Environment: The Poetics of Pollution

There is a dawning world-around comprehension Of the existence of a significant plurality Of alternative energy source optionsAvailable for all Earthians’ vital support. . .

Disturbed last month by the specter of an oil refinery proposed for Searsport, Me., not far from his beloved summer home on Bear Island, Buckminster Fuller, 75, fired off a protesting telegram to Maine Senator Edmund S. Muskie. The basic message could have been put in 21 words: URGE YOU BLOCK THIS AND ALL OTHER REFINERY PROJECTS ON MAINE’S COAST. ALTERNATE ENERGY SOURCES ARE AVAILABLE. CALL ME FOR DETAILS. But Bucky Fuller—author, architect, inventor, philosopher —operates on a grand scale. He turned to free verse, and the orotund result almost filled the entire Op-Ed page of the New York Times.

Fuller emphatically opposes the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal), which not only are in limited supply on earth but also pollute air and water. To go on using oil and coal, he wrote,

Is equivalent to drilling a hole From the sidewalk into a bank vault Pumping out money And calling it free-enterprise discovery . . .

Total System. Fuller prefers tapping the sun’s “cosmically inexhaustible energy” or harnessing the tides, possibly in the Bay of Fundy. In addition, he would like to see all nations and continents hooked into a global energy grid, with electricity flowing efficiently across time zones to meet distant peak-hour demands. He envisions “a total-humanity sustaining system” that would decrease birthrates and increase longevity. In short, Fuller’s poetic excursion was mind expanding, if not mind exploding.

Muskie took some time to unravel Fuller’s visionary verse. But last week he replied in the Times with 44 lines of his own bad poetry. After reeling off a few contemporary images—”nemesis clouds,” “putrid smoke,” “noxious oxides”—he got to Fuller’s Maine point:

A nd the rockbound coast Is threatened by the super Tankers disgorging crude oil On the tide . . .

Muskie has no power to block the proposed refinery at Searsport. Still, as a potential presidential candidate, he ended his answer to Fuller on the right hortatory note. Allowing that the U.S. has “the knowledge, the skill and the treasure” to save its environment, the Senator thundered: “Only our dedication —commitment—is in doubt.”