Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

[NOTE -- I will not be with my computer for the next few days.  Will post again when I can, probably Sunday or Monday]

Have wanted to bring this to your attention — a new book about the coal industry, entitled Big Coal: the Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, by Jeff Goodell.

I have not yet read it, but draw your attention to a review of it in the NY Times Book Review, June 25.  The review itself tells you what’s wrong with the coal ’solution’ to our energy problems (”accounts for nearly 40 percent of America’s carbon emissions,” for example, or, “mining coal probably takes a lot fewer lives than burning it”) and why more coal production for electricity continues the course towards destructive global warming.

So here is my question: you want to keep your lights on.  You want air conditioning in the globally warming summers.  We are reaching peak oil, natural gas supplies are tightening, coal fouls the air and warms the atmosphere, nuclear energy is clean but has other problems.  What will you sacrifice of your lifestyle to keep the lights on?

Because this will mean not having multiple houses, this will mean ending the McMansion boom, this will mean no more cathedral ceilings, this will mean dimmer light bulbs, this will mean raising your thermostat in the summer and lowering it in winter, this will mean paying much more for energy (with tax credits for the poor), this will mean massive tax transfers to subsidize the rapid development of renewable energy sources (solar, wind, etc.).  It will mean a willingness to spend our tax money helping to develop alternative energy sources for developing countries so that people living in poverty can raise their standard of living to something approaching human dignity while we become downwardly mobile.

It will mean living more simply with fewer ‘things,’ it will mean changing completely our attitudes towards economic ‘growth,’ acquisition of goods, wealth generation.

Can we do this? Because like it or not, the future of earth’s ecosystems, the ones that support human life, depend on it.