Youth, age, the tailend of it all, and Syncrude oil sands mining for glory

How wonderful it would be to be young again.  So full of energy, ignorance, folly, and certainty.   To be again that arrogant, opinionated, save-the-world hero.  To go boldly where none have gone before; and to brave the elements for the joy of existence.  To protest at Syncrude and try to stop the world in its tracks with one bold action.  Maybe to die a young martyr for a noble cause, or at least a few ducks. 

Age brings caution, insight, and doubt.  You just know too much to be sure there is only one correct answer.  You have learnt to consider all things.  This senescent wisdom brings comfort but no amelioration of yearning.  Yearning for change for the better……at which point you immediately devolve into a whirlpool of questioning the philosophy of good.  And glad there is gas for the car when it is too rainy to ride a bike to the office. 

An example of the difference between age and youth is this blog and the blog at this link.  At the linked-to blog, you will find a fascinating piece by JessieS, of Greenpeace, who it appears was one of those idiots who suited up and went out the Syncrude tailings pipe to hold a banner calling for an end to oil sands mining.   He notes:

Standing beside me was my fellow pipe blocker, Paul Baker, and our unwavering support person, Anna Gerrard. The pipe in front of us jutted out about 10 meters over top of the steaming tailings pond, with a shuddering 40 ft drop into the black toxic sludge and pile of jagged rocks. The sandy end of the tailings dam cliff fell away as Paul stepped near the edge. I can’t speak for my friend Paul, but I know I was petrified at that point. I felt like saying “THAT’S THE PIPE???? I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS!!”

At about the same time as this was happening I was wondering around testing a new way to cover said ponds.  I was vainly trying to recreate my youth.  But maybe I never was as bold or foolhardy or as plain dumb as JessieS.    About that the silliest I did and wrote is this:

I had met the representatives for Bidim in South Africa and they had convinced me to place a layer of geotextile over the clay before laying down the one meter sand layer that I proposed as the starter dike for the impoundment. I had no way of calculating the stress on the geotextile. So I choose the strongest available. Teams of Zulus cleared the vegetation and we rolled out the thirty-meter wide zone of Bidim. To connect the rolls and make sure they stayed together, we had other teams of Zulus sweating in the sun as they used every wire coat hanger in the land to “stitch” the individual strips together Then I let the scrapers go. Loaded with sand from the escarpment, they bounced out over the Bidim. It became a game: could you go faster than the bow wave that developed ahead of the scraper.? Could you pull out of the depression around your machine? Could you remain sober as they scraper rose and fell by upto half and more of a meter?

At that age, even then, I was trying to find engineering solutions, not photo-op solutions.  Even at their age, I would have thought that doing the following exciting but futile, a mere expenditure of adrenaline to no end:

It took Paul and I a good 15 or 20 minutes to shimmy with our large blocking devices to the end of the pipe. I kept my eyes focused directly ahead of me and when I looked down, I looked directly at where I was placing my hands on the pipe. I could hear the helicopter above us and the wind was picking up, whipping my bangs in my face. Paul kept looking back at me, holding up his thumb, and I would respond back with a an “I’m ok” thumbs up. Anna, our lifeline, was feeding rope out inch after inch. At the end of the pipe, I could feel the heat on my thighs and I was dripping with sweat. I couldn’t imagine how hot Christine and Scott, the skull banner team, must be, decked out in full hazmat suits. I took a fleeting look to my right and saw them and Max, their support person, finishing the skull banner, its mouth wide over the other tailings pipe, vomiting ashen liquid into the depths of the pond. I took a final quick look behind me, carefully turning only my head and not my body, to see the giant banner that Jeannie and Dave had draped over the edge of the sandy dam.

Maybe the world needs different types to do different things to find the right balance to survive and prosper.  Maybe we need young people to send out to die in battle: (a) to keep society safe against the enemy; (b)  to keep the tribe intact; and (c) keep the tribe free of the destructive energy of such youth.  Only stupid youth would go out to die in battle or vainly go out in a full suit along such a pipeline.  I do not think they achieved anything; and even if they died it would make little difference.  True they would be  passing heroes and martyrs.  And they would have reminded us to keep probing, to keep thinking, to keep making things better.  But others more prudent would soon send their memory to dust.

Who knows, if they live long enough they may chance on a real problem and an effective solution.  Certainly this was not one. 

Then again as a final thought, maybe this act of folly was done to prove their merit in a disfunctional society.  Like those black kids in LA gangs who have to kill somebody, anybody, before they are allowed to join the gang and sell drugs to impress the girls with whom they seek to sleep.  I bet JessieS slept well that night.