Connecting the Dots: Occupy Times Square, Re-Occupy Our Imagination by JULIANNE LUTZ WARREN
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MINDING NATURE 6.1 Connecting the Dots: Occupy Times Square, Re-occupy Our Imagination By JULIANNE LUTZ WARREN ctober 29, 2012: This is the 83rd anniver- flashing above our heads, which glowed with undimin- sary of Black Tuesday, the day that the ished brightness. We would not yield our memories stock market crashed in 1929, ushering in and expectations to the images shimmering above us the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl at Times Square; the high-resolution, gargantuan vi- Oyears. As I awaited Hurricane Sandy, I walked Tess, sions of girls in sexy underwear and boys with big feet my terrier, along the wall of Central Park near West in high-performance sport shoes. These images seduce 103rd Street, which was barricaded by city authori- us to dissociate from our selves, real sex, the earth be- ties to keep people safe from falling tree limbs. Up and neath our feet, the actual stars in the sky, flocks of birds down the sidewalk, Tess and I were pelted by acorns as migrating beyond the clouds, and the people standing wild gusts blasted through the oaks lining the streets. right beside us. We would resist the engulfment of our Pumped with adrenaline, we dashed up and down the hopes into that “sponsored dreamscape.” We would sidewalk for a few minutes and then, finally, stopped. choose to be grown-ups, standing amidst sparkling I shivered slightly. kiosks that advertise Coca Cola (recycle), NBA2K13, Sounds of trees—full of and, Rock of Ages, Annie, Book of Mormon, Wicked, nuts percussing the cement— and War Horse—all against a leaden sky. It would be planted seeds of fear. that leaden sky itself that would occupy our minds. Our message is this: END CLIMATE SILENCE. A couple of days earlier in the park, I watched a These words were painted with black paint on single, tiny Winter Wren—whose bright voice can slice a duty-reassigned US Army-issued parachute. Just through dark springtime woods—with quiet intent, the right number of people in a circle of hands faced picking tiny flower seeds out of the soil near my feet. each other and held the edges of the pink fabric taut October 28, 2012: One day earlier and three hours so the message—END CLIMATE SILENCE—was clear before the NYC subways went through an “orderly” against the blue-painted concrete near the bottom shut down at 7 p.m. to help keep people safe during of the ruby-red bleachers, the now iconic structure the incoming Hurricane Sandy, I took the 1 train to that cost $19 million to build despite economic cri- 42nd Street where a group had assembled in Times sis in 2008, where visitors have since competed with Square to take a stand, refusing to yield our imagina- each other in climbs to the top—a vista from which tions to bad dreams. We would not yield our faith and people may experience an adrenaline-pumping dose ideals—our hopes—to the numbers of the stock ticker of simulated hope. For us, the stairs become part of JULIANNE LUTZ WARREN CONNECTING THE DOTS: OCCUPY TIMES SQUARE, RE-OCCUPY OUR IMAGINATION 10 MINDING NATURE 6.1 the backdrop and we position our message for a photo Romney, $4,748,461), buying their silence, or worse, shoot from the ground. Our photographer is hidden their decency.2 Obama’s better decisions seemed above the dazzle behind the tinted glass of a nearby twisted. In an amazing triumph for the people who hotel. Next, we shuffle around together, keeping the had clamored against it, Obama, at the start of the parachute-dispatch level until we are in line with the year, denied the needed presidential permit on the “Earthcam,” which takes in a shifting live aerial view Keystone XL pipeline because it would jeopardize the of Times Square. For a few minutes END CLIMATE health of the sensitive agricultural lands it would run SILENCE competes onscreen with the bewitching, across. Romney strongly criticized Obama’s decision half-naked-well-shod fantasy world environing us. because he believed that it opposed the national inter- I discovered, however, that I needed help to keep est in jobs and economic growth. Meanwhile, Forbes from being lured in. Magazine reported the same day that prices for crude Recite birdsongs. Quit oil in the areas that the pipeline would serve were the big, flat screen. Wrinkle out “artificially low,” because major oil companies like of pretend. Breathe free. Exxon Mobil, British The Earth is resilient and Petroleum (BP), and I discovered afresh my own desire to watch my dis- Conoco Philips could creative, but neither inex- embodied self ascend into limelight to be watched and not get the oil to their desired by others who wanted the same thing for their haustible nor unbreakable. refineries