Toby Pomeroy’s craft-jewelry studio is a signer of the Bristol Bay Protection Pledge and the No Dirty Gold campaign’s Golden Rules. In this guest blog post, he explains why he signed the pledge.
I signed on to the Bristol Bay pledge as an action to express my commitment that we must, as responsible members of the family of man, act consistently with the restoration and preservation of the bounty we have inherited so that our children’s children can marvel at the same wonders that have been here millennia before us.
Once destroyed, nature’s beauty cannot be restored at any price.
Bristol Bay is a treasure, a jewel in our safekeeping. As we would never think of gambling with our children’s’ well being, it is also our responsibility to never let risk or harm befall this a rare and beautiful natural treasure.
This is about forever.
In the past, we have squandered our birthright.
When I was 11 my parents took me and my brothers to watch native Americans perched over the thunderous falls at Celilo, netting native salmon for their livelihood as their ancestors had done for thousands of years. Those ancient fishing grounds, timeless treasures, were inundated by the backwater of The Dalles dam in 1956.
In my 20’s I watched as, one after another, Chinook salmon leaping to clear the roaring south Umpqua falls now it is a drastically reduced run that will almost certainly be extinct within 100 years.
We have destroyed, and are continuing to destroy natural treasures in the name of progress that will diminish by their absence the lives of those that follow.
We have the opportunity to leverage and shape the future, to guide the course of action right now for future generations. Each of us plays a part and we can all be left inspired by the role we play in bringing about that future.
It is time for us to reverse the stupidity of our thinking that we can take, make and waste as much as we want, simply because we have the legal right to.
Paul Hawken in his book, The Ecology of Commerce came to his ‘inevitable conclusion’:
“Business people must either dedicate themselves to transforming commerce to a restorative undertaking or continue to march society to the undertaker.”
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