For Arthur

I used to see him on Saturday morning at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market, walking alone; I never saw anyone speak to him and the casual gossip I picked up was that he was a nut of some kind, preaching a gospel nobody wanted to hear.

This is the fate of our prophets: A voice crying in the wilderness of modern life. What courage it takes to go on, year after year, researching, writing, trying to reach an audience that stubbornly turns away. His message was too dire. We didn’t want to be reminded of what we are facing. And now he is gone.

Friday I was immersed in Arthur’s final book, a handsome, long, hard-covered volume called The Earth and I. The format alone seems to give him his due. Someone was taking him seriously, seriously enough to invest in a long, expensive book that probably few people will read. He’d already spent his life trying to give us this warning.

The book is a daunting achievement, thick with well-researched statistics about the on-rushing disaster of climate disruption we all know about and yet seem, hour to hour, to forget. It is written in clear, hard, declarative sentences, without personal involvement—the prophet does not plead his own case, does not allow us to know about his personal torment. Arthur would say that is irrelevant. He simply wanted people to be warned, even while not positing any escape from the consequences of our global fecklessness.

I know of one woman here who is also a prophet, a Cassandra walking the ramparts of our obliviousness, shouting of doom and destruction to come. She does her bit by producing vegetarian food for her friends and clients who may not grasp the larger meaning of her work.

But Arthur is the only man I’ve known in my long life who spent his years, his income, his energy and his hope in what now appears to be a hopeless cause. His last book lays it out. We are past the moment of no return.

So why read it? Why listen to the rare voices of the prophets? Because we owe it to ourselves to know that we have brought destruction on ourselves and on many generations still to come.

I’m glad Arthur escaped our latest itineration of madness.

Rest in peace, exalted soul. You told us what we don’t want to know.

[For more on Arthur and his work, please see my piece, “Humans, Bees and Wildlife in 2023.”]

In New Mexico Environment Arthur Firstenberg RIP