Running out of water 3
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Posted on August 25, 2006
Filed Under Deep ecology, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Continuing this theme regarding water, I thought I’d send along this link to an article on the BBC website by the Exec. Sec. of the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity. The situation is pretty grim, but Ahmed Djoghlaf is amazingly not without hope. One cannot afford to be without hope.
What concerns me is not so much the question of whether or not we have the ability to help the planet’s waters recover from the damage we have done – a resource precious beyond imagination in terms of what makes the Earth so unique in the known cosmos, indeed what makes life possible – but whether or not we have the will to do so.
Every day, more precious wetlands are put under development, more houses are built along rivers, lake shores, bays and inlets. We have obstructed millions upon millions of natural water systems by paving over and around them with asphalt and cement. We have dammed and dredged, altered flows of streams.
Then, in this society, we add to this insult to water with our overuse, our waste, our leaky infrastructure through which billions of gallons of water are lost, and on and on. And we haven’t even mentioned yet the amount of toxic pollution we have dumped into this most precious resource — fresh, delicious, potable, renewing, life-giving water.
Wisconsin is home to some of the north’s most beautiful lakes – but they are all, all, polluted with mercury. Fishing is a major sport in the state, but one best not eat the fish anymore. This is incredible. And still, folks want their lake homes and resort development. Still, folks want to put their motor boats and ski jets on the water. Still, industrial pollution rains down pollutants on the water.
Can we, can we, can we — just think about this — can we begin to say no to developers (no matter how well connected politically), to development that should not happen in such places, to a rampant capitalist economy that says it is better for us to grow the economy and let people live wherever they want, even if it means destroying the planet?
Can we get our priorities straight? Because if we cannot, there is no reason for optimism. Optimism only rests with our willingness to change how we live, to get over our arrogant assumptions that living freely and richly means living wherever we want, consuming however we want.
Ecological hope resides completely in the willingness of the human person/s to change, and most especially in this culture of consumption, individualism, selfishness and corporate greed. We can do this. We can. But that capacity lies first in our values, in our hearts, in our framework of meaning. And then we have to turn that tide within to a force that can change what we believe about the human being within the delicate balance of the earth’s ecosystems from which we emerged, within which we have our being.
Earth is also us. We can’t keep separating ourselves out from nature and think that nature will endlessly support us as we take it apart piece by precious piece.
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