Two Goose Friends

Yes, Nero continues to fiddle while Rome burns. But let's take a break from all that. Tonight I'd like to give a "shout out" to two fellow Earth-Savers:

Growth Busters
http://www.growthbusters.com/

And another one:

Growth Is Madness
http://growthmadness.org/

These two sort of go together and are both operated by fellow Earthians from Colorado. Oh, and the GrowthBusters guy is working on a documentary that sounds excellent:










At this point (I'm totally exhausted) I should offer some rambling commentary about why we exist and why we are so determined to pollute and foul the planet just so that we can make money and be comfortable. Well, you know, I can't say anything about it because it's just plain stupid. Yeah, I know, I'm part of the problem. But I work from home and am laying off the meat, so my carbon footprint is pretty low. I really just need to give up electricity, grab some bear skins, and learn to survive in the wilderness. I know that I'll want to make a really comfy hut, and before you know it I'll be hooking up a dishwasher. Yeah, I know, the human race is screwed.

Public Wake Up - Your Earth is in Danger!

You Never Give Us Rest...

While most of us activists are still recovering from the election it's already time to get back into the fight. This week I received several urgent Action Alerts that involved violations against our environment. It seems the mighty grips of business are able to manipulate and control government almost at will. I see we environmentalists as the Thin Green Line — we are the only obstacle that keeps business and their lackeys in government from riding roughshod over what's left of our environment.
Oh, excuse me Mr. President. I think I found
your missing Weapons of Mass Destruction.

This week as I was driving through the so-called "countryside" I saw new housing developments going up everywhere. All the beloved woods that I so deeply love and grew up with GONE — GONE FOREVER! And I'm thinking, just how much do we need to grow? Just how much of our world needs to become Peopleland? Shouldn't there be a balance, and a sense of fairness, between humans and the natural world? Seeing the bulldozers crush every last tree in their zeal to asphalt America crushes my soul. For years now, every time I drive by a new development I scream "rape" and "murder." But no one listens, and no one seems to care.

First and foremost, I am amazed how ANYONE alive can NOT have a desire to protect our natural world. Come on, this world sustains us. If we foul our water and air and pave the last of our greenspace, how can we live a healthy life?

I especially hold religious people to a higher level of accountability. Come on, God created this Planet. Don't you feel an obligation to revere and protect God's handiwork? Are you assuming that God or the Government will take care of it?

Every person on this Planet, especially Christians, should do SOMETHING to protect our natural world, even if it's working at a pet rescue center or recycling aluminum cans. EVERYONE should help. If you don't, you are simply dumping the problems of the world onto your children and grandchildren. And please don't tell me "God will take care of it" or "it's part of God's plan" because that is simply shirking responsibility.

My dream is that the preachers at the pulpit, the talking heads on the TV screen, the business tycoons, the intellectuals, the working people, and the government bureaucrats will all WAKE UP and start protecting and preserving our Planet. Because right now when you don't do ANYTHING to protect the world, all you are doing is handing the keys over to the corporate piranas.

My friends in the development community
appear unwilling to talk with me about their
ongoing efforts to weaken environmental laws.

And when you pull up next to me in your massive SUV, with 20 fish and "W" decals pasted on the back, please don't tell me how good you are because you sing in the church choir, and what a lowly, scum wretch I am. Don't tell me to "get into the word," don't tell me "I've been brainwashed," and PLEASE don't tell me I'm a "wayward sheep." Because after a lifetime of wrestling with guilt and cognitive dissonance, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not the one who's messed up. Rather, I'm the little Yellow Canary who is vainly going "chirp, chirp" as the mechanized flotillas of bulldozers come my way.

But You Can Help...

I encourage every living person to help make a difference in some way, even if it means NOT flicking your cigarette butt out the window. There are dozens of excellent environmental organizations, and I encourage you to join the one of your choice. Help financially when you can, and get on various environmental Action Alert lists and respond to their urgent messages. I've heard several politicians say that they don't talk a lot about the environment in their campaigns because they don't HEAR MUCH ABOUT IT from the public. We have to change this. We have to jump up and down and make more noise than the well-dressed corporate lobbyists (you know, the ones with the bottomless pockets). Write letters, attend demonstrations, visit your elected representatives, and become an ADVOCATE FOR THE EARTH. And on a personal level, set the example by reducing your impact on the Planet and live in such a way that does not harm our future. Yes, you can do it!


