Healing Power of the Small

Thoughts to an email list:
The guy in the Winnebago, or Hummer, or 5000 sq ft home, buying stuff he doesn’t need by the truckload from some Big Box store, is the engine. The aristocracy, advertising media, and politicos are the fuel, it would seem. The problem is not that we are using some energy to stay warm, or take a hot shower, or even flying to China or Brazil to experience foreign cultures. The problem is greed wrapped in the flag of efficiency, of pillaging wrapped in the banner of growth, and of dishonesty wrapped in the shroud of accounting.

The problem is you and me, and 6.5 Billion people all wanting to live like you or me, or any other struggling American middle class denizen. If the population of China were to consume (and waste) paper like we do here, which economically they are projected to be able to achieve by 2030, it will take 2 planet Earths to allow them to do that. Let the Indians play too and now we need 3 Earths. That is just wood, it is like that with everything else.

The problem is that our Western economic models are based on growth at any cost, and are not able to sustain a population of 6.5 billion, soon to be 7 billion. This economic model relies on advertising and media to create a culture of consumption, disposables, and planned obsolescence; which seemed to work just fine in 1955, but is killing us surely in 2006. Moving that model to China is just not possible, there just isn’t enough stuff.

The problem is that being “green” is still “alternative”, when it needs to become the way we live. People expect electricity in their homes, like magic, without a thought of the acid rain or CO2 produced when it is generated. People want hard wood floors, without a thought of clear cutting and flooding. People want, why we demand, cheap gasoline, without a thought to the geological realities of a limited resource which is frankly too precious to burn. When I turn on a light now, I think “burning coal” . That simple mantra has translated into a habit of turning off lights when I leave a room. It didn’t take long to turn that into a normal habit of every day life. Buying wood from a sustainable forest, putting in a cleaner furnace, putting up solar arrays, recycling, composting….none of these things should even be worth mentioning, none of these should be commendable, but just part of daily life.

Back again to the old phrase of the 19th century, a phrase that displays the consciousness of cost when using energy. “I read his poetry, but it wasn’t worth the candle”. At least then, they had an awareness in the language of the effort and cost of making the resource, that there was a tangible cost associated with generating the light. Today, I stand up on the trail at twilight and look out over the San Gabriel Valley, into the Oz like spires of downtown Los Angeles, all brightly lit, the glow apparent even from space. I connect the dots to the generator, then to the coal (or natural gas), then to the strip mined mountain, then back to the air I must breathe, to the high tension towers marring my mountains, to the vehicles spewing along the freeway, to the gas pump that fuels them, the refineries that offload the crude from the Middle East where we have pissed away billions and lives to protect that flow…. Yeah, it is all of a piece, and it is all of us, and all of them, the great planetary consumption machine. And most people don’t have any idea how it works, it's all magic.

Which is why when Marcus buys a wood stove, or Richard intalls a solar array, or you switch to natural gas… It Matters. It moves us another step toward the future we need to create, the future of electricity from the sun, the future of wind turbines on the prairie, the future of silent electric vehicles floating down the freeway, the future of clean local food and water, of renewable energy and sustainable forests. Not some green pipe dream, but a real vibrant economic reality based on sustainable practice, telling the ecological truth, and living as if nature mattered. And yes, spending the money to get there, demanding that respect for all life is applied in all circumstances, and demanding accountability. I wouldn’t smoke at your dinner table, why is it okay to allow these manufacturers and vehicles to smoke in my air ?

I can begin and put in CFL or LED lights all over my house, and turn my thermostat down 5 degrees. I can drop the 25 large and put in the solar array and switch my vehicles to bio diesel. I can learn how to grow a garden, tear out the front lawn and permaculture my surrounds. We can all start looking at the ways we can move our suburban homes to a sustainable life style. Death to Suburbia, its day is over. Elegant living with a small footprint and stop blaming and feeling guilty. Individual actions like this are our only hope - the individual rejection of the hyper consumption based society and the acceptance of the additional work and effort it will now take to create a world that can continue as a foundation for the finer efforts of the human spirit. Mozart and Bach both composed by candlelight.

The only hope I see for the humans, and other life forms, is to start building that future step by step. Right Now. A future that provides the requirements of life for all people, a future whose economy doesn't rely on poisoning the planet, a future where people live as if Nature mattered. My small actions, and others small actions, will accumulate and allow us to heal our natural foundations. Small steps, small improvements, over time.

The healing power of the small.