Never before has our planet Gaia, had to deal with so much life that is struggling to remain in balance and … also keep her most recent of offspring, we (intelligent?) humans alive … so that we are able to survive and thrive in wellness.
When we look back to our past through our family tree, back through the lineage as a species we can only trace back to possibly 2 million years as a human …that is of physically evolving. Which is interesting because the honey bee has been on our planet for 10 million years and it was not for these bees and the matriarchal system in which they live, we would never be able to enjoy much in fruit and very few vegetables, plus flowers. As we are told that the honey bee is totally responsible for the pollination of over 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide.
However I digress.
So when we look at a photograph taken from space of our home planet at night, we can clearly see the outline of virtually every country, except North Korea, as well as the major global cities and megacities, with lights connecting in a lattice work spreading out in all directions. And when we zoom in we see the intensity and interconnectivity in far more diverse ways ... that we are in fact a planet of light even in our darkest moment.
Now cut back to 500 years BC and have a look at planet earth at night from space and what do we see? We see NOTHING but darkness. No light emanating from Athens in Greece, no light from Thebes and Karnak in Egypt, or Babylon in Mesapotamia or the Hindus Valley, or Xian in China, and nothing but blackness across North America and Mexico.
Yes, maybe some fire lines where lightening has struck dry area of grassland and scrub, but that is virtually nothing.
With possibly 250 million people on earth 2,500 years ago there was no evidence of our ecological footprint, we were able to live relatively sustainably, in that the planets environment was never at risk.
Today with us hitting 7 billion at the start of 2012, the situation is far more challenging and yes serious. Very serious.
If you are a loving Mother and a caring Father, I implore you to read on.
What are we doing for our children and grandchildren, you know these delightful little bundles of energy running around the house laughing and yelling and (sometimes driving you crazy) and playing like there is no tomorrow!
Yet what of the day after?
Now with food prices, energy costs, social disruption, media manipulation, armed revolts, nato incursion outside its realm, nuclear meltdowns and radiation spewing to monetary collapse and the confluence of it all — we ask ourselves: What are we doing? What are we thinking? How are we not panicking when the evidence is so obvious that we are crossing some growth/climate/natural resource/population blood / brain barrier all at once?
This is not science fiction.
“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who describes this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world … then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”
Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, http://www.footprintnetwork.org - an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.
Latest calculations are that if China wanted to copy the same consumer patterns of the USA - from house to cars to electronics and food, we would need an extra 8 planets! With fast growing India approaching China's population then there is Brazil and Indonesia where is it all going?
… We are using more resources than the Earth can provide. We are in global ecological overshoot.
I remember when I was a kid, the neighbors next door were having a new 'state' house built for them on a section beside their present house/shack. As the new house neared completion, the inhabitants of the old dwelling moved all their bedding into one room where the fire place was and started cutting down the outside walls of the furthest room and feeding the wood into the fire place in the room that they had retreated to. And I watched in astonishment the gradual destruction of a whole corner, then the side of their home disappear as the wood kept the fire alive and the inhabitants warm.
Fortunately it all worked out perfectly, for when their new house was ready to move into 3/4 of the old shack had been demolished and sawed and axed away, to be consumed, and then they safely migrated to there new house, still with a 1/4 of a house of fire wood in reserve.
However here on our magnificent giving living planet, we do not have another planet to move to. We do not have that luxury.
If we are to be an intelligent and visionary species, how are we going to solve this colossal problem especially when we see so many children under ten years of age. Running around playing, and enjoying their freedom to experience life? (see how I come back to them?)
What are we leaving them, and as there are so many of them today, how are they going to face this future, and how do you think they will react when they find out that we adults have pulled the rug out from beneath their feet?
Do you think that they are going to love us? Because if we love them, we would certainly be thinking of them and what we can do them?
So as we lie in bed each night, how can we really show our love and our connection to these little beings, who show so much promise. What are you going to do for them, or say to them if you do not do anything?
Time to get creative and take this conversation further with our family, neighbors and community because we can change and we have all this unacknowledged potential within us to do so.
Time to claim your power. Turn off your TV, that uncreative force field in your living room and go and talk to your neighbors and community and, this is when synergy, inspiration and connectivity can produce synchronicity and novelty and ways that will manifest magic, yes thats right, magic because if you believe you can shape your individual and common future, I can assure you … you can!
Share pro active as well as meditative and insightful emails and tubes among your family, friends and kin.
The web is virtually our only communication tool a present.
Practical things to do.
Connecting to your Local Community.
http://www.ooooby.org - Out of our own back yard How NZ is doing it.
http://www.transitiontowns.org - UK where it all started.
http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz - What is happening in NZ
On a more activist level, phone up your local City or Town councillor and in particular your Member of Parliament, and ask for a face to face meeting. Say that you want 30 minutes and that you are bring a delegation from your electorate. (your friends) When they receive half a dozen appointments coming in every week, that will jerk them upright, because they are in need of (your)votes to stay in 'power.'
And providing we do not transition to electronic voting in NZ we can still have a honest electoral system.
Remember, our planet Gaia this magnificent living super system called Mother Earth is sharing breath with us every moment of our existence. When we breathe out, she breathes in and when she breathes out, we breathe in - perfect reciprocity as long as we keep our trees and forests and not poison our oceans where the plankton transmute our co2.
