"The future will either be green or not at all"-Bob Brown
I still feel neurotically guilty about taking a plastic shampoo bottle from a nice person I stayed with as teenager, uh, -some time ago. And also, for accidentally breaking a little piece of their shower equipment and not telling. It was probably a ten dollar replacement, but I felt I could not afford it then. So I am conscientious, probably to a fault.
If I could repay that person now, I would. But how trivial that is, compared to, say, driving around in a car today! Or buying all sorts of products that make me complicit in the destruction of the living web that supports us all! Every day, simply by consuming electricity and food in this unsustainable system, I effectively steal life and health from others, not only the other smart monkeys, but the whole fabric of life that will be needed in the future by all as well!
I also owe a debt to those who went before, clearing the way for me to be free, safe, and comfortable. Those who fought for our freedom. Those who built the roads and infrastructure I take for granted. Those who brought me this very nice ipad.
Until we can convert the whole system to sustainable and life supporting, it is impossible to individually be free of blame for the present unravelling. If we could feel the small repeated daily acts of theft and harm to others we cause, as if we saw it happen in front of us, we would quickly find better ways.
Because we measure stealing and theft in money terms, we notice it. But more subtle, and often purposely hidden theft from our commons and our environment is carried out with our future buying dollars daily! Might as well be in our name.
A pay as we go approach, folding the true environmental cost into the price of stuff might get our attention. And stuff producers would not even mind, as long as they knew they had a fair deal, an 'even playing field', rules that everyone had to abide by. The true cost.
I wonder if the anxiety about running up the national debt, which is ultimately a pretend game, is a misplaced way of worrying about the mounting environmental debt, which is frighteningly real.
"If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will not, in the end, produce food either." -Joseph Wood Krutch
No comments:
Post a Comment