We are living in one of those strange interludes in human history where only a small percentage of those alive perceive how seriously our species' survival is threatened, and how urgently the structural causes of this impending calamity need to be addressed.
From the snippets of conversations I pick up on the streets, in the markets, or in the ballpark (more on that venue in a minute), most Americans are still more concerned about the cost of the gasoline they pump into their cars than they are about their own personal over-sized carbon footprint on our common planet.
(Less I sound self-righteous here, I should admit that I am conducting an inventory of my own wasteful habits, like driving my car, eating meat, leaving the lights turned on, etc., in order to assess where I fit in the human ecology of wastefulness. So far, my initial grade for myself is a C-...and that is nowhere good enough.)
On to baseball, an intellectual refuge from the depressing "facts of (real) life."
Tonight was the first home baseball game of this season (albeit an exhibition contest) between the Giants and the Mariners.
The latter team's star is the great Japanese player who is known by only one name -- Ichiro -- and my Japanese companion was so excited at seeing him from lower box seats just off home plate that her lovely smile lit up any otherwise gloomy game's night.
Baseball as a sport has an enormous carbon footprint, and wouldn't you know that it is the frugal Japanese who are trying to do something about it.
They've announced a campaign to reduce the length per game this season by 6% (12 minutes), which will have a significant impact on the overall energy consumption necessary to keep all of those bright night and scoreboards lit, among other luxuries.
Of course, this is not only a good idea, it is a harbinger of things to come.
The Giants, who looked utterly pathetic on the field tonight, badly need a marketing theme if they hope to attract fans to their games this season.
Why not be the first "green" MLB team?
This is a great idea, and San Francisco is the right place for it to happen, but alas, the current management seems clueless about the urgency of the moment.
Baseball is as close to an American experience of timelessness, unless you include fishing, imaginable.
But time will not wait for us. The time to go green in our "field of dreams" is now, not when it turns out to be too late.
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