"One With the Earth"

The logo design comes from my brother and friend Dan, a fellow activist in Pennsylvania.

About the Logo. The symbol defines all environmental concerns as interconnected parts of one overarching challenge, ensuring a livable world for our children and future generations. The symbol will be an ever-present reminder encouraging personal, corporate, and public responsibility for protecting the environment. It will increase support for sustainability efforts and build demand for Earth friendly policies and products.

Humanity is damaging and depleting Earth's resources faster than nature can renew them. The "One with the Earth" symbol was designed to be the universal visual shorthand for acknowledging this problem and for promoting the need for fundamental change in our relationship with nature. It is free for all to use. Symbol artwork is available at www.onewiththeearth.org. Also available are (in small quantities) free buttons, decals, and refrigerator magnets.

The Earth has limits. Prior to the industrial revolution, the Earth was able to renew itself faster than it sustained losses and damage caused by people, animals, and natural disasters. Now, for the first time in the history of the world, the situation is reversed. Living in harmony with nature, once an option, is now a global necessity.

What went wrong? There are two major factors. In just the past 100 years human population has increased from under 2 billion to over 6 billion. There has also been, during the same period, an explosive growth in wasteful consumption, toxic pollution, and careless use of new environmentally destructive technologies. The result is runaway destruction of ecosystems and depletion of natural resources — fish, arable soil, fresh water, wildlife, and forests.

Why isn’t more being done? Our political, religious and economic attitudes were formed over thousands of years during which time it was thought that resources would always be plentiful. It is therefore understandable that global conventions for living within Earth’s limits have yet to be established.

There is good news. There is sufficient technology and practical knowledge to solve the world’s environmental problems while actually increasing our quality of life. The bulk of the advancements took place during the past 30 years and mostly by private business and entrepreneurs.



The Canary Concludes...

And that is the message of Dan, myself, and a growing number of Yellow Canaries all over the world. You may not listen right away because much of what we say goes contrary to the way of living that you have always known. But, in time, my hope is that you will join us on our journey.

The Slaughter of Mother Earth

Another forest in the Atlanta area has been clearcut. Hurray! Now we can grow our economy, make rich people richer, and create more traffic when the development goes up.

Somewhere in one of those dark skyscrapers in Atlanta, a red-nosed economist is pulling a whiskey bottle out of his bottom desk drawer and taking another swig. He's staring at a computer screen as he writes his latest economic forecast. "We've got to have growth," he says in a slurred voice. "We have to keep the economy growing. The world is infinite, it is the size of the sun, and the United States can hold millions and billions more people! Who cares about the forests we desecrate, the species we drive to extinction, and the impact our development has on weather." So he continues writing his rosey economic report.

The next day his report is all over the news, and the Republicans are screaming, "See, the economy is growing because we cut taxes," and the Democrats are screaming, "The data is flawed, that economist was DRUNK last night."

But John and Jane Doe really don't care either way. They have always lived with growth, they have learned to accept and adapt. Perpetual growth is JUST THE WAY IT IS and there is nothing that can stop it.

A big corporate head is at the end of the boardroom table in a darkened room. Every once in a while the rising smoke from his cigar glimmers in the one lit light. "Dwiggins, BRING ME THAT ECONOMIC REPORT, and give me a milkshake from Steak-n-Shake while you're at it." A lone, tall, skinny man with horn-rimmed glasses scurries about at the far end of the room, and there's a sound of ruffling papers.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen. We CAN BUILD this mall, and we can hire cheap foreign labor to build it and staff it. That will allow maximum profits for us, so that I can expand my house in Boca Raton."

It is not all their fault because eternal growth is all they know. The lake, the old fishing hole, is all gone. A little boy looks at the acres of scorched earth and asks his father, "Where will the animals go?"

The father looks down and says, "The animals will find another place to live, and Saddam is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction."

"Oh," says the little boy. But the father is lying. The little greenspace left west of Atlanta is crisscrossed and fragmented—not much of an ecosystem can survive around here.

