I saw the danger / yet I walked / along the enchanted way. —Peter Kavanagh, Raglan Road, 1946
Over the past few decades a recurring question arises in public ecological discourse: In the face of overwhelming evidence, scientific warnings, existential urgency, and countless examples of ecological disintegration, why are societies worldwide so slow to respond appropriately?
Why, fifty years after the Limits to Growth study, are we still not able to slow human expansion and consumption? Why, fifty years after the UN first raised the issue of human population stress, are we still quibbling about whether or not we should even discuss the delicate issue? Why — 80 years after Alice Hamilton’s Exploring The Dangerous Trades, and 60 years after Rachel Carson’s, Silent Spring — are we still flooding our environments and our bodies with toxins? Why — after 33 international climate meetings over 41 years, two centuries since science understood the greenhouse effect — are human carbon emissions still rising?
As a species, and as diverse societies, we’re acting like an immature student, who keeps avoiding a simple homework assignment. Except this is […]
We speak money yet make decisions with emotions.
With endless drumbeat of hoard plus reflexive fear of loss we freeze.
[I went to Carleton just before Donella and Don Meadows and got a taste of Remote Viewing from you, Stephan A. Schwartz.]
Noam Chomsky tells us repetition leads to lapsing, forgetting to continue repelling. The advertisers and corporations know this susceptibility.
Nazi complicity — included pervasiveness of desk killers — those very companies continue today. Read about it in (Brit) Dan Gretton’s “I You We Them: Walking Into the World of the Desk Killer” (plus see his performance art organization, Platform.) Hear his interview on Derrick Jensen’s Resistance Radio program.
All best wishes!