Discuss: The Big Green Lie

Every journey begins withaasingle step, and this is going to be a long journey. I wouldn’t call it a lie so soon on our trip just because you cant see over the next hill yet.  Change includes all the things you haven’t imagined yet.  Peace.

Tommy, what a beautiful thought.  Change includes all the things you haven’t imagined yet.  Forgive me if I steal it.

Right on Moses!  We should have learned from history after all the schools threw it at us, but not even those governing have learned from it.
The greatest investment in infrastructure in American history was during the depression.  We have not had a major infrastructure project since the interstate highway system of the late 50s and early 60s.  A far greater undertaking then building enough wind and solar to replace coal and natural gas. 
What most don’t realize about government is that it is a necessary element of society.  Paying taxes is necessary, but what is most important is what our government spends those moneys on.  If all is reinvested in infrastructure, people doing the work pay taxes, they spend the money, others get it and they pay taxes, and so on.  In a healthy econcomy, the money “turns over” about 15 to 20 times a year.  The government in the end gets it all back.  We just keep doing it and low and behold we have a wondeful and health society, economy and environment.
But no we have been spending it destroying other countrys infrastructures and paying interest to the very wealthy and countries overseas.  53% of every dollar in income tax in 2007 went to paying interest.  We got NOTHING for it!
It is time for a new priority and not the promise of another 100 years in Iran.

Ok. Back to the article. What really frustrates me is all the “talk” about how to get things done or how difficult it is to get things done. I’m drinking the Kool-Aid, but I’m not getting drunk.  At this point, I need less hype + hope and more information straight from the front lines about how to honestly pull it off.  Granted Schendler’s article is only about a page long, but it is just more “talk” with no real solutions.  Yawn.  I’ve heard it all.  Someone ought to write a friggin’ book.

Rob:

I agree with you. (Sorry, I only had 600 words.) But… your description of the book we need is uncannily close to what I’ve written. Tentatively titled “The Forever Business: Dispatches from the Sustainability Frontier,” it should be out in the fall through Public Affairs. It’s all about what it really means to do stuff, to implement sustainable practices, and what goes on when you’re actually in the trenches doing retrofits, fixing buildings, using biodiesel, and getting dirty. It covers mistakes as well as successes, and it is meant to be the link between all the talk and all the theory and implementation.

I think the article was clear, useful and led off with an idea that rings true as a crystal goblet:

‘Someone asked me recently, “I know green is popular now. But what’s next?”

‘I said: “Honesty.”’

That works for me. The whole article works for me.

Jules Older, Editor-in-Chief
Ski Press

I have to go back to Einstein once again:"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

the interesting part of the discussion is not addressed:
“limited resources, economic growth, resource wars, etc...” in one vein and in the other vein we fail to talk about the elephant in the living room: capitalism, economic growth and keynesian militarism has doomed future’s generations resources and chances of right livelihood not just in the USA, but in many other places.
Everyone talk about the difficulties of going green but no one wants to confront the reality of total loss of control over the economy and resource alocations. Americans (including Canadians and Mexican elites) are hooked in wasting precious resources; from human to natural resources.
See:
http://mondediplo.com/2008/02/05military

I have read many of the discussions here in related topics, it is not goig to be a change that entails to read a book and vote for Obama; it will entail voting for Ralph Nader and finding every non brand name candidate voted in and clean up house from the white house to the mayor’s office.
Then change the way laziness and mediocrity are extolled, how rugged individualism is a dysfunctional way to live in community, how greed and selfishness creates and perpetuates suffering.
Capitalism and its values only brings joy for a few and oppression, boredom and hedonism to the many.
Green business in this economic system anathema.

Harris Pohl on Dec 16, 2007

We have passed the line of no return. I have been an activist for many years. I remember when Ralph Tory, around 1986, came back to canada from a conference in washington, where there was a discussion on what to do about the environmental degradation. According to his reporting, people made the suggestion that business would have to cap growth. The members of the business communities were all against it. Nothing got done, in the mean time lots of environmental groups became co-opted. Lots of activists are paid to be activists. Poverty, wars and environmental degradation has achieved an all time high. Academic types took over the environmental movement completely.  The token non-whites are rare and far in between (in North America). Voices are silenced, by death (Corbin Harney - Shundahai Network) or by disillusion (my own).
Actions are pathetically stupid (write letters of protest or fly to Bali to demonstrate about an agreement that will not be implemented (remember Kyoto?, Remeber the Waste Trade agreement done in Basel? ask Jim Vallette what happened to the Basel agreement?)
The environment news of record is the Rachel’s weekly has records of all the above.
So we can be saddened by the loss of opportunities, or we can try to re-bild community, but the main stuff is not touched with a ten or 1000 foot pole: consumption and corruption.
Now that the dollar is loosing its value sooner than we all might think, everyone slumbering will have to get up and do something that they never prepared themselves for: face reality and think up solutions for :
1 - water shortages - e.g. Tennessee, Georgia and California (invading canada for it or using NAFTA chapter 11 will not do);
2 - Storms, fires, floods, earthquakes;
3 - a huge population of uneducated by design; violence fed, by design; marginalized by design and exploited by design; not knowing or having experience in how to deal with lack of their favourite junk food joint (the only place where s/he can find a meal they can afford to pay for, with the meager wage they make.
4 - the backlash from all the lies that will be uncovered and how frustrations will be dealt with.

Do I need to go on?
So all of you that are writing in this discussion are having a 1980’s conversation, while the tanks are at the door, the drought is at the doors, the concentration camps inside of the us have been built, the floods and weather storms are at the door (World Watch predicted long time ago). Your conversation should not be intellectually driven. All of the above done in your name.  Who cares about Rick Bass? Great he wrote. Well what have you all done with what he wrote? How his writing get us all off the shithole we find ourselves in?
Not happy to make a disaster of the us and north america, american military is making a mess out of other parts of the globe and destroying our home - the earth-.
What are you doing about stopping the obliteration of Gaia?
There are more than a million scientists, intellectuals, writers, philosophers, university educated people in the us alone; you all know about the problems. What keep you from working together in getting this mess clean up?
Pretty soon we will not have time for compassionate and productive living: survival will be the big stake.
My suggestion:
Call on citizens to design a plan of action to deal with the major issues in your community. Call it adhoc commission on surviving the crunch.
Place in the agenda all the problems.
Prioritize the ones that are most important e.g.
a- drink water (where does it comes from. Is it secure for the population.
2 - Food - where it comes from? Is it secure for the population? If it is not how do we make it secure? What actions do we need to put into place to secure food, water and heat for the winters. Who has the heirloom seeds, where are the orchards and the gardens?
3 - Community building: What are our assets?  How inclusive? How much of the population is marginalized and how to change that? People that are included don’t steal from you.

So you get the drift.

If we don’t get back to basics and start building the future now, there will not be any time left for the organizing that is needed for the transition to be smooth.
If this is not done soon, it will be bloody.
Harris