From today's Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

"Metro Atlanta's population boom keeps booming along—adding about 320 people a day since 2000—with the fastest growth among Hispanics and Asians. The 20-county metro area's population increased by 9 percent between 2000 and 2003 and now is about 4.4 million, according to estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau."

Globally, the Planet's population is 6.3 billion and rising rapidly and we are losing an estimated 200 species a day*. A lot of these species play essential roles in our ecosystem. We really have no idea what we're screwing up. It's just that all we know is growth, so we keep on doing it, at the expense of everything else. Read a book on Easter Island, and you'll learn that we REALLY CAN destroy our world.

We humans are running out of time. We have to reinvent from the ground up our morals and ethical systems. We need to redefine just how much "stuff" a person needs to be happy. We need to weigh in the future and environment every time we make a decision. We need to stop making cars our false idols. We spend trillions providing them with black nature trails and massive seas of asphalt. They are the real God of our sick society, and this is wrong.

If we don't change our ways, one day humans will be on the list of "Species Lost Today" and Mother Nature won't care one bit.

My inspiration for today: Friends of Ishmael Society .



*This is just an estimate. Since many species are being destroyed before they are even discovered, this is a tough guess. However, the famous Harvard scientist Edwin O. Wilson puts it another way by saying, "Current species loss due to human intervention is probably 1,000 to 10,000 times greater than what would occur naturally."

Supersizing Atlanta

Painting by Lucy Brady, used with permission.


Well, the news is out...a report by the Atlanta Regional Commission states that metro Atlanta is adding 2 million more people in the next 25 years. The worse news is that even if proposed transportation improvements are made, the traffic is STILL going to get worse. Now, the roads are already packed around here, so face it, the American dream is going to become a nightmare. We will just waste our lives away sitting in our cars, as emissions spew from our tailpipe. And as we sit in a sea of cars, we'll scream, "What a great nation we live in!"

Of course, most people don't even read the newspaper, so they don't even know about all these growth projections, nor do they think about it. After all, we humans are designed to adapt, right? And besides, it's God's will anyway — it's just another sign of the end times. While some just accept the problem, others blame it on immigration or the "damn yankees" that are "invading" north Georgia.

At a sprawl presentation I attended a week ago, the speaker said that OVER 60 acres a day in metro Atlanta are cleared for development. That means more strip shopping centers with nail shops, more roads, more "Big Box" stores that are surrounded by massive parking lots. If we scalp the land and develop the entire U.S., won't that effect weather patterns? Is it really right to smash every forest and pave every pasture in Chatlanta (the new name of our area when Chattanooga and Atlanta run into one another)? Is this moral? Is it righteous?

Now immigration is a complicated issue that I won't address tonight, but I will say that our country's own policies are exacerbating the endemic poverty in Latin America, which is forcing people to move here. But overall, immigration is only a side effect of a far greater problem.

The PROBLEM?

The problem is that every time a couple has more than two children, they are growing the population. Right now, world population is skyrocketing and will soon hit 6.5 billion (it was only 3 billion in 1960).

The typical response to traffic is "build more roads" and the typical response to overpopulation is "there's plenty of room."

Okay, let me address these:

Roads - Build them, and people only move farther out. Roads are only a cheap subsidy for developers. They open up more land for the bulldozers. As long as the growth remains out of control, the roads will just fill up again.

Plenty of Room - Shouldn't there be a balance between nature and humans? Is it our destiny to pave over every last inch of the Earth to build another convenience store or gas station? And while there may be enough space for everyone to have a plot of land, there is certainly not enough resources for unlimited people. Already, steel and gas prices are up, partly because of China's booming economy. The price of seafood is already increasing as the world's fisheries continue to become more depleted.

I remember giving a presentation once on how all the world's oceans are already below replacement level, except the Indian Ocean. Well, now I read that giant fishing ships, often from Taiwan, are now fishing out the Indian Ocean — the last great area that has not been over-exploited by humans.

While family size is a sensitive issue, all I ask is that everyone in the world should consider "stopping at two." In that way, at least we'd have a fighting chance at protecting our natural world and ourselves. Do we really need another 6 billion people on the Planet? What goal does that accomplish?

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"Rush-hour drive times will continue to lengthen, as will gridlock regionwide. For example, an afternoon trip from Marietta to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is projected to grow from a 48-minute ride to a 70-minute odyssey."