Yellow Canaries Are Everywhere

Let's put him on the mantel. No, let's
set him over the toilet. Yeah, that's a
good idea. Yeah, that Canary was
a tortured soul. Poor guy.

The Good News...

Is that there are actually thousands of Yellow Canaries around the world, just like me. These are people who care about the future and do great things to make the world better. They are writers, poets, politicians, ministers, corporate leaders, and lowly grunts like me. All of us have one thing in common — we care. We worry about what the world will be like in seven generations or in 100 years. We really don't WANT to see humans destroy both themselves and their home Planet. But with our nukes, sloppy land use policies, and indifference toward the Natural World, we seem determined to kill ourselves.

I can always spot a Canary out in a crowd. Always when I meet them, I find we have similar views about life. Whether they are trying to help kids out in the inner city or building solar windmills, I immediately respect and admire them. I have the deepest respect for humans that try to make my world better.

The Canaries who've been at this for a long time usually "see the light" and become concerned about SUSTAINABILITY. Simply defined, sustainability is living in such a way that we leave the world in as good or better shape for the next generation. That's all there is to it, and that's all I ask. There are hundreds of indigenous societies that have lived this way for thousands of years, but they are small. Western Capitalism, on the other hand, is a huge locust that consumes everything in its path. Armed with an accommodating religion, Western Capitalism consumes, rapes, and destroys. In return for our allegiance to this Whore, we get a house, color TV, and a can of beans.

But some people are questioning the Mother Culture that we worship. They are saying, "Wow, if we melt the polar caps then the poor island nations won't have a place to live." But Mother Culture says, "Buy that Hummer because God has blessed you and whip out those credit cards because it's Christmastime."

Interestingly, Canaries are more concentrated in some areas more than others. The Scandinavian nations, for example, are modern societies that appear truly committed to sustainability. They are leading the way for the rest of us. Even in some parts of the United States, there are concentrations of Canaries, such as in New England and the Pacific states. But in the so-called Bible Belt states, Canaries are an extreme rarity.

If you think I'm suggesting a correlation between fundamentalist Christianity and a disregard for sustainability, well, sadly, I am. My biggest goal in life is to get the conservative faith community to embrace sustainability. That is it. Sadly, my particular denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, was making small steps toward this goal before being seized by extremists in the mid 1990s. Most of the moderates have been purged from my denomination, and these were the men and women who provided hope.

Who the hell are these Christian extremists? I tend to think that they are people who are scared. At the very least they are scared of change, and at worse they are terrified of seeing their traditional religious paradigm crumbling.

Okay, well, I'm rambling. There's nothing worse than a rambling canary. So, I will end my post with an excerpt from a great Scandinavian Canary. It is from Gro Harlem Brundtland, MD. Dr. Brundtland is the past prime minister of Norway and recently completed a term as secretary general of the World Health Organization. When I first read one of her essays, I just started crying. I had never read anything more powerful.

From Gro Harlem Brundtland, one of the world's greatest Canaries:

Although modern transportation and communication systems are bringing the world closer together, the economic and social gaps between us are still widening. Our knowledge may have taken man to the moon, but our mismanagement and over-exploitation of the world's natural resources have brought life on Earth closer to extinction.

For the first time in history, human activities are having a severe, possibly irreversible, impact on nature and the living conditions of all the species on our Planet. Global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, lack of clean water, extensive loss of species and biological diversity, acceleration of deforestation, and desertification are all signs of the global crisis now approaching.

And that, my friends, is the crux of my problem. And whether you choose to accept it or not, it is your problem too.