That she shares her water and earth (minerals) so as to loan us bodies in which to live is magic in itself. Sol, in particular Soul … that is another equally profound story.
Te Poi - Tim
When we look back to our past through our family tree, back through the lineage as a species we can only trace back to possibly 2 million years as a human …that is of physically evolving. Which is interesting because the honey bee has been on our planet for 10 million years and it was not for these bees and the matriarchal system in which they live, we would never be able to enjoy much in fruit and very few vegetables, plus flowers. As we are told that the honey bee is totally responsible for the pollination of over 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide.
However I digress.
So when we look at a photograph taken from space of our home planet at night, we can clearly see the outline of virtually every country, except North Korea, as well as the major global cities and megacities, with lights connecting in a lattice work spreading out in all directions. And when we zoom in we see the intensity and interconnectivity in far more diverse ways ... that we are in fact a planet of light even in our darkest moment.
Now cut back to 500 years BC and have a look at planet earth at night from space and what do we see? We see NOTHING but darkness. No light emanating from Athens in Greece, no light from Thebes and Karnak in Egypt, or Babylon in Mesapotamia or the Hindus Valley, or Xian in China, and nothing but blackness across North America and Mexico.
Yes, maybe some fire lines where lightening has struck dry area of grassland and scrub, but that is virtually nothing.
With possibly 250 million people on earth 2,500 years ago there was no evidence of our ecological footprint, we were able to live relatively sustainably, in that the planets environment was never at risk.
Today with us hitting 7 billion at the start of 2012, the situation is far more challenging and yes serious. Very serious.
If you are a loving Mother and a caring Father, I implore you to read on.
What are we doing for our children and grandchildren, you know these delightful little bundles of energy running around the house laughing and yelling and (sometimes driving you crazy) and playing like there is no tomorrow!
Yet what of the day after?
Now with food prices, energy costs, social disruption, media manipulation, armed revolts, nato incursion outside its realm, nuclear meltdowns and radiation spewing to monetary collapse and the confluence of it all — we ask ourselves: What are we doing? What are we thinking? How are we not panicking when the evidence is so obvious that we are crossing some growth/climate/natural resource/population blood / brain barrier all at once?
This is not science fiction.
“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who describes this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world … then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”
Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, http://www.footprintnetwork.org - an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.
Latest calculations are that if China wanted to copy the same consumer patterns of the USA - from house to cars to electronics and food, we would need an extra 8 planets! With fast growing India approaching China's population then there is Brazil and Indonesia where is it all going?
… We are using more resources than the Earth can provide. We are in global ecological overshoot.
I remember when I was a kid, the neighbors next door were having a new 'state' house built for them on a section beside their present house/shack. As the new house neared completion, the inhabitants of the old dwelling moved all their bedding into one room where the fire place was and started cutting down the outside walls of the furthest room and feeding the wood into the fire place in the room that they had retreated to. And I watched in astonishment the gradual destruction of a whole corner, then the side of their home disappear as the wood kept the fire alive and the inhabitants warm.
Fortunately it all worked out perfectly, for when their new house was ready to move into 3/4 of the old shack had been demolished and sawed and axed away, to be consumed, and then they safely migrated to there new house, still with a 1/4 of a house of fire wood in reserve.
However here on our magnificent giving living planet, we do not have another planet to move to. We do not have that luxury.
If we are to be an intelligent and visionary species, how are we going to solve this colossal problem especially when we see so many children under ten years of age. Running around playing, and enjoying their freedom to experience life? (see how I come back to them?)
What are we leaving them, and as there are so many of them today, how are they going to face this future, and how do you think they will react when they find out that we adults have pulled the rug out from beneath their feet?
Do you think that they are going to love us? Because if we love them, we would certainly be thinking of them and what we can do them?
So as we lie in bed each night, how can we really show our love and our connection to these little beings, who show so much promise. What are you going to do for them, or say to them if you do not do anything?
Time to get creative and take this conversation further with our family, neighbors and community because we can change and we have all this unacknowledged potential within us to do so.
Time to claim your power. Turn off your TV, that uncreative force field in your living room and go and talk to your neighbors and community and, this is when synergy, inspiration and connectivity can produce synchronicity and novelty and ways that will manifest magic, yes thats right, magic because if you believe you can shape your individual and common future, I can assure you … you can!
Share pro active as well as meditative and insightful emails and tubes among your family, friends and kin.
The web is virtually our only communication tool a present.
Practical things to do.
Connecting to your Local Community.
http://www.ooooby.org - Out of our own back yard How NZ is doing it.
http://www.transitiontowns.org - UK where it all started.
http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz - What is happening in NZ
On a more activist level, phone up your local City or Town councillor and in particular your Member of Parliament, and ask for a face to face meeting. Say that you want 30 minutes and that you are bring a delegation from your electorate. (your friends) When they receive half a dozen appointments coming in every week, that will jerk them upright, because they are in need of (your)votes to stay in 'power.'
And providing we do not transition to electronic voting in NZ we can still have a honest electoral system.
Remember, our planet Gaia this magnificent living super system called Mother Earth is sharing breath with us every moment of our existence. When we breathe out, she breathes in and when she breathes out, we breathe in - perfect reciprocity as long as we keep our trees and forests and not poison our oceans where the plankton transmute our co2.
That she shares her water and earth (minerals) so as to loan us bodies in which to live is magic in itself. Sol, in particular Soul … that is another equally profound story.
Te Poi - Tim
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