The Black Snake, the Midgard Serpent--and Us

Where I live in the Hudson Valley, NY State area, my local community is facing a terrible environmental threat. This is the construction of a huge natural gas-fired power plant, the CPV Power Plant in Wawayanda NY, that will belch out massive pollution into the air and water, threatening health and well-being throughout our area, poisoning our water supply and  running the risk of massive explosions.

See http://www.blog.protectorangecounty.org/ to learn more. If you live in the Orange County area, the web site will tell you action that you can take. Time is of the essence! The final permit needed for the project will be decided by early August, so the more people call and write to Governor Cuomo, who will make the final decision, the better our chances to stop this nightmare. Tell Andrew Cuomo to not approve the permit, because we need to stop the Power Plant. Call the governor at 1-518-474-8390. Call every day if you can. You can also leave comments at https://www.governor.ny.gov/contact-iframe. Cuomo gives every indication of wanting to run for president in 2020. Let him know that if he stops this project, you will consider supporting him in any future presidential campaign, and that if he does not, you will take your business elsewhere!

I have decided to reflect on the situation through the lens of Norse Mythology.  Is the threat like the Frost Giants looking to snuff out the sun, or is it the Fire Demon Surt looking to burn up the earth? Well, both of those could be said to symbolize the current state of danger, but there is another mythological image that works even better: Thor fighting the Midgard Serpent. What made me think of this is something I heard today  at a protest today in front of The Threat. A Native American man, a descendant of the local Lenape Native Americans who ancient burial ground is threatened by the CPV plant, spoke about the Indian myth of a "black snake" that poses a danger to the earth. He argued that the massive push by oil and gas companies to build pipelines and drill for gas and oil everywhere as much and as fast as possible was the modern version of the Black Snake. A second speaker noted that just as the snake can burrow into the ground and grow multiple heads that reach into all directions, so does the Millennium Pipeline, the local structure providing distribution of fracked gas in this area, represent a hydra-headed menace growing day by day as construction of this and related pipelines proceeds. Pondering the snake image, I thought of the Midgard Serpent, Thor's ancient enemy, who he must fight again and again, never quite vanquishing but hopefully keeping in check.

This pipeline and this power plant, and all the other power plants and pipelines that similarly threaten other communities, are our Midgard Serpent. We must, like Thor, raise our hammers to fight it back. Victory will not come all at once, or it may only be partial, or it may never come, but we must fight.

Protect the Earth. Protect Midgard, the only world we humans have. Remember Thor.  Fight back the Serpent. This is our duty.

Death by Corporation

I have recently been thinking about how so many of the world's most serious problems today are either caused or made worse by the powerful business entities known as corporations. It is not just that large corporations engage in practices and sell products that may be harmful in various ways. It is also the case that such corporations are also able and willing to use their considerable economic power, media presence and political clout to block or confuse any efforts to address serious problems from global warming to childhood obesity to gun violence, to name just a few.

Global warming. It is a serious threat to humanity's future. Warmer temperatures are causing more and more extreme weather with damaging, even lethal consequences, with the "superstorm" Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast of the USA in October of 2012 and the raging fires caused by excessive heat and drought in the New South Wales region of Australia in January of 2013 as two recent examples of the environmental juggernaut that is bearing down on us. In the judgment of most scientific authorities, we have to alter our patterns of energy consumption, in particular our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas, in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that are building up in the atmosphere and triggering a warming of the climate that is in turn warming the ocean waters, that in turn cause more warmth and moisture to rise into the atmosphere and produce the storms, droughts and other weather effects causing increasing damage to life, land and property. However, the carbon fuel industries have poured money into an intensive media campaign, particularly prominent on right-wing news outlets like FOX News but also finding its way to other media channels as well, to discredit the very idea of global warming or climate change, convincing a good many Americans, and no doubt others elsewhere, that either global warming is a kind of scientific hoax, or, that there is no clear proof that it is the result of human activity,and no proof that human activity can halt it. Therefore, it would be foolish to undertake actions such as reducing the burning of fossil fuels, since such actions would be disruptive to the world economy without any certain environmental benefit. This has confused many people into a state of apathy. The Victors: corporations that profit from fossil fuel production and consumption. The Losers: all of us who want the planet to remain livable. The reason: the incredible hunger for profit that blots out all other concerns and values is proving capable of drowning out the world's scientists and visionary leaders concerned about the future.


