What Will It Take to Wake People Up?

The United Nations is set to report that many of the world's mightiest rivers are sick and depleted. So not only are we heating up nature's corpus mundi, we're draining its bloodstream as well. (Thanks to The Future Is Green for the link.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Kolbert, who visited Seattle last week on her book tour for Field Notes from a Catastrophe, reports in the latest New Yorker that ice melting is accelerating faster than the models have predicted.

So what are we doing about all of this? Recognizing we're all well-intentioned, I would have asked Kolbert how she feels about jetting around the country (and the planet) to promote a book on a "catastrophe" brought about in some measure by jetting around the planet. Jet pollution is emerging as a disproportionally severe contributor to greenhouse gases. And we're in an era of increasing private jet use where a few very rich people are really wasting the future for all of us.

So what's the average person's perspective on all of this? For those of us enmeshed in green issues on a 24-hour basis, it's sobering to get a reality check like this one:

"By the time I got to work, my 15-minute commute by car had taken almost an hour. In a little while, I would pick Ben up, and we'd take the bus home. Which bus, I wasn't so sure.

Fighting greenhouse gases ain't going to be easy."

The incredible cultural momentum behind destroying the earth really has no easy solution. Even in New Orleans, traffic jams will return once rebuilding takes hold. Confronting and reversing global warming "ain't going to be easy," for sure. The only thing harder, in fact, will be the terrible, fatal alternative.

— Paul Andrews, GreenForGood

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