Here it is, Christmas Day 2006. It’s been snowing gangbusters here in western Montana. All is quiet, all is still. All is peaceful. Or so it seems.
2006 was a year of treading water, at best. The rich got richer. The poor got poorer. Governments became even more ruthless and reckless, pursuing nuclear technologies, testing nuclear weapons, wasting soldiers lives and hundreds of billions spreading the seeds of “democracy” where it is neither welcome or understood, all while ignoring the real environmental problems they are facing in their own backyards. And we proles kept spending.
And since you’re likely to be somewhere in the gaping maw known as the middle class here in Amerikay, you probably felt the squeeze on your resources from every direction; energy, food, transportation, housing. No wonder we don’t have much of our collective human spirit to focus on solving environmental problems when it requires all any one person can muster to sustain their lifestyle.
Oh I know. It’s all just business as usual. The way of things. For now at least. But while you were living your life and feathering your nest, the earth got hammered, again. Worldwide, we exceeded all records for carbon dioxide output, and moved the bar higher on solid waste. Temperatures have risen to their highest in the past 1 million years. How can next year bring any improvement, unless we take a closer look at the real source of the problem: ourselves, the 7 billion people living like there’s no tomorrow?
Hmm, maybe tomorrow doesn’t mean very much after all the lip service and wishful thinking I’ve heard from well-intentioned people. Could be why nobody in this country saves much money either. In tomorrow’s world, money won’t mean much because our progeny will have much bigger problems to cope with, like finding themselves without clean air, clean water, or food.
So be thankful you live in a time when you can ignore the world at large and block it out with material comforts. We of today are truly blessed, in a wickedly finite way. And successive generations cursed—saddled with a diminished set of expectations and a polluted planet as a result.
Whirled Home Journal wishes you and yours a 2007 full of happiness and joy driven by introspection and reconsideration of the material world that defines us all. A self-reckoning for the good of the world around you. Because who you are isn’t best measured by what you own or what you preach or believe. It will be best measured in the world of tomorrow by what you do (or don’t do) about the environment around you today.
And here’s wishing you a little less of everything to illumine your path.