Childhood obesity. This is an increasingly common condition in the USA and is growing in the UK and elsewhere too. It is not just that young people are becoming more massive in their size. They are also manifesting diseases such as diabetes that threaten their health and longevity. Scientists are not clear on all the causes for this situation, and there may well be many from lack of exercise due to more sedentary lifestyles and pastimes to the ingestion of growth hormones given to farm animals and ending up in American food to overeating of "junk food" filled with fat, carbohydrates, salt, sugar and/or corn syrup, and chemicals that add appealing color and addictive taste. No one objects to the government encouraging young people to exercise more, such as First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, but when Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC, made an effort to restrict the bottle and/or serving size of sugary drinks such as soda, there was a huge outcry from the soda and beverage industry,and a media campaign accusing the mayor of robbing Americans of their "freedom," presumably the all-important freedom to eat and drink non-nutritious foods and beverages and develop heart disease and diabetes. Once again, corporate greed attempts to override human interests.

Gun violence. As I have addressed this recently, I will not rehash the whole discussion, but just focus on the corporate profit dimension. Guns and gun-related paraphernalia are big business in the USA, highly profitable indeed. The main pro-gun lobbying organization, the NRA, is largely funded by gun manufacturers. With so much money at stake, the purveyors and manufacturers of guns are definitely not going to let a mere public outcry by the majority of the people of the nation over problems of gun violence get in the way of the profits that their stockholders feast upon. And once again, we find a sophisticated media campaign funded by gun manufacturers and amplified by right-wing media that any reduction or restriction of guns in America is an assault on fundamental freedoms and evidence of a totalitarian government in the making that is best resisted by --you guessed it-- guns. So go out now, all you freedom-loving folk, and prepare for war against the big bad government that thinks of nothing else but how to oppress and enslave you. I keep wondering when someone will start championing the right to bear nuclear arms. If possessing personal weapons without restriction of ANY sort is so important, then why not allow patriotic Americans to have their own nuclear bombs and missile launch systems? Wouldn't that be the ultimate demonstration of the most important American "freedom?"

The defense of the "right" to eat and drink unhealthy foods and the "right" to own and use a limitless number of guns is almost identical to the way that tobacco companies used to champion the "right" to smoke. The skillful effort to confuse and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming/climate change is a planet-threatening problem RIGHT NOW is also reminiscent of how the tobacco companies argued for decades that there was no good scientific evidence that smoking was harmful to human health, even though the companies themselves had done their own research proving that point!

We cannot trust corporations to watch out for our health or the future well-being of our planet. Corporations just want us to buy buy buy whatever crap they are producing, no matter what the cost to health, to society, to the environment,and they will do everything in their power to prevent anyone from interfering with their business activities. As a college teacher, I am sad to see how many of my students seem to believe that the American style corporate economy, the so-called "free enterprise/free market" system, is not only the best economic system, but indeed the ONLY one that is possible. This is the result of the past 30 years of American politics in which the Reaganite vision of government-BAD, businessmen-GOOD; regulations-BAD, profits-GOOD; compassion for others-STUPID, selfishness and individualism-SMART has been dominant. For the sake of the planet and ourselves, I pray that this paradigm is now losing its allure and that we will be able to have a different kind of conversation about such issues as mentioned above. One thing is for sure, every step of the way, powerful corporations will fight like hell to prevent any changes that might deprive them of their all-important profits. They do not care about the future, so we are going to have to care twice as hard.

In Snorri Sturluson's version of the myth of Baldur, his death causes widespread sadness, and his mother lets it be known that if all beings will weep for him and show their love, he will be returned to life. The whole range of living beings are ready to cooperate, but only one creature refuses, a female giant that is actually the mischievous god Loki in disguise. She says, "Let Hel (death) keep what she has...I will not weep for Odin's son!" This is the kind of hard-heartedness that we can expect from the giant corporations of our day. When we tell them the children are being killed by an oversupply of dangerous weapons and unhealthy food, that the oceans are rising and destructive storms are washing away our shores and threatening our cities, and when we urge them that we have to change the way they do business so that future generations can walk on the earth in safety and enjoy the light of the sun, the blue of the sky and the greenness of the earth, they are not going to want to listen. We have to keep at it until they do. Today's corporations are caught in a web of evil that they have spun for themselves, but the corporations are at bottom human institutions, and we must strive to reawaken that glimmer of humanity that still exists somewhere inside the armies of lawyers, the billion dollar marketing teams, the disinformation campaigns, the corporate boardrooms obsessed with financial figures.

Above all, we have to reject the idea that profits are all that matter. People are more important than profits. Nature is more important than profits. The well-being of us all and our planet is more important than profits. We need new economic arrangements that honor our deepest, most sustaining and inspiring values and reject the false idols of narrow-minded greed and profit. We need to revisit the very idea of what corporations are for, who they should serve, and whether they should bear more responsibility to society and nature in a broader sense, and not just be answerable to their shareholders and the stock market.

As a Pagan, I can easily relate this to the Pagan love of nature, but there is in fact no religion I know of that tells people they should seek to destroy each other and all in nature for the sake of gold and greed.