Oct 9 2008 - Our Pollution Problem Choices - (Yom Kippur, 5769)

Last year, at this time, we asked the question, can we human beings actually and fundamentally change? For without that possibility of our being able to modify or control our behaviors, there really isn’t much sense to the High Holy Days, is there? Without our being able to change, what sense do the themes of return, renewal, and repentance make? For it is these elements that comprise the essential work we are exhorted to do during these High Holidays.

Having decided that we can and, indeed, must be able to make changes, this year, I want to raise a different question. It is: can we perfect human-kind? I want to pursue this question through the use of a large metaphor. It begins with a bike ride I took on the path between Dillon and Frisco that traverses the dam.

Ziva and I were pedaling our bikes along that byway this summer, taking in the magnificent mountain vistas and marveling at the beauty of the lake. There amidst all that was so pristine, I spotted something lying on the shoulder of the road. I took a double-take because I couldn’t believe what I saw. Someone had actually pitched a soiled diaper there. (Yes!) How d i s g u s ting!, I immediately said to myself: this is the end of the wilderness experience for us all if anyone is callous enough to do something like this.

I don’t know exactly why I came to this over-the-top conclusion. After all, between the mine tailings and the myriad mounds of other refuse that people have chucked or scattered over just about every square mile of our Colorado mountain territory, one dirty diaper shouldn’t have driven me to such a dire induction. And yet, this one act, this one tell-tale sign of our slovenliness as human beings signified to me a statement of supreme defeat in our battle to be good stewards, preserving and saving our planet. More so, it seemed to sum up an evaluation I have been making in these past few years about whether I believed that people were perfectible. For, is it not to this aim that we devote these days of awe? Just as we reach to perfect God’s creation and, through tikkun olam, attempt to become co-partners with God to perfect the world, are we not on some like road, trying to make ourselves better people…and is there not some goal of perfectibility that we ought not be striving for?

Each of us remembers the science classes where we learned that there are always natural forces which build up the earth, forming new mountains or laying layers of lava over the surface of the earth, creating new land. These, of course, primarily and specifically, entail the work of volcanoes and the movement of massive glaciers. Then there are the opposite forces of water, wind and temperature differentials which break down the mountains and, over centuries, move millions of tons of soil from one place to another as they degrade and displace what was once built up.

To an often greater extent and at usually a much faster pace, we humans ourselves manage to change the face of our globe. But let me quickly assure you, I am not sermonizing about global warming. I don’t want to attempt that discussion today. I am more concerned about what each of us is doing about improving ourselves in the face of our depleting the earth’s resources. Should we not be making the effort to preserve the beauty and wonder of what God created in us and outside us that God left us in charge of? After all, Midrash tells us that when God finished the work of creation, the Eternal told Adam that we are responsible for the preservation of the world; for, if we fail, there will be none after us to set things right again. (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 7:20)

Just as an aside, we witness among ourselves, in this very congregation, those forces which seek to build up and those which tear down. There are those who are intent upon our recycling. I have to admit that I was less impressed with that effort until Ziva and I began to do it ourselves at home. Suddenly I realized that we were cutting in half what otherwise we would be sending as garbage to a land fill. And what we did put into the recycling effort would save resources and energy because the plastics and metals, paper and glass would not have to be produced from scratch but could be reworked and re-used with much less energy involved.

I have watched and participated in our highway cleanup. I noticed that the most refuse appears closest to the restaurants on the stretch of Bowles we patrol. I also notice that one person with an open plastic bag of garbage flying out from the back of a pick-up truck or from the deliberate hand of someone from inside a car can undo the work of many of us that may have taken us as much as a half hour to clean up. It really galls me to be out there in the median or walking on the side walk, gathering garbage, junk and rubbish, and have some clown drive by and pitch his half empty soda can right out his car window. Man, if ever there was proof that bad things don’t happen to people who do bad, that moment encapsulates it for me. Yep, right there and then, know that people who do evil things do exist and continue to flourish. Just when I think that those of us who are trying to make the world a better place might be achieving some success, along comes these other folks cluttering up and littering the world all over again.

Yes, we all shake our heads and mutter under our breaths, but we don’t do more than that. We don’t, I suspect, because there isn’t much that we think we can do. Confrontation is ugly and often risky. Noting license plate numbers and making formal complaints is impractical to the point of being ridiculous. Imagine walking into a Littleton police station to report an instance of gross littering. I think it would take being armed to keep the authorities’ attention! It would probably take them a whole half hour to stop laughing upon our departure. But, still and all, I think we’d all like to do something more about the polluter than just complain

Part of the answer is to educate. You should see the programs that Israel is creating all over that country at this point. There are squads of kids and adults being trained to teach the rest of the population about the merits of recycling and of conservation of resources. Realizing that there will always be society’s miscreants, most people will pick up on the values of recycling and, for another example, of carrying a refuse bag in their cars which they can empty in more proper places than onto the road. We know that there are those who will act ugly because they actually deem themselves to be so, and there isn’t much to be done about them.

Another part of the answer is to just continue doing what we’re doing…of every-so-often, strapping on the safety vests and grabbing the big orange bags and going forth to collect every bit of trash we can. This maintains the status quo. It doesn’t allow things to get too far out of hand. But, neither does it solve the problem.

For, you see, at the end of this discussion, we come back to my original question which is whether humankind itself is perfectible. Given the metaphorical nature of my conversations about our trashing the Earth, do we now think that we all, actually, might get it right?