Un Solo Populo

I was sorting out things that I packed long ago which followed my intermittent nomadic lifestyle and came across some buttons and stickers gathered during the first Earth Day in 1970. Each button declared “One Earth, One People” in various languages with the picture of the Earth taken by one of the Apollo missions as the master image. I used to have 25 of them; now, I am down to five—in Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian and Italian. From the last comes the title of this reflection.

I also still have stickers that I used to attach into a lot of things, from documents to envelopes. I was into promoting images of the “earthrise,” inviting new loyalties to a new symbol system and mythology for Century 21. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who died last July, successfully initiated and promoted the observance of Earth Day worldwide.

A poster of the planet with a Hawaiian lei and John Lennon’s “Imagine” emblazoned prominently below the picture on a sky blue backdrop graces the front of my sixth grade classroom. It came from a time of listening to the wails of the whales; of extending open arms and tight hugs to tree trunks. Of course, those involved understood that this was not finally about whales and the trees. It was about us, humans. Now, a call to a singularity of the planet is no longer focused on the oneness of its people but in its diversity as it seeks connections and creates networks to define its wholeness.

One Earth, one people, remains a relevant and overwhelming challenge today. More so as it is becoming clear that for all the high-sounding verbiage about love of country and the defense of freedom, the wars we fight boil down to access and control of the world’s resource on oil. Falling on deaf ears, scientists are now aggressively trumpeting their long ignored message about phenomenon of global warming as their data connects it to the changes in weather conditions. Awakened politicians are finally getting more assertive in influencing public policy toward earth-friendly energy and fuel consumption. Green politics has moved from party membership to political perspective. Conservative mothers and war veterans have begun listening to the voice of conscience before the political rhetoric of bearing arms in the service of protecting resource interests.

Social Studies in the sixth grade for the CNMI is focused on ancient civilizations. The textbook ends with a unit called World Today where it portrays the people and places, history, government and economy of the modern times. Our class reversed the chronological flow and began with images of the contemporary world. Like peeling off the onion, we will now glance at the 30-year old wild aggregation of cultures called the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, then look at the 225-year old “We the People” experiment. We then trace the beginnings of the human odyssey in the Upper and Lower Nile, to Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent; mark the almost simultaneous eruption of consciousness east of the Asian steppes, south of the Himalayas, around the Aegean and Ionian Seas, that would create the Greco-Roman tradition which left its indelible mark on Europe. Bringing the European agenda to colonize the native populations across the Atlantic and the Pacific, we will find our place back to the CNMI and the U.S. of A.

Of our present world, briefly, the picture includes about 200 sovereign entities across the planet, peopling six continents (our textbook have yet to catch up with the contemporary geo-social continent called Eurasia). Population increased from 1.6 billion a hundred years ago to 6 billion-plus in the current era. We expect to double that number in 25 years. National identities are expected to increase as well. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia was but prelude to more disassembling of existing countries into smaller units. Even in the United States, there is built-in option to split into smaller units like that one written into the State of Texas’ constitution. Of course, California is expected to split into two, maybe four states in the future, and we’re not talking about the lines along the Andreas fault, either.

The planet’s population is increasing geometrically while the resources are not only getting scarce, the state of the world’s natural resource has become polluted, dirty and unsafe to use. While trade among peoples accelerated in the last 1,500 years, so has the incidence of war. Two world conflagrations, in fact, devastated the last century.

All these thoughts about the planet got triggered again in my mind this week as the coalition of the willing in MINA gathered to apply the green perspective into the ecological issues of the Commonwealth. This Thursday, an EcoSalon takes place where interested parties gather around a meal to converse on their environmental concerns. Islandwide Saipan is currently engaged in recycling efforts. One wishes that the current political wrangling would at least take a serious glance at the current state of our natural capital—the land and waters of the Commonwealth.

Two weeks before the end of the summer, I finally got around to shifting into a “vacation” mode. I snorkeled in the lagoon north of Tanapag and was dismayed at the state of the waters 200 meters off from the shores. Slime, waste matter and all kind of debris polluted the area, which explains why tourists are not lining up to plunge into the waters. It was not until I got close to the breakwater reefs that the expected and touted luxuriant marine life became evident.

I recall in the early 80s, while swimming in one of the coral atolls of the Marshall Islands in the late afternoon, tracking a manta ray and a lost baby shark, when a piece of baby plastic diapers floated before my goggles. Urban lifestyle had reached the outer islands and even in that remote area of the world, urbanization and its profligate consumption ethos had already come a-calling. I am afraid, our marine life destruction has gone way beyond Mother Nature’s recuperative capacities.

My citizenship to One Earth this year will be held accountable by what happens with the San Vicente sinkhole. When my students sing their Wednesday song which has the following lines: “Saipan is our village a few thousand strong; we’re building a home where each one can belong,” I shall stand at attention and ask myself what I have done, time-wise and resource-wise, to deal with the San Vicente sinkhole.

Un solo populo is thinking globally, acting locally. Many directions toward one Earth!

Strictly a personal view. Vergara writes a weekly column for the Saipan Tribune.