Rikipedia

Old habits are just hard to break -- it's just part of human nature. It's also part of human nature, I think, to focus on the positive and not admit to the negative until it affects us personally and drastically. In 100 years or so, oil has rapidly advanced the basic quality of life for many Americans well beyond that of most other people on the planet. We equated the positive benefits of oil use with "progress" and simply left it at that without looking for other ways to support our lifestyles. There was no need: oil was cheap and plentiful and ours for the taking.

I think the media bears a huge responsibility to investigate and report the root causes of these human-made disasters such as oil spills to give people the basic knowledge to make informed choices. I think the media is woefully flunking this task. By reporting these disasters simply as disasters and treating them with little more weight than one gives car accidents, people are not able to draw the important connections needed to reduce risks to minimize these disasters in the first place.

I not only think it is possible to transition off our petroleum dependency, I think it is inevitable. My only concern is that we will be lulled into the status quo of relying heavily on fossil fuels for another 20 or 30 years before we get serious about switching our energy base. The sooner we get started, the more graceful -- and less costly in terms of human health and life -- will be the transition.

Well I certainly hope so! I wrote this book in a way that would be readable for a broad audience specifically with the intent and hope that readers would take its message to heart -- oil is more toxic than we thought -- and then act on this new understanding. I hope to inspire individuals to get involved in the biggest threat facing civilization today -- our choice of energy.

This spill and the cathartic experience of writing about it for six years taught me the most, I think, about anger. I'm a passionate person and the negative side of passion is anger. It was easy to be angry after the spill -- at Exxon, at the federal government, at the state government, at all the destruction of innocent life. It was easy to stay angry at Exxon after the spill for dividing our fishing community (and other oiled communities) with the money spill (aka the cleanup), for the giant pretense that its spill had no long-term harm to workers or wildlife, for lack of initiative (still) to double-hull its tankers, and for many other reasons.

I am in love with where I live. Love is both joyous and painful; love probes our emotional depths and challenges us to expand our capacity to care, to struggle to improve, to fix things that are wrong. I am here for the duration, because where I live is Earth.

Sadly, on March 16, the U.S. Senate voted 51-49 to open the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas drilling. It's too bad the pro-drilling forces don't have to get as many "yeses" over the years as the pro-sanctuary forces have had to get "nos." The incredible efforts by the environmental community, the Native peoples like the Gwich'in and their Inupiat neighbors to the east in Canada, and thousands of Americans have won many "no" votes, but it only takes one "yes" vote to change everything.

Yes, I accept the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend -- and I give it all away to my favorite environmental organizations. Money is not a bad thing. It's a form of energy that can be put to good use. So that is what I do. It's a gift from the Earth and that's where I return it.

Oh dear. This is perhaps why I've been asked by K-12 science teachers for better information for students! While cows and sheep do contribute to global climate change, they are not the main cause of it. Certainly not, if one is to believe 2,000 scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program. These scientists report that the ever-accelerating rate of fossil-fuel consumption over the last 150 years, combined with extensive burning of wood, are the main culprits contributing to carbon emissions and global warming. Methane, produced by cows, sheep, rice growing, and forest burning (in slash and burn agriculture), is more effective in promoting warming than carbon dioxide, but there is less of it. About 20 percent of the global methane emissions are due to farm animals. I'm afraid we have no one to blame but ourselves here and our fossil-fuel habits.

Alaska still has the advantage of a largely intact ecosystem. As we teach our children in Alaska, salmon are the most valuable product grown in forests! They take a lot less time to grow than trees, and they need healthy forests and healthy watersheds to survive.

I've asked this question myself of many people with a wide diversity of knowing. At first I was surprised by the consistent answer, stated in different ways: work on yourself. Be the change you want to see.

Yes, it certainly can be overwhelming. So you have to start with baby steps. Small accomplishments inspire larger steps and successful larger steps are empowering. Pretty soon, you'll find you are running to keep up with yourself.

Well, first you have to have something to write about that inflames your passion! Then, on days when you wonder just why the heck you've assigned yourself this ridiculous task, you remember you care and why you care.

Ho ho!! I laugh because when I walk into bookstores I realize there are so many choices, and what may help or inspire one person can be completely off the chart for another. And I do love to read books to learn about the world around and within me. My tastes have changed a bit with time too. At first I hungered for knowledge about the physical world and now I find myself steering into the metaphysical world (although some cultures do not even recognize this word because it is all a continuum).

Goodness no. The environmental movement is far from dead. It lives in the hearts of commercial fishers who realize the connection between strong salmon returns and good habitat protection; Native people who teach their children that their culture depends on the land; sports fishers who cast their lures into our rivers and lakes; mothers who are furious that their own breast milk is poisoning their babies and that their young children struggle to breathe or die from chemical exposures thought to be safe; people who walk their dogs or themselves in parks and wild places; families who recreate outdoors; farmers who work the land; economists who calculate that healthy economies depend upon healthy environments ... My! The list goes on and on.