I was first explicitly taught about our environmental impact in 1991. Dates and years tend to be a blur but I can pinpoint this to the Double Vision skatedeck. My computer class partner and I made a sweet pixel art picture of one them in 6th grade. In that same class, we participated in a project to collect data on acid rain and share our results using telecommunications. In a public school in a maddeningly inept city in the middle of the bible belt, we learned that rain was gathering acid in the air that got there by pollution and bathed the world in such fun stuff. We even used computers and the internet to talk to someone far away. There were protests and campaigns for the ozone layer and smog. Every picture of L.A had that dystopian sky. Enough real movement to happen to see some changes as well as the protracted emigration of manufacturing to nations without pollution and labor laws lead to much cleaner skies. The hole in the ozone began to close!
The first war with Saddam came along but the essential difference is that one had an end. There was a small measure of hope. We weren't at war. There was no boogey man.
I gravitated toward studying environmental science and ecology. The structure of the intertidal zone is a world as worth exploring as the great forests. Academia and science were in strong agreement that people were causing global changes. We could see it happen in the great fisheries of the Grand Banks. Basques had been fishing there for 500 years. History is cool.
The environmental signs were pretty clear, we needed to modify the structural elements of the global system or a lot more and lot worse shit was going to happen. The scale of impact was far to great to understand and any reasonably logical person could see that there were exponentially more variables we had yet to even thing of considering. No avenue of research on our efforts to poison the world yielded positive returns unless we had either never touched it or were actively trying to minimize our impact. This is key for anyone just now jumping into this discussion. We can't save the environment just as we can't fix a cut. We react and allow our body to heal itself, as the planet would have if we had acted then. This is not a tragedy of the commons because it falls far more squarely on the global profiteers.
September 11th, 2001. I was a senior in college and should have been preparing to be a productive piece of the world. We know what happened but it is the response that has ripped our soul from itself and made earlier climate predictions woefully short. We have not stopped being at war and now I teach kids who were born after 2001 and are headed off to the same endless fight. Some accounts place the United States military as the largest polluter in the world. It is definitely in the business of actively destroying it. It does not have to be but that is a different tale. We are now rounding the curve in the hockey stick cure of global systemic change and it is going to be a strong reminder of how terribly awesome our god is. Kali Ma may be a more apt representation. I have no reason to believe we will create the change we need to avoid this suffering or it would have already happened.
We were duped into letting it happen by profiteers and the leaches that have gained sickening wealth along the way. They take our money to build jails for kids, what's poisoning a river to increase profit?
Something will be done and it will be too late.
Hey!
Some pictures we have.
As for those who deny any of the science, watch as we live through an endless demonstration of energy's movement to balance.
Consider the billionaire class. They know all of this and are surely planning for a different future. They believe that they can protect themselves and their wealth and come off their arks with even greater influence. They stand to recreate the world in their image.
The drums of battle are striking anew. We can not worry about snail darters and beef management when we have a new enemy to consider. We can not afford to do much about it either because we have to buy more bombs. There are and will be some magnificent efforts to redirect climate change.
what is the ultimate point. time for us to plan for that future.....This is a chronic pain and a disease we created and watched. It's not hopeless, the climate is going to change and our response is the everything. The best solution is an all hands on deck change to less waste. You could get a beautiful hope behind an intentionally orchestratred migration of humanity to better formed societies. This will not be false for everyone, what structures do we make the grandest changes in and those require a focus on things far beyond any individual could imagine.
None of this do we have control of. It is hard enough to do so in our ownselves, much last past our doorways. The only changes we can inact are nearest at hand. On the climate level, that is enough to drive the engine but it just can not be that easy. Here's the thing, the best way to having a secure and meaningful life whether the world burns up or not is through much stronger communities that can be self suffecient but also operate as nodes for an even greater societal construct. We, as individuals, can not afford the stress and nonsense to constantly bog down the need for some to prevent progress for it comes at the restructuring of their system. Our votes and living habits should do that lifting for us. As we turn and work to make our community healthier, stronger, and more sustainable then we force the market towards us.
This is not easy for those of us plenty able to and far more difficult for those who can not afford nearly so much...
The first war with Saddam came along but the essential difference is that one had an end. There was a small measure of hope. We weren't at war. There was no boogey man.
I gravitated toward studying environmental science and ecology. The structure of the intertidal zone is a world as worth exploring as the great forests. Academia and science were in strong agreement that people were causing global changes. We could see it happen in the great fisheries of the Grand Banks. Basques had been fishing there for 500 years. History is cool.
The environmental signs were pretty clear, we needed to modify the structural elements of the global system or a lot more and lot worse shit was going to happen. The scale of impact was far to great to understand and any reasonably logical person could see that there were exponentially more variables we had yet to even thing of considering. No avenue of research on our efforts to poison the world yielded positive returns unless we had either never touched it or were actively trying to minimize our impact. This is key for anyone just now jumping into this discussion. We can't save the environment just as we can't fix a cut. We react and allow our body to heal itself, as the planet would have if we had acted then. This is not a tragedy of the commons because it falls far more squarely on the global profiteers.
September 11th, 2001. I was a senior in college and should have been preparing to be a productive piece of the world. We know what happened but it is the response that has ripped our soul from itself and made earlier climate predictions woefully short. We have not stopped being at war and now I teach kids who were born after 2001 and are headed off to the same endless fight. Some accounts place the United States military as the largest polluter in the world. It is definitely in the business of actively destroying it. It does not have to be but that is a different tale. We are now rounding the curve in the hockey stick cure of global systemic change and it is going to be a strong reminder of how terribly awesome our god is. Kali Ma may be a more apt representation. I have no reason to believe we will create the change we need to avoid this suffering or it would have already happened.
We were duped into letting it happen by profiteers and the leaches that have gained sickening wealth along the way. They take our money to build jails for kids, what's poisoning a river to increase profit?
Something will be done and it will be too late.
Hey!
Some pictures we have.
As for those who deny any of the science, watch as we live through an endless demonstration of energy's movement to balance.
Consider the billionaire class. They know all of this and are surely planning for a different future. They believe that they can protect themselves and their wealth and come off their arks with even greater influence. They stand to recreate the world in their image.
The drums of battle are striking anew. We can not worry about snail darters and beef management when we have a new enemy to consider. We can not afford to do much about it either because we have to buy more bombs. There are and will be some magnificent efforts to redirect climate change.
what is the ultimate point. time for us to plan for that future.....This is a chronic pain and a disease we created and watched. It's not hopeless, the climate is going to change and our response is the everything. The best solution is an all hands on deck change to less waste. You could get a beautiful hope behind an intentionally orchestratred migration of humanity to better formed societies. This will not be false for everyone, what structures do we make the grandest changes in and those require a focus on things far beyond any individual could imagine.
None of this do we have control of. It is hard enough to do so in our ownselves, much last past our doorways. The only changes we can inact are nearest at hand. On the climate level, that is enough to drive the engine but it just can not be that easy. Here's the thing, the best way to having a secure and meaningful life whether the world burns up or not is through much stronger communities that can be self suffecient but also operate as nodes for an even greater societal construct. We, as individuals, can not afford the stress and nonsense to constantly bog down the need for some to prevent progress for it comes at the restructuring of their system. Our votes and living habits should do that lifting for us. As we turn and work to make our community healthier, stronger, and more sustainable then we force the market towards us.
This is not easy for those of us plenty able to and far more difficult for those who can not afford nearly so much...
