NOT BIKE RELATED WARNING:
Many are entranced by an economic worldview in which endless growth is not only possible, but also desirable. This ignores or denies the fundamental ecological reality that the Earth is an essentially closed system with limits to growth. Much of our activity seems ecologically destructive, and we disagree about what should be done to fix the problems we have created. Many of us think our own plan of action is the solution, but it seems possible that excessive human activity-in and of itself-is the basic problem.
The Earth needs to heal, and we cannot make it happen; frequently our efforts only deepen the wounds. But if we can relax our demand for material goods and reduce our rate of reproduction, the Earth might be able to heal herself. Perhaps we can find fulfillment in nonmaterial terms and learn what we seek we have always had.
Our culture is so focused on progress that we frequently don't experience our own lives just as they are here and now. But the world will always be exactly as it is in each moment. It's astonishing how much time and energy we expend in trying to deny this simple fact.
This doesn't imply passivity. Our visions and ideals are also part of this moment. Everything changes, no matter how slowly, and we can act to alleviate suffering. Yet if plans for the future are not balanced with acceptance and joy in this moment, just as it is, our lives go unlived. The challenge is to work with our lives as they are rather than imagine that things are different. If we can learn to soften our aversions and desires, our lives might become less frantic and more spacious.
One fundamental difficulty is that we do not directly perceive ourselves to be biological beings in a living world. The nonhuman world has become a sort of inanimate backdrop to our human affairs. Theoretically, we know we depend on the physical and biological systems of Earth, but experientially we are alienated from those systems. We treat the Earth as a stranger we should protect for pragmatic or ethical reasons, but until we individually begin to actually experience nonhuman creatures as family and the Earth as our home, we are unlikely to relax our demands for comfort and security or make the changes necessary for our survival, joy, and sense of belonging.
The felt experience of belonging to the ecosphere is psychologically and spiritually healing and may have profound implications for changing our destructive patterns of behavior.
-Robert Kull
3 comments:
Half the world's tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The rate
of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second,
and has for decades. Half the planet's wetlands are gone. An estimated
90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of
marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Almost half
of the corals are gone or are seriously threatened. Species are
disappearing at rates about 1,000 times faster than normal. The planet
has not seen such a spasm of extinction in 65 million years, since the
dinosaurs disappeared. Persistent toxic chemicals can
now be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.
Here is one measure of the problem: All we have to do to destroy the
planet's climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children
and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today,
with no growth in human population or the world economy. Just continue
to generate greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to
impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates,
and the world in the latter part of this century won't be fit to live
in. But human activities are not holding at current levels -- they are
accelerating, dramatically.
The size of the world economy has more than quadrupled since 1960 and
is projected to quadruple again by mid-century. It took all of human
history to grow the $7 trillion world economy of 1950. We now grow by
that amount in a decade.
Oh ya, that is part of an article written by James Gustave "Gus" Speth, the dean of the School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies at Yale University
And like I said, I will be incredibly surprised if people continue to reduce their driving now that gas is once again affordable. For different reasons you and I are both more resigned than ever to reduce our driving. Let's hope other people do so, too.
Dan, it's so hard not to be cynical, you know? People can be really cool, but for the most part if it's inconvenient at all, people are too lazy to change their habits.
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