The SCOTUS Majority Doesn't Hold Water
“When the circle is whole, so are we.”
A guy is driving along a country road when his car breaks down. As he's checking under the hood, he hears someone say, It's the spark plugs. He looks around but there's nobody there. All he sees are some blackbirds and a horse in a field. He goes back to looking under the hood. Again, the voice says, I told you, it's the spark plugs. Again, the man stops, looks around and sees no-one. The third time, he looks up just in time to see that it's the horse who's been talking. The man can hardly believe it. He finds the farmer who owns the horse, and excitedly tells him everything that happened. The farmer listens politely. Don't pay any attention to him, says the farmer. He doesn't know a thing about cars.
It's a little like that with the recent Supreme Court decision about ephemeral streams and it's like that with our political system in general. The SCOTUS majority doesn't understand ephemeral streams any more than ephemeral streams understand them. But, since humans make laws and the Supreme Court makes decisions that affect the Natural World - in this case ephemeral streams, it's on humans to understand how Earth's hydrology functions. The survival of all life, including human life, depends on healthy ephemeral streams.
Not all rivers are visible. Not all flowing water flows continuously. The rivers that we can see are only part of the story, and by far not the most important part. Ephemeral streams hydrate food webs, aquifers and fragile, specialized habitats. They are an aspect of the crucial and critically threatened, multi-dimensional connectivity of healthy rivers. Ephemeral streams are the lifeblood of rivers: they contribute more than half the total drainage discharge of more than twenty million permanent rivers that flow in the United States alone.
Ephemeral streams flow laterally, vertically and longitudinally, transferring energy, organisms, food, seeds, larvae and microbes to the Selves and places that need them: they are responsible for the flow of nutrients that directly shape the health of water downstream. When healthy, ephemeral streams contribute to habitat connectivity. They also transport and disseminate pollutants. When ephemeral streams become compromised, habitat isolation and species fragmentation are amplified. Man-made obstructions and pollution compromise the exchange between surface and groundwater; chemical composition and geomorphology are drastically altered. Ephemeral water appears seasonally, in response to copious rain. The diminishment of ephemeral streams affects all riparian zones, wetlands, floodplains, river deltas and therefore ocean health of the entire planet. Ephemeral streams are a major big deal. If the SCOTUS majority had understood this, they would have made a different decision.
Ephemeral, intermittent and subtle energies are fundamental patterns throughout the Natural World: pulsing, peristalsis, seasons, hibernation, all are examples of periodic or intermittent functions that keep life going.
Until recently, humans, too behaved like ephemeral streams. The farmers and artisans of each region, micro-climate and unique terrain focused on the foods and materials that grew best there. On market days, goods were exchanged with neighboring communities who cultivated crops and made things unique to their place. Culture took shape. People were fed. Earth was hydrated and the land was understood. In an emergency, people could safeguard and share the reserves that protected survival for all. Trade was about relationships and mutual protection.
America isn't a democracy, it's a profitocracy. Politicians are selected by the amount of funding they can generate. Laws are written to protect business and profit above all else. Global lawmakers, politicians and judges don't yet understand that their primary responsibility is to Earth and the future of all life.
Here's what we know that SCOTUS does not: to be aligned with Love and Earth is to be aligned with Source. Game over for petty self-interest, pollution and war. That's the medicine of this time. Our sacred task. Our future.
