“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
John Muir
by
William Thomas
As the new economist Hazel Henderson so famously remarked, “Things are getting a lot worse - and a lot better - at the same time.”
So where to put our attention?
While it is crucial that we recognize the dangers bearing down on us, we can respond either positively or negatively - not both ways at once. Seeing how we humans make positive changes only when motivated beyond our inertia, the worse things get, the more optimistic I become.
Ironically, those most resistant to making small personal changes that will directly benefit their health and well-being right now are, by their own intransigence, hurrying much more drastic changes that will be much less easy and pleasant to resolve.
Perhaps the biggest and most dangerous myth about meeting the rapidly converging challenges of climate change, peak oil and increasingly inadequate water is the corporate-promulgated lie that these interconnected problems are too extensive and expensive to cope with. Robert Kennedy Junior corrected this misperception at the “Live Earth” concert where he said, “Now we've all heard the oil industry and the coal industry and their indentured servants in the political process telling us that global climate stability is a luxury that we can't afford. That we have to choose now between economic prosperity on the one hand and environmental protection on the other. And that is a false choice. In 100% of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy.”
[BradBlog.com July 8/07]Yet across North America, our continuing personal and national inaction in the face of paradigm-shifting events demonstrates how consumers self-trapped on the treadmill of desire, distraction and debt somehow hope that our continued denial - if not actually a solution to rapidly multiplying crisis - will at least allow us to remain comfortable right up to the moment when the last forest is razed, water no longer flows from our taps, gasoline is unaffordable, and this watery world's all-encompassing ocean becomes a lifeless acid lake.
Which would be a tad too late.
The news interlocking U.S. corporate-government interests don't want us to hear is that starting to pay attention to our habits and conditioning is the key to joyful liberation. And remembering who we are. Hooking up a solar panel, taking our first shower from a roof-mounted solar water heater, or blipping the throttle on our electric-assist bicycle and peddling easily and silently up once intimidating hills are a heck of a lot more fun than the grim austerity we've been told must accompany our letting go of the petroleum that enslaves us, while threatening the extinction of most species. “Homeland Security” that does nothing to protect our home planet is no security at all.
Even better, the best and quickest responses to our Climax Industrial Civilization - Reduce, Reuse, Remember and Recycle - require no new technology or expense. On the contrary, using water as sparingly as the astronauts we are, and remembering to turn off unneeded lights and unplug unused appliances like computers and TVs (which draw significant power in “stand by” mode even when supposedly switched “off”) can be done at the speed of thoughtful action. When we see how saving the “green” outside equates with saving the “green” in our wallets, we will begin to comprehend what new economist Paul Hawken calls the Ecology of Commerce.
Better yet, why not leave those pacifying and brainwashing teevees permanently switched off?
Meanwhile, as rising oil prices threaten petroleum-dependent industrial agriculture and the transcontinental transportation networks on which delivery of poisoned crops depends, implementing small-scale drip irrigation in our rooftop, backyard and community veggie gardens can bring healthier food home at a fraction of current energy costs.
Similar decentralizing trends in cutting home energy consumption and turning to local power generation through tidal, solar or wind sources could - if kick-started by North American government grants and tax incentives already in place in Japan and Europe - will achieve immediate and significant reductions in our Godzilla-size carbon footprints, while dramatically reducing our vulnerability to power-grid price rises and anticipated large-scale disruptions.
But expecting that major techno-fixes like misnamed, petroleum-intensive “biofuels” or hydrogen-powered cars will allow us to continue our wasteful consumption is an addict's delusion that will only deepen existing disparities and make the inevitable reckoning worse. Even if we Ignore how previous technological “fixes” such as the petroleum-propelled “Green Revolution” in farming, or “Better Living” through carcinogenic chemistry have also introduced intractable trouble, we no longer have the time or motive energy to retool our entire existing infrastructure to accommodate “fixes” provided by the same Big Oil pushers.
Instead, we can start creating smarter ways to live, commute, play and work alongside the structures and assumptions that no longer serve us. Necessity begets innovation, bringing out the best in human cooperation and ingenuity. So why not panic now, and avoid the rush?
There is much we can do as individuals and communities right now - today - once we choose to awaken from our trance and get involved. Onboard a foundering space colony of interdependent lives, choosing not to stop chopping holes in the hull and radiation shielding are no longer options.
Best of all, 95% of the world's humans do not live in blinkered North America. On-line and in mega-conferences like the current climate confab in Bali, people are meeting everywhere and moving toward appropriate, deeply-considered solutions. What's being done? You might be pleasantly surprised.
