Chris Jepson: Compared to what

Ah, the conundrums of modern life. Is ignorance bliss? Are we righteous human beings when we collectively participate in the ecological destruction of our Mother Earth? How do we balance “our” joy in living when as the author Daniel Quinn observed, “[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.”

One of my all time favorite songs is from a 1969 album titled “Swiss Movement” featuring pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris. It absolutely cooks. Titled “Compared To What,” the chorus line asks, “Trying to make it real compared to what?” If you are at all reflective it is no doubt challenging to not experience intense despair and frustration (at times) over the ecological destruction of our planet.

It’s a large question, one that subsumes any number of equally challenging issues. Let’s bring it home locally. Ask yourself, “Why is more necessarily better?” Why is Orange County willing to expand its eastern urban growth boundary so as to add thousands of new homes (4,000) into what is essentially a rural environment along the Econlockhatchee River? How does destroying that which cannot be replaced help the environment? It doesn’t. But we do it just the same. All the time. In the name of individual “land rights.” In the name of profit. In the name of jobs. In the name of progress.

Once-upon-a-time—as a far younger man—I ran for public office and had yard signs that read, “Grow Less. Owe Less.” Is that a hoot or what? It makes me laugh at my naïveté. Of course, I lost. Tilting at “managing” growth is a fool’s errand in Florida. You’re thought suspicious for such thinking. It is considered antithetical to the American way of use it up now and throw it away. The environment. Progress, don’t-cha see.

Just a few miles down the road (east) from Orlando in Osceola County is Deseret Ranch, a Mormon Church operation. It consists of 290,000 acres across three counties, including Orange, Osceola and Brevard. In 2015 Osceola County Commissioners approved a development plan for 133,000 of those acres that will eventually be home to 500,000 residents, becoming a “community” larger than the combined populations today of Winter Park, Orlando, Kissimmee and Apopka.

In a Sept. 26, 2015 Orlando Sentinel article by Stephen Lemongello, Deseret Ranch manager Erik Jacobsen offered the following company position, "You can't plan growth. You can only plan for it.” I am unsure but this sounds suspiciously like an example of a distinction without a difference. Right now, today, these 133,000 acres are ranchland with few people. In 50 or so years, half-a-million will call it home.

What’s to be done? Some reading this will disagree with my contention that mankind urgently requires a new definition for what constitutes progress. More of us at the trough, buying toaster ovens and Pampers ain’t no blessing for the planet. Even if one fervently believes that you depart this planet upon death — to one’s heavenly rewards, or “whatever” one’s destination for that matter — regardless, what does it say about any of us that we handed off Earth as an expanding livable dump, a growing ecological wasteland for her many suffering and dying species.

The environmental writer, George Monbiot, assessed our contemporary values this way, “Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.”

Intelligently, we need to make it real compared to what, to a definition of sustainable progress. And doggedly work toward it.