Well, here we are on the last day of 2008. I feel like I should do some kind of valedictory post, a look back over the year, or predictions for next year, or some kind of list, or ... something. Everybody else is.
But I got nothin’. It’s funny, at the end of a year when the world seemed to get faster and crazier—the epic drama of the election, shriller and shriller warnings from scientists about global warming, the biggest economic crash in a half-century—I find myself preoccupied with with the small-scale and domestic. My strongest memories of this year will mostly be of moments laughing around the dinner table; my three year old’s passionate-if-incoherent stories about the adventures of the "Minium Falcon"; my five year old’s first attempts to sound out written words; reading the Narnia books at night, my older boy’s head on my shoulder, the little one blinking hazily against sleep.
Thank goodness for the bubble of joy and calm I’ve got up here in North Seattle. ‘Cause it’s been an intense year, and next year—nay, the next decade—is shaping up to be a white-knuckle roller coaster ride. I’ll jump back on it next week, but for now, I’m enjoying the quiet.
Peace and, as always, many thanks to all Grist’s readers for their support, knowledge, passion, and participation.
[Postscript: check out Grist’s top green stories of 2008.]
Seventh Generation launches anti-toxics campaign with wee gimmick
Ask Umbra on replacing hot-water heaters
The fight to save childhood
Comments
View as Flat
stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:59 pm
31 Dec 2008
In calling for change in our time, great scientists are speaking about what could somehow be true to wealthy and powerful people who prefer that the "business as usual" status quo be maintained. Industrial/big business powerbrokers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians want to keep things going along just as they are going now, come what may for the children and coming generations, for life as we know it, for the integrity of Earth and its environs.
Many voices are needed to support "voices in the wilderness" like those of Jim Hansen and John Holdren, exemplary scientists who have been willing to speak truth to those with the power to make the kinds of necessary change that make belief in a good enough future at least a possibility. Assuring a chance of a good future for the children and for life as we know it is an achievable goal that will lead us to overcome the arrogance and avarice of many too many leaders of my "Not So GREAT GREED GRAB Generation" of elders.
If too many leaders of the family of humanity choose to keep doing precisely the things they are advocating and doing now, and if we in the human community keep getting what we are getting now, then it appears a sustainable world for our children cannot be achieved. By so doing, the limited resources of Earth will be permanently dissipated, its biodiversity massively extirpated, its environment irreversibly degraded and life as we know it recklessly endangered. The current gigantic scale and anticipated growth of per-capita overconsumption of limited resources, global production and distribution capabilities, and absolute human population numbers worldwide are simply, clearly and patently unsustainable, even to the year 2050. Given Earth's limitations as a relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible planet, the projected increases in these currently unbridled consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species could soon lead the human family to come face to face with some sort of colossal ecological wreckage.
Now is the time to speak out loudly, clearly and often about what is true for you. Forget about political correctness and convenience. Let go of economic expediency and greediness. Embrace necessary change rather than waste another day preserving the selfish interests of the small group of rich and powerful people, and their many minions, all of whom are adamantly and relentlessly defending an unsustainable, same old "business as usual" status quo.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1 ...
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amazingdrx Posted 1:18 am
01 Jan 2009
Green job recovery, climate stability, peace, prosperity, and international cooperation are positive.
Negativity is playing into the hands of the status quo. State lottery revenues are up, people are plowing their hope into the usual scams.
Cultural bankruptcy is the legacey of the bushwackers, a flight to greed, after the fight instinct proved fruitless once again.
Think positive, community victory gardens, community renewable energy and transportation coops, factories humming with green production, organic farms producing renewable energy, the power of growth ..real growth without the Ponzi scheme, we have all seen it conquer the odds. Watch a seed sprout and produce a fruiting plant.
The indication from history is that once a change wave has reached 10%, say 10% of your neighbors with solar panels and plugin cars, it goes exponential.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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