How do I merit this good fortune of being in this place at this time? Answerless question.
Most mornings I give thanks for this day … and for yesterday. I give thanks for the earth we live upon and the sustenance we draw from it…the sustenance of body and of spirit. Then I ask that we heal the earth before it becomes too badly damaged by our usage, before it becomes irretrievably ruined for generations to come.
April 22nd is Earth Day. A time to make changes toward a healthier earth. There are so many things that humans are doing that damage our environment and damage ourselves:
--75,000 chemical compounds out there and practically none of them having been tested for toxicity to humans, much less plants and animals, and many of them are killers --genetically engineered (or modified) organisms and practically none of them tested by independent scientists, and those scientists who have done tests and come up with sick and dead rats and mice have been denigrated and fired (read Jeffrey Smith's Seeds of Deception, 2002) , with sterilization of soil by corn and soy plants which create their own insecticide "bt"
--U.S. military using depleted uranium on munitions which become pulverized when exploded and taints every human being who touches and breathes it…the generation of children born to everyone currently present in Iraq will carry its taint as it also sickens and kills their parents (and also in Kovoso and Albania)
--wars, wars, and more wars: more generations of human beings slaughtered in the name of whatever
--huge oceanic fish stocks reduced to individuals or gone completely
--the 8500-square-mile "dead zone" of oxygen-depleting plankton bloom, ever enlarging, in the Gulf of Mexico at the outfall of the Mississippi River, killed by the polluting nitrates and phosphates from the farm fields of the giant Mississippi River basin
--global warming, euphemistically called by those who deny its reality global climate change as if it were merely something we can adjust to. Suddenly last month Pentagon scientists started becoming alarmed that the warming and melting of the northern polar ice cap and Greenland's glaciers could pour such a stream of fresh water into the northern Atlantic that the Gulf Stream would be shunted downward and southward, abruptly changing the climate of the Northern Hemisphere to cold and colder. The Pentagon's concern was less that it was bad for the earth and more that it would engender more wars for food and water.
--nuclear weapons. Truly the hideous brainchild of humanity. And more insane is the United States' quiet work to put weapons in space with a planned test this summer. Greg Braden's latest book The God Code: The Secret of Our Past, the Promise of Our Future (my current reading material) says it well:
Interestingly, when we examine the many conditions that have been identified as our greatest threats, we discover a common thread that links them. That thread is humankind. ... Along with the hazards that now threaten the natural world, we live in the growing shadow of weapon technologies with the power to destroy civilization and render our planet uninhabitable to all but the simplest forms of life for centuries. The willingness to explore such technologies, the precision with which the resulting weapons have been created, and the ease with which their use is now justified--and even believed to be survivable--creates what is without doubt the single greatest threat to our survival today. (pp.182-3)
We dream in our little worlds. Though some do not. There are many, many activists out there, working hard to rein in the destruction. Heck, if one could just shut down the wars and stopped building weapons, the money currently spent in these actions could probably give every adult in the world a living wage.
We have seen the madness of megalomania and crusadism before — history is full of it, and we are watching it again in the personages of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. How far will it go? How do we stop this real madness?
As the birds sing this spring, I enjoy them. I love my grandchildren and wonder how on earth will this world survive and provide them as pleasant a place as I have lived in.
And pause in sorrow at the horribleness of all the inhumane actions taking place this minute all over this globe. In sorrow at the hunger and thirst in people who have no choices before them. Because we have not created an earth community of peaceableness and equality and justice for all.
Is it even possible?
I read Starhawk's email posts from Palestine where she has been training people in non-violent resistance to the constant Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes and farms. She describes the olive groves in cultivation since ancient times being ripped up by the bulldozers preparing for the "wall" which is supposed to protect the Israelis — the apartheid wall which is being paid for with American tax dollars. Call me callous in a way for being more concerned about the environment than the people, but I cannot sympathize with a nation which rips up orchards of thousand-year-old trees and purposefully pours septage from incursive settlements into streams and ponds.
Every day some new atrocity or some new environmental degradation or some new health risk is reported. There are times when it seems impossible to effect change for the better.
So much to do.
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Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey Smith
U.S. testing of weapons in space this summer: tinyurl for the Moscow Times
Letters from Starhawk in Israel and Palestine at Starhawk