Separation Anxiety. I checked tomorrow's weather a moment ago, more out of habit than out of interest. "Heavy fog"... and I realized that it just didn't matter what the weather was, that I would do the same thing tomorrow, no matter the weather. What I really wanted to know was what to wear. It makes me a little sad because it was not that long ago that most of human existance depended on the daily weather, and more specifically, on our intensely intimate relationship with the larger world. It has not always been true that cold weather or storms were merely impediments to our daily commute. Heavy fog used to mean that foraging would be more difficult, that dampness would permeate all of our possessions, and that tonight we would eat a meal that contained plants gathered with our own hands and meat hunted with skills that we have largely lost.

I think about the differences between that time and the present occasionally. The differences are a result of geography in large part. This was made clearer to me today while watching a country music video (!) on television. Montgomery Something-or-Other was singing that "You do your thing and I'll do mine." One of the verses said that he'd like to be at a lake with a fish on the line or eating "something I just cleaned", with the implication being that many urban citizen's disdain for hunting is an indication of their separation from the natural world that provides resources. It's true. Most of the population of the world relies on hunting, planting, and foraging skills to feed itself. The human race relies on the connection to the world in order to survive. The fact that people find the reality of their own impact on the world disdainful is upsetting. My impression is that many urbanites (and suburbanites) would argue that their vegetarian-eating, Prius-driving, and NPR-listening lifestyle serves to reduce their "ecological footprint" in a nation of gas-guzzling SUVs and 16oz. sirloin steaks.

I'm not sure that making lifestyle choices that reduce your footprint on a web-based application is a good way to lead your life. It seems to me that informed citizens of a free nation have a right to make the decision to act as they see fit in all manner of circumstances, and that information about the long-term consequences of these actions must be reported back to these same citizens in order to adapt in a changing world. Our separation from the world that we extract resources from, whether the resources are crude oil from Azerbaijan or coffee beans from Mexico, is preventing us from making the internal decisions that the bulk of the world makes every day. Even our high-speed internet connectivity and 802.11g wireless networks can't move information about our actions into our consciousness fast enough for us to act. When a hunter breaks a twig and alarms the prey, the prey responds immediately. When an American consumer buys a can of Krylon spray paint, nothing happens immediately. The toxic chemicals, the disposal of the empty can, the solvents used to clean your hand after you've sprayed your garden furniture, none of the impacts of the can of paint is immediately felt by the American consumer. Perhaps the cost of the can of paint includes some of the cost to mitigate these impacts? Doubtful. Does Sherwin-Williams (manufacturer of Krylon) accept empty paint cans for reuse? Do they provide remediation efforts to clean up excess Xylene or Toluene in the air? Does your federal government? Local government? The answer is most likely no, because your use of the paint doesn't constitute a "major source" under the clean air act. Even those of us who consider ourselves to be environmentalists are not aware of the ramifications of our actions.

So the country music video continues with me in agreement of the artist's point, and he comes to a scene in which our hero drives a huge SUV with his two young kids in the back seat, buckled up tight. The lyric is "I won't risk my family's safety to save a little gas." Fuel economy being on of my particular interests, I sat up and decided to keep watching this channel. I've been wondering why some people don't seem to care about the fuel economy of SUVs, and continue to drive them despite the rising price of gasoline. IT didn't make sense to me until I heard that lyric. There's a reasonable argument there. Safety of the family. It was the first time I had heard a real reason for SUV ownership. It's funny, and probably not coincidental, that I'm 100 pages into a book about SUVs.

I realize now that this artist hasn't gone all the way in connecting the dots from his first point about fishing and hunting to this more recent point about SUVs, and that one of the reasons behind that lack of a connection is the separation between the pollution caused by automobile exhaust and the death of freshwater fish and forests due to acid rain. They are linked, but the time and space relationship is not immediately obvious. It's hard to tell someone to drive a smaller, more fuel efficient car in order to prevent fish kills in the Adirondacks. They will not see the connection, and further they will not care because, even though the cause and effect relationship between the cars and the fish doesn't hurt the fish in thier local lake.

Our technology has allowed us to retain the separation between man and the local environment while providing us the power to connect our actions to the global environment. Does the recent cool weather in New England provide further evidence of our human impact on the globe?' I don't know. But I do know that the immediate impact of going out in the rain is that I get wet. Sometimes that damp and cold feeling is bad, but tonight it feels like a chance to feel an immediate connection to the world after a long period of separation.