My best friend from high school is
getting married in two days, and I sit with her on the living room
floor of her cousin's house, surrounded by stacks of seating cards,
menus, candles, wedding favors and picture frames that have to be
sorted into boxes and brought to the wedding venue. It's the first
time we've spent much time together since graduating from nearby
colleges six years ago. She moved to Houston to take a high-paying,
high-stress job with Exxon-Mobile, and I spent a year volunteering in
a developing country, then moved to rural Vermont. I still have a
card that she gave me before I left. “Don't become a total hippie!”
she jokingly wrote, (correctly) envisioning a life in which I would
forego daily showers, enjoy the taste of granola and exchange ideas
with liberal environmentalists.
In high school, she and I became
friends because we looked so much alike that even our mothers
couldn't always tell us apart in photographs. We adopted similar
styles, dyed our hair blonde and listened to lots of Led Zeppelin.
Our last hurrah after college was a road trip to a music festival in
Tennessee, and even then, things had started to change. A week after
the festival, I wrote in my journal: “A. left for Texas this
morning and it feels like the end of an era. Other people have moved
away and come back, including myself, and yet it still felt like the
same time period – the years tick by and we get older, but time is
seamless nonetheless. Now it feels like that seam, which had been
stretching and stretching almost imperceptibly, has finally broken.
I'm sad, I'm nostalgic, but it was time for this to end. We've
changed too much.”
Other close friends from that time
period have visited her in Texas, but I have not. Her life down there
seemed so removed from the choices I was making. She'd gone from
ripped jeans and paisley headbands to pearls and high heels, and I
stuck largely with the torn jeans aesthetic. Was I immature, and she
was simply growing up? I wasn't sure. While she was turning to
anti-depressants, removing herself ever farther from the natural
world and working for a company that values profit above all else, I
was participating in conservation projects and working for idealistic
non-profit organizations. Exxon-Mobile came to represent to me
everything that was wrong with the world: reckless capitalism,
corporate irresponsibility, political takeover, environmental rape
and disregard for climate change, and I was appalled that my friend
could work there. Yet at the same time as I distanced myself from
her, I partially understood her decision. Her family didn't have much
money, her father was ill and she had the opportunity to help. She
had the opportunity to succeed. When you grow up in poverty,
financial success is a powerful motivator.
Still, I was floored when she asked me
to be in her wedding. But I accepted, thinking that maybe it would
lead us to rekindle our friendship, or help me realize that the
people who work for Big Oil are people too. After all, how often does
an environmentalist get to sit down at a table with a bunch of
Exxon-Mobile folks?
Now, two nights before the big event,
we're drinking wine and looking at pictures and things are going
remarkably well.
Then the other bridesmaids leave the
room, and she leans toward me, conspiratorially.
“E. and I might be moving to Canada,”
she says in a whisper. “I haven't told anyone yet.”
Canada! I think, envisioning rich
forests and open spaces. “Where?”
“Alberta,” she says, and then I
understand. Tar sands.
She sees my face. She can read my
reaction. She assures me that tar sand mining is safer for the
environment than off-shore drilling, and will move us closer toward
North American energy independence. It's the future.
I try to be tactful – this is, after
all, a celebration of love. I casually mention the pristine,
carbon-absorbing, wildlife-rich boreal forest being ripped up for a
few billion barrels of oil.
“Eh,” she says dismissively. “It's
a wasteland up there. There's enough wilderness left in the world.”
I nearly bite my tongue off.
Thankfully, the other bridesmaids come back, and the conversation
reverts to safe topics like how to tie the bows on our dresses.
***
The next day I find myself sitting at
the rehearsal dinner with a thoroughly Texan uncle of the
groom and the bride's quirky uncle from Pennsylvania. Just when I
think the conversation will revolve around skiing, grandkids and the
weather, it swerves unexpectedly into fracking territory. The uncle
from Pennsylvania is solidly against hydraulic fracturing for natural
gas because of the risks to the environment and human health, and the
lack of research and oversight. The uncle from Texas seems to
consider it a marvel of modern science and something that big oil
companies should be pursuing full steam ahead. There is a bit of
polite debate and the conversation ends awkwardly.
The inescapable sheen of oil has coated
our lives. Just because I consider myself an environmentalist, drive
a fuel-efficient car and try to buy food that hasn't been shipped
great distances doesn't mean I am not dependent on fossil fuels. More
importantly, just because I too rely on fossil fuels doesn't mean
that I'm hypocritical in believing that the only path to a
sustainable future is one that lessens this dependence.
After the wedding ceremony and the
dancing and eating and drinking, I washed the makeup off my face and
went to bed without having reached any conclusions. I'd hoped that
being part of a wedding funded by the oil industry would have led me
to some sage little nuggets to write about: if we surround
ourselves with like-minded people, we will only further alienate
ourselves from dialogue and change, for
example. Or, underneath our different political, social and
environmental beliefs, we're all just imperfect human beings, trying
to do what we think is best. Or, we ultimately realized that
our friendship was more important than our differences.
But all of those are too trite and too
neatly wrapped to be fully honest. The truth is that while
communication is important, all the dialogue in the world is probably
not enough to challenge someone's belief that we should mine the hell
out of the tar sands because there's enough wilderness elsewhere in
the world. The truth is that my friend and I will probably continue
to drift further apart, and she will become further entrenched in her
world and I in mine.
(Tar sands photo from Wisconsin Sierra Club)
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