Based on the collective experience of the many individuals, groups and organizations currently working to address the perilous state of the Great Salt Lake, the most essential component is that having to do with cooperation and community.
The consensus of scientists and ecologists is that a problem as complex as an imperiled saline lake during a period of both regional and global climate change cannot be solved either simply or quickly. The good news, however, is that it can be solved — but only by all of us working together in a cooperative, coordinated, unified and systematic way.
“All of us” means not only governments, municipalities, corporations, businesses, nonprofits, churches, universities and other such entities, but also, and perhaps especially, individual citizens — ordinary, extraordinary, famous, anonymous and everyday people; postal workers, teachers, farmers, nurses, gardeners; presidents, secretaries, housekeepers, beekeepers, bookkeepers; senators, mayors, actors, athletes, musicians, writers; mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters; grandparents, singles, aunts, uncles and cousins; step-relatives, in-laws, out-laws; accountants, architects, builders, trash-collectors, clerks and babysitters; truck drivers, doctors, journalists, philanthropists, scientists; Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Wiccans, atheists, agnostics — believers and non-believers alike; Democrats, Republicans, Independents, nonaffiliated; immigrants, tourists, distant relatives and friends; all race and nationalities; even nearby neighbors from Idaho and Wyoming. Anyone and everyone who breathes the air: we all belong to the lake, and it belongs to us.
If it is to produce healthy air for us all to breathe, we are the ones who have to do something to restore it to a healthy condition. As the American writer Annie Dillard said, “There is no one but us ... There never has been.”
The Great Salt Lake is everyone’s heritage; it is everyone’s responsibility; and it is everyone’s opportunity. In other words, those who are looking to the federal government, the Utah governor, the state Legislature, alfalfa farmers and billionaires to save the lake need first to see that it is we, the people, who have the power to save it — if all of us do our part.
Over the next 12 months, in cooperation with governments, faith groups, corporations, businesses and many other groups, organizations and individuals, we hope to develop a master plan that will provide opportunities for anyone or any group that wishes to contribute to the Lake’s rescue, restoration, regeneration and resilience. The plan will include action items for schoolchildren as well as state senators, for artists as well as accountants, for poets as well as philanthropists, and for counselors as well as corporate executives.
By doing something and many things together, and doing them consistently, we will become good ancestors for the generations who will inhabit the communities and landscapes that fall within the Great Salt Lake region when we are gone — our grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren and their families, friends and neighbors — all those who will look back to us with gratitude that we thought of them as well as ourselves in restoring the Lake. Our example will inspire them to continue looking forward so that all future generations of people and other creatures that depend on the lake will be able to flourish.
Using the metaphor of an orchestra in which we are all musicians playing our parts in what might be called “The Great Salt Lake Symphony,” it is important to note that the piccolo is as important as the cello and the flute as necessary as the timpani, and that unless we all play together, what we will make will be noise, not music. Let’s play together — and let’s invite all the birds who nest or rest on Great Salt Lake to join our citizens’ symphony!