Snow, Snow, and more Snow

I’m going to admit up front this doesn’t have much of anything to do with the environment. It is a rant, pure and simple. But I think it reflects on why we treat the environment the way we do: we can’t accept a loss of control, pure and simple.

In my position at the college I am privy to most of the complaints levied by the population in relation to the goings ons of the everyday sort of campus affairs- broken toilets, out of order exit signs, and, most often, heat that is either too hot or too cold and air conditioning that isn’t functioning, depending on the season. I get just as many complaints at work as I do through facebook, which seems to be the repository of everyone’s bad feelings about their daily activities. And in the past week, there have been even more complaints than normal- and all about the snow.

Oh, I’m tired of being stuck in the house. Oh, there’s nothing to do. Oh, I’m so tired of shoveling, oh, I wish it would stop snowing, oh, the lines at the grocery store, whine whine whine. People who I know don’t like their jobs much complaining about how much they want to go back to work. People on and on and on about how the college shouldn’t have been closed for a whole week, that it was taking too long to get things cleared, that the state botched things up, that if we lived up north they never would have dealt with things so badly.

Well, I for one am appalled at these reactions. First off, knowing how hard the crew worked on campus to clear away the snow as fast as they could, staying overnight, not seeing their families, working endlessly to clear away snow that was already piled high on the ground, not to mention the places where it drifted- I saw damage to buildings, pieces of roofing pulled right off by the snow. And the understaffed crew had to clear it all away with two pick ups with plows, because one of them broke clean in half from the weight of the snow, a broken tractor, and a rented Bobcat. People asked why the snow wasn’t cleared faster. Well, what would you expect? It’s not like they’re willing to divert more money to the grounds crew, for extra staff, or for better equipment. And yet somehow they expect them to be able to make the snow magically disappear the day after it stops falling? Really the complainers should be ashamed of themselves for having so little respect for the people who have worked so tirelessly to clear the campus for them.

But it’s not just people on campus. Everyone I’ve talked to goes on and on about how miserable they were staying in their houses, not being able to get out and drive. It’s all about having to get out and drive- and honestly the roads would have been clear a lot faster if it weren’t for the people who insisted on trying to drive on them before they were ready, so that road crews (on campus included) spent more time towing people out of snowbanks than actually plowing. And what I can’t understand, is why people are so incapable of being inside their own houses (especially if they have children). Is being at home so bad? I got so much done over the week at home- and enjoyed myself more than I had in months. It was a right little vacation.

But then again, I’m ok with the slow pace. I’m definitely ok with not driving. I keep all the food I need in my house, because I don’t shop at the grocery store anyway. And I’m willing to admit that some things are just more powerful than business as usual, which seems to be what everyone else was so upset about. “Nature” cannot be allowed to stop the ongoing rush of daily activity. Snow? No. Snow cannot be allowed to cause interruptions, no matter how many feet of it fall on the ground. We must assert our control over it immediately, show that no manner of snow fall can keep US from driving on the roads.

And, to attempt to make this relevant, this is how it relates to the environment: we believe, as a society, that we can control natural forces. We believe weather has no effect on us. THIS is how we end up growing tomatoes with massive petroleum inputs in January. THIS is how we start to believe that we can change the composition of the atmosphere and not have any negative effects. We believe we, and the natural world, are two separate entities at war with one another. And, if we believe that it is direly important to conduct business as usual on a daily basis, we are at war with nature, because nature is not business as usual. Stuff happens, and that stuff usually happens for a reason (not like fate, or something), but because those weather events are important to the survival of the ecosystem. And we can fight them all we want, but in the long run, we will lose. Business is not going to conquer nature. Unless we accept the fact that we are as subject to its ever changing progression, we will get left behind.

So get over it, people. It snowed.