Defining Monstrosity

No Norwegians can possibly have avoided noticing that a new entity has made its appearance in the media: The Monster Pylons. The general sentiment seems to be that they are a bad thing, but still it looks like they are getting built, and people are screaming bloody murder. Especially local politicians and environmentalists have latched onto the subject with a vengeance, but a whole bunch of other politicians are following in their wake, sensing the scent of blood and publicity. My question to them all is: Why?

The debate has been raging for a while now, and I thought it had lost its power, but then it popped back up on the TV when I was sitting with friends last night. Since I haven't really understood why people are so pissed off by The Monster Pylons, I asked the room, and my friends demonstrated what seemed like an encyclopedic knowlege about the subject, or at least about the complaints being made. Some people say they are going to kill all the birds in the area. Others seem to think they will create unsurmountable problems for local air traffic. Hidden deep in the Grade-A Concentrate of BS, there was the one argument which cannot easily be shot dead by logic, so it is also the one I shall address. It was Lars who put it like this: "They ain't exactly pretty."

Now that I can relate to. It happens every so often that I see traces of human activity, either on TV or with my own eyes, which piss me off deeply and permanently. Such as the recent Natonal Geographic documentary on illegal gold mining in the Amazon rain forest. It transpires that it doesn't just lead to the predictable large-scale defoliation, but also to the annual dumping of some sixty tons of mercury into the river. That shit is going to kill EVERYTHING and it's going to stick around for thousands of years. It's making my skin crawl, but strangely it is not the stuff with which to incite a crowd.

How about the creation of deserts, then? We are doing it in a lot of places, at a high rate of acerage. It is pretty much a permanent process, as most experts agree that once an area is thoroughly parched and devoid of sediment, it won't re-foliate until we have another ice age. What's more, deserts are pure ugliness. If you disagree, it's either because you grew up in one, or because you've never seen one at all. Still, I see people yawning in the back as I say this.

Okay, I've gotta try something else, then. How about my pet peeve: Our use of HDPE. High Density Polyethylene is a fantastic material. It has reasonable tensile strength, high resistance to chemicals, it's unbelieveably tough and it simply won't degrade unless you expose it to UV radiation. Add a couple percent of carbon black, and it will even live (be functional) for thousands of years with limited sunlight exposure. You can use HDPE for damn near anything: Water mains, sewage pipes, wear pads, shipping pallets, automotive parts... the list just goes on and on. Now take a guess what the most common usage is? It turns out that nearly one third of the annual global production of HDPE (about 8 million tons in 2007) is used for disposable packaging.

Of course, most of this is responsibly dumped at a landfill, where it may rest in peace for ever. However, a sizeable percentage is dropped in the oceans, where it joins thousands of acres of PVC tarps, Polypropylene lines and nets, Polystyrene food packaging.... the depressing truth is that we do not know how much plastic is presently either floating on the surface or crowding beaches around the world, but we do know that the amount is rapidly increasing. And there you have it: My prime example of the ugliness of the human impact on nature. It may not be the ugliest example out there, but it is something I have seen with my own eyes, and it makes me very, very sad. Still, it sometimes feels like I'm the only one who cares. I'm sure I didn't move you now, did I?

But you sure as hell are moved by the Monster Pylons. Back when I was having this discussion with my friends, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was sailing up the Hardanger fjord and unexpectedly came across a power line of monstrous proportions. Can you guess what I felt? Nothing much. Maybe a touch of admiration for the audacity of the human spirit. Sure, the huge pylons are expressions of engineering rather than art, so they're not exactly pretty. Still, the big, spindly things reaching for the sky don't seem nearly as ugly as some deliberate acts of architecture.

Have you ever seen an aerial view of a big city? It looks like an oozing sore growing on the earth's crust. Given that we somehow decide that our creation of "permanent" structures is a serious environmental/aesthetic issue which we need to solve, then cities is the place to start. If you abandoned a big city today, the scar in the landscape would be visible a thousand years from now. Not so with the Monster Pylons; If we in the future decide that they're too ugly to live with but lack the resources to tear them down, they're still just a five hundred year "problem" when we walk away from them.

Why, then, is it that the "environmentally and aesthetically conscious" politicians of this world are campaigning against the building of power lines, while at the same time completely ignoring the pressing issue of deleting all major cities? Okay, that was a stupid question, but I think I made my point. This has nothing to do with the aesthetics or environmental impact of building Monster Pylons, but it has everything to do with whoring your integrity for publicity. Incidentally, that seems to be the one thing you really need to be good at in order to succeed in politics. Which is why I never considered going that way.

EDIT: Finally, someone said something intelligent in this debate