest of the piece holds little importance, these memories were the catalyst for it all. Berry wants to escape again, hewants to feel that same nostalgia he had as a kid. Perhaps he feels as though he has nowhere to escape to, that his life is too stressful and he’d like to have that jovial child care-free feeling again. This story that he tells us isn’t about him building a farm, or wanting to reclaim the land and become a sustainable human being- ok, maybe that’s too far. But in essence, Berry admits to wanting to feel the child-like feeling he once felt again.

A more different, extreme approach to this nostalgia can be shown by Henry David Thoreau’s Journals from Walden. Thoreau famously abandoned his day to day life and decided to live on Walden Pond. It’s important to note that Thoreau’s actions weren’t necessarily out of a sense of nostalgia like Berry’s. His text suggests that he appreciates nature, and laments its loss and lack of recognition due to modern day commonalities. This is best seen in his journal entry for Tuesday, December 30^th. 

In this entry, Thoreau describes a tree that is being cut down. He explains all of the steps that the men are taking to saw this tree down. When he refers to the tree he describes it as a “noble tree.” His description of the tree is filled with characteristics like this. “The silvery sheen…”; “as if it were destined to stand for a century”; “mast-like stem.” He presents the tree to us as something that’s been on this earth forever, something that represents more than what it is. He personifies this tree. He refers to the tree as a human, a long well-regarded friend whom he loves dearly. A friend whose loss will affect him greatly, and should affect us greatly. This majestic tree is being murdered, in a sense, by these men. To him, this is a crime. He describes the axe: “the manikins at its base are fleeting from their crime- they have dropped the guilty saw and axe.” The description of these men, who are cutting down the tree because it’s their job, is that they are manikins. They are absolutely nothing, Thoreau simply disregards them as human beings, and all that is important is this tree.

This contrast shows the difference between the tree and the humans cutting the tree down. The tree is everything, the nature is all, the humans are nothing- they are not important in the slightest. The men have just murdered this tree with their guilty axe. When the tree finally falls, he says: “And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air.” 

This, along with the description of the tree as a hull, solidifies the grand importance of this tree. How could someone simply destroy this mythical, living creature? “Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled- I see no procession of mourners in the streets-or the woodland aisles- The squirrel has leapt to another tree… but the woodman is preparing to l ay his axe at the root of that also.” This is where his view of the tree and the atrocities committed to it go further than his own thoughts. He is compelling others to think about this tree the way he thinks about it. Not simply as lumber, but as something that should be kept. Something that we should not allow to be lost. His descriptions of the tree alone may be enough to persuade someone to not cut down this tree, but Thoreau understands that not everyone recognizes the majesty of the tree, and he is disappointed by it.

The film A Fierce Green Fire based on the book by Aldo Leopold takes a look at some of the history of environmental regulation and also focuses on nostalgic scenes. It is absolutely filled with actual scenes shot in earlier times like the 80’s, and modern interviews about what happened at some events. The overall message I think that the film was trying to convey was that we aren’t doing as much as we were before. People in general are less involved in politics and policies. The scenes from the past showed people guarding trees, protesting government, and stopping harpooners. 

While this is still done today, it’s simply not the same. There’s no real major movement like there was ‘back in the day.’ They used older feel-good music to convey this, and in general the language and direction of the film seemed to portray that message. Montage scenes with people hugging trees with old, 80's rock music were among the more typical scenes in the film. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is incredibly similar to this movie in that both movies are tributes. Silent Spring is a tribute to Rachel Carson and her amazing life and achievements. The film's reflection of her life was similar to that of a montage video I've seen at numerous Bar-Mitzvahs, except with more dialogue. Both films are paying tribute, and even mourning the loss of both older culture, and Rachel Carson.

Bill McKibben’s book, The End of Nature, is not about the yearning for something that was once felt, but perhaps the yearning for something that once was. His piece focuses mainly on how we are nothing but a blip on nature’s radar, and that nature was here before us. He is sad to see how human influence has changed the earth from what it once was, its beautiful self, into something so man-made. He says:

"But it felt different, and lonelier. Instead of a world where rain had an independent and             mysterious existence, the rain had become a subset of human activity; a phenomenon like smog or commerce or the noise from the skidder towing logs on Cleveland Road- all things over which I had no control, either….There’s nothing there except us. There’s no such thing as nature anymore."

The difference between this lamentation and that of me or Berry is that McKibben could have never possibly felt what nature truly was. The longing is for something that he’s never experienced. Glimmers of its beauty are shown throughout his experience but in the end, nature is tainted by the existence of humans. The writing style of McKibben is representative through this quote. He writes as if he's frustrated and sad that we don't have nature anymore, but much like I knew with my house, he knows that there is nothing he can do. This also is a direct contrast to Thoreau's thoughts that we are non-important and that nature is everything while we are nothing. McKibben says that nature should be the only thing that is important, however we have already tainted it, and there is no going back.

Unfortunately, we are at a point where we have to try and roll back the damage we have dealt. An article from The Guardian, Should tackling climate change trump protecting nature? by Miles King discusses whether we must give in to this feeling of nostalgia, or we should do what's best for us as a human race. "the production of renewable energy and the small number of jobs the development would bring were of greater benefit to society than protecting the wildlife." This decision and sentence is framed in a way that suggests that they want to protect wildlife, but they took the lesser evil. The nostalgic sense of protecting the wildlife is wanted, but people were not willing to give up their lives for it, which is something Thoreau, Berry, or even McKibben may have done.