Basin and Range (Annals of the Former World Book 1)

by John McPhee

David Brower, for example, the founder of Friends of the Earth and emeritus hero of the Sierra Club, has tirelessly travelled the United States delivering what he himself refers to as “the sermon,” and sooner or later in every talk he invites his listeners to consider the six days of Genesis as a figure of speech for what has in fact been four and a half billion years. In this adjustment, a day equals something like seven hundred and fifty million years, and thus “all day Monday and until Tuesday noon creation was busy getting the earth going.” Life began Tuesday noon, and “the beautiful, organic wholeness of it” developed over the next four days. “At 4 P.M. Saturday, the big reptiles came on. Five hours later, when the redwoods appeared, there were no more big reptiles. At three minutes before midnight, the human race appeared. At one-fourth of a second before midnight, Christ arrived. At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark raving mad.” Brower holds up a photograph of the world—blue, green, and swirling white. “This is the sudden insight from Apollo,” he says. “There it is. That’s all. We see through the eyes of the astronauts how fragile our life really is.” Brower has computed that we are driving through the earth’s resources at a rate comparable to an automobi...