A world reeling

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Posted on March 18, 2008
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Earth spirituality, Inspiration and reflection

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

So the Feds will do the unprecedented thing — they will bail out Wall Street. We will pay dearly for this decision. One take on this, The end of Wall Street as we know it, from CNN. Another from today’s NY Times: Rescue Tests the Fed’s Credibility.

The alternative, they say? The collapse of the U.S. financial system.

Iraq War — five years on, no end in sight. Expected price tag: $3 trillion.

That’s not our money, by the way. That’s your children’s and your children’s children’s money. We are funding this war with debt.

Oil prices are settling in above $100, unprecendented, a permanent change in our economic lives, our energy base, our way of life. We will prepare better for this future — or not.

But here is what we are not preparing for, and what we will not have money for given this course — the global life-altering impacts of climate change, the fundamental changes to our entire production systems as energy prices pull out the underpinnings of economic globalization.

This morning, oil market expert Matt Simmons was on CNN. This is what he said: we need to fundamentally reorganize our economic system given the looming energy shortages and esclating prices. That means trucks off the roads, that means staying home more, that means driving far less — that means shifting production of food and other goods back to the neighborhood.

Do you hear anyone, ANYONE, talking about these things within our political culture? Have you heard anyone among the religious leaders and pastoral workers in your community talking about this and calling for the conversion, the life changes, the political and social activism required to meet these challenges?

If so, let me know. I would love to talk about them here. If not, join this conversation, check out links on our posts, get conversations, teach-ins, etc. going in your churhces, schools, around your dinner tables, find local organizations, get involved and engaged.

Just to punctuate the theme of this post — did you see last night’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart? Did you see the interview with anthropologist and archeaologist Brian Fagan whose new book, The Great Warming, is about the impact of global drought on civilization in other eras of global warming, portending a reality now that will put this world into a situation of crisis like nothing we have seen before? Here is the link to the interview. I’m going to read his book. Here’s what he writes about it on his web site:

The Great Warming argues that the warm centuries brought savage drought to much of humanity, from China to Peru. It also argues that drought is the hidden, most dangerous element in today’s humanly created global warming, often ignored by preoccupied commentators, but with the potential to cause over a billion people to starve.

This is a time of great change, great upheaval. This is not temporary. This will be our reality now and for coming generations. We need to learn how to live amidst upheaval, to see it not as disaster and catastrophe, but as opportunity — especially to rise to the best within us, to offer to this new world all the skills and ingenuity and creativity we can muster to create within the midst of the upheaval a new human endeavor, a new meaning framework, a reason more than any we have known before to get out of bed in the morning and get to work — no, better, to get to life.


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