around incorporeal selves. I became more interested in cran- the Gulf Coast fast ing my neck to see if I could see myself on the screen enough. This was a bold complaint from an industry than in the message I was holding in my hands. Not a that, fewer than two years earlier, had been respon- moment too soon, the parachute-holders, some with sible for spilling billions of gallons of oil into the Gulf smiles for passersby and some with their eyes closed of Mexico. In June 2010, Obama said that this disaster as in prayer, began chanting together, at the top of our was as profoundly worldview-shaping as 9/11. It con- voices, “HURRICANE IN OCTOBER, CLIMATE SI- tinues to profoundly spiral outward, sickening reaches LENCE MUST BE OVER.” For a dose of reality, recite of the ocean, shorelines, and thousands of people (or these threshold numbers published this past August in more) in a poisonous chain that is also cycling inland. Rolling Stone in an article by climate change activist Nonetheless, in the second presidential debate, al- Bill McKibben: though Obama insisted on the importance of develop- “2” is the utmost number of degrees Cel- ing “clean energy,” he and Romney engaged in what sius the global average temperature can rise can only be viewed as a radically bizarre contest to above the Holocene average and we still have demonstrate which of them was more pro-drilling and any expectation that Earth will maintain con- mining. Throughout the campaign debates, neither ditions to which we have become long adapted. candidate talked openly about climate change. “565” is the maximum number of gigatons No policy discussion makes sense apart from the of fossil fuels we can burn by mid-century and reality of climate change, however, which has arisen have any expectation of staying under that 2 from extreme land-use practices encouraged in the degree temperature limit (at current rates we United States. Industrial-era land uses, particularly will blow throw this in 16 years). “Green Revolution” agriculture and forestry, have di- “2795” is the still-rising number of giga- minished Earth’s biodiversity, which maintains the tons of oil and gas in proven reserves (valued gaseous composition of the atmosphere to which we at $27 trillion) which fossil fuel companies in- have become accustomed. We appropriate deeply bur- tend to sell to us. This means that we need to ied, ancient, carbon-rich fossil life as fuel to burn in keep at least 80 percent of that underground. 1 order to grow food and textiles, manufacture plastics and nylons, pave parking lots and streets, and drive The 2012 presidential debates between President cars. This has pumped tons upon tons of carbon di- Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were the first since oxide directly into the air. Now, Earth’s atmosphere 1988 not to include at least some mention of climate contains proportionately more greenhouse gases change. The oil and gas industry donated over five than it has at any other point in humanity’s existence. million dollars to their campaigns (Obama, $705,373; Amounts of carbon dioxide, the top greenhouse gas, JULIANNE LUTZ WARREN CONNECTING THE DOTS: OCCUPY TIMES SQUARE, RE-OCCUPY OUR IMAGINATION 11 MINDING NATURE 6.1 are at 392 ppm and rising, already well above 350 efiting from a way of life that is harmful to others and ppm, the likely threshold ushering in disruptive or cat- eventually will be harmful to me as well. astrophic changes in ecosystems and human societies I surrounded myself with bowls of clean tap water alike. The over-abundance of greenhouse gases has to drink and wash with if the power went out. I realized already raised the Earth’s global average temperature how fortunate and wealthy I was; the clean water sur- about 0.8 degrees Celsius over the past century. This rounding me was cradled in porcelain. All I have to do means that the atmosphere holds at least four percent is push a lever and, carried by clean water, my waste water vapor on average, which tends after evaporat- flows away from me to somewhere else. The clean wa- ing from arid places, to be dumped as rain deluges on ter that surrounded me was cradled in a crystal pitch- already wet areas. er, hand-thrown pottery bowls, and copper pots. All This election year is in the running for the warm- I did was turn on the faucet and it flowed to me from est year ever in the continental United States. Extreme somewhere else. The clean water that surrounded me drought in the Midwest has destroyed winter wheat at home in Manhattan on the eve of Hurricane Sandy, and corn and soybeans. Ten days before Hurricane and on all previous days, has flowed through pipes to Sandy, I sat atop a hill in Birmingham, Alabama, where the city from reservoirs to the north, including the Gil- I was attending a family wedding.