I visited my friend Lisa in Clearwater Beach one year during October; a storm had just passed and we were walking on the beach in the late evening. She stopped to examine conch shells — she called them “warrior conchs,” but I think the proper designation is “fighting conch” — and each one she determined was still alive, she threw back into the ocean. There were thousands of these mollusks on the beach, and the beach was long. I reached a rhythm with her as comfortable as the worn robe of our friendship: step, pause, bend, examine and throw. She said she did not want them to become stranded on the beach; they would dry in the sun, and die. I do not know if she ever considered the immensity of the task, and I did not question her about it. She focused on the one thing, and did that thing well.
That memory is one of many that floated to the surface of my consciousness as I finished reading a story about two men who had figured out how to “turn pollution into plastic.” Mark Herrema and Kenton Kimmel swam against the tide of popular opinion — and warnings from so-called “industry experts” — and figured out a way to take methane captured from dairy farms and use it to make plastic that will be formed into chairs, food containers and cellphone cases. Toward the end of the article, a big-wig in “industrial biotech research and development” for Dow Chemical company doubted that the technology would do much to “reduce global warming.” Harvard physicist David Keith concurred, saying in essence that we put out more waste than we can capture and recycle.
I have written of my friend Nancy, the Southern Indiana Queen of Recycling. Nancy examines the trash after guests have left to make sure that nothing recyclable has been thrown away. Her neighbors scatter when she comes out of the house on trash day, for she has accosted and castigated them for trashing what can be recycled. She keeps plastic bags in her freezer, and food waste goes in this “frozen garbage.” When the bags are full, she empties them in the woods behind her house. She views the earth as a resource, and one that is not infinite. She does what she can to conserve and renew the life of her “house.”
Loren Eiseley was a science writer to whom is attributed the “Starfish Story.” In the story, a man is walking on a beach littered with stranded starfish, picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean. When someone points out that the task is too great to make a difference — the beach is large and the starfish are many — the man notes, as he throws another, “It made a difference to that one.”
I did not know about Eiseley’s story that October evening when I was watching my friend pitch conch back into the roiling ocean, but she was doing the one thing that she could, just as Nancy is doing the one thing that she can. We should all do the one thing that we can. Good stewardship of the earth is incumbent upon each of us, whether or not we embrace the reality of global warming. Each small thing that we can do, collectively and individually, can make a difference in the quality of our lives, and the “house” we live on.
I am a poor housekeeper of the house I live on, but I will do better. Rather than view with despair the immensity of the task, I will do the one thing I can.