Are we triggering ‘big forces out there?’
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Posted on July 29, 2006
Filed Under Justice, Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Well, you might be baking in the unprecedented California heat wave. Or you might have been among the half million without power in St. Louis, suffering through unrelenting heat and humidity. You might be among the hundreds of folks in Fairport Harbor OH recovering from the 10 inches of rain that fell yesterday in northeast Ohio.
Or you might be among the millions of Peruvians who, when the glaciers melt, will have no access to water and their mountains and valleys will turn into deserts.
Or you might be among the privileged – wealthy US Americans building houses in deserts and mountains, in forests and along shorelines, taking more and more of the increasingly scarce resources of our earth for your pleasure. You might be among the privileged griping about high gas prices but driving as much as ever.
I can’t help myself this morning. I’m pretty upset. The Washington Post, one of the few newspapers that covers global warming where it should be — on the front page — had such a depressing article today about the melting glaciers.
“When the glaciers are gone, they are gone. What does a place like Lima do? [2 of 8 million already have no water access and Lima depends on glacial melt for water] Or, in northwest China, there are 300 million people relying on snowmelt for water supply. There’s no way to replace it until the next ice age.”
So said Tim Barnett, climate scientist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
And this from the article — 70 percent of the world’s fresh water supply is stored in glaciers.
Please read this article, and the adjoining one about one of our more heroic climate scientists, Lonnie Thompson. He is the source of the quote in this post’s title. He believes it is already too late to stop the warming in time to save the glaciers. I have posted about his research before (to see, go here).
“I am more and more convinced these glaciers are going to disappear. There is such a thing as too late.”
On page 3, an article about the California heat wave, the deaths of more than 130 mostly elderly folks.
At the meeting I just attended in Toronto, evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris said that scientsts believe that the Amazon rainforest is about one year from the tipping point at which its death is certain. She said that there are an estimated 73,000 fires burning in the rainforest right now.
This will be an utter disaster for our planet that will affect all of us. The rainforests are the earth’s lungs — and you can’t breathe without lungs.
I think I call my project ‘Ecological Hope’ as much out of desperation as anything else — a cry in the wilderness, a scream over against the news that indicates we have already irreversibly altered our planet in ways that will cause extreme suffering across the world.
We must examine our hearts and consciences very thoroughly now to ask what we are going to do. ‘Free market’ capitalism and the belief in economic growth will not work. At the same time, the poor have the right not to be poor. The onus on us to change drastcially how we live is very heavy. Are you yet willing to put severe limits on the privileges you assume and enjoy? — like world travel, multiple houses (all of them air conditioned in the summer), the assumption of water for lawns and golf courses, perfect lawns sprayed regularly wiith chemicals that run off into our water systems, our lakes and rivers, to stop drinking out of plastic water bottles, to reduce your use of energy in your daily lives, to take mass transit instead of driving your car and insisting on more roads, to stay home more, to live simply so that others may live, etc., etc.
I have to tell you, if we insist that the changes be voluntary, they will never happen, and certainly not in time to pull us back from the brink.
Which is why I keep repeating this mantra — what is required is a profound spiritual transition, a new relationship entirely with the planet, the earth, one another, a wholly new kind of economics (not of growth and profits), a new global community working together to address crises that are truly global.
In the background on CNN — extreme heat warnings for Chicago and Great Plains states as the bubble of heat from California moves east. Here in the DC area, we will have oppressive humidity and temperatures near 100 over the coming days. Record heat in Europe. So far, the warmest year on record, following 2005, following 2004…
What are we really willing to do to meet this crisis at the level it demands?
Said Lonnie Thompson: “The rate at which these changes take place is accelerating. There are some big forces out there that we don’t understand, and we don’t want to trigger those.”
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