With a growing awareness of mounting ecological, economic, political, and social problems, there exists many growing currents of response.
While many people are waking up and getting involved, many more are burning out. They've taken in too much depressing information about how the world is out of control, and they're just shutting down. How can we turn the tide? What's the secret to transforming apathy into resolve?
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"We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism."
- Emma Goldman, 1911
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People often ask me if I have any hope for our survival. What they really want to know, of course, is whether I can provide them with some grounds for hope. I am hopeful, because I feel sure that something extraordinary is going to happen in your lifetime--in the lifetime of those of you who are three or four decades younger than I am. I'm talking about something much more extraordinary than has happened in MY lifetime, which has included the birth of television, the splitting of the atom, space travel, and instant, global communication via the Internet. I mean something REALLY extraordinary.
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When Green For All founder and green jobs advocate Van Jones started writing The Green Collar Economy, it was a book about how to get green solutions to poor people. But by the time he was done and the book was released this fall, its scope had grown: Global warming had become common parlance, and the economy was on everyone's mind, regardless of class. His new book looks at how we can fix our environmental and economic crisis with a program that will create jobs, lower pollution and return some dignity to working Americans. It sounds great, but what's in the fine print? AlterNet's staff writer Joshua Holland and managing editor Tara Lohan sat down with Jones and talked about whether green jobs are actually legal under our international free trade agreements, what happens if we get an Obama White House, and how the progressive movement must go from "opposition to proposition, from protest to governance" in order to lead our country out of crisis.
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At the end of the Ecocity World Summit 2008, Conference Director Kirstin Miller read a declaration. The text is as follows:
An ecocity is an ecologically healthy city. Into the deep future, the cities in which we live must enable people to thrive in harmony with nature and achieve sustainable development. People oriented, ecocity development requires the comprehensive understanding of complex interactions between environmental, economic, political and socio-cultural factors based on ecological principles. Cities, towns and villages should be designed to enhance the health and quality of life of their inhabitants and maintain the ecosystems on which they depend.
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While this article was written a couple years ago, the solution it presents for our coming energy crisis is truly visionary. All of our past fuel sources have come indirectly from the sun - from trees that grew in the sun’s rays, to the lush foliage of the pre-historic era which decomposed and was compressed over millions of years into coal and oil. But it all starts with the sun. Ancient human cultures once worshiped the sun as they understood it's sacred importance in giving life to the plants and animals which they were dependent on to survive.
As tool-makers with large brains, humans have the capacity to merry ecological wisdom with sound technology. While I am wary of the danger of simply seeking techno-fixes to solve our problems, I find promise in technology when it is accompanied first by a new way of looking at things. Because at the root of our ecological crisis is the vision we have of our relationship to the earth - to the sun, to other species, to other human beings. Our culture's vision created the problems we have today, and a new vision can solve them.
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