How Then Shall We Live: Eaarth Part II

The ending chapter, "Lightly, Carefully, Gracefully" outlined a few areas we can work on specifically in view of the environmental issues, specifically global warming, facing us today. If summed up briefly, it would be: food, fuel, and the internet--going small and local. It paints a more hopeful, and bearable picture of what future can look like. It'll be hard, requiring more people to farm, more sacrifice in terms of "comfort," and more pressure for the powers that be to commit to maintaining our planet's livability, the last of which I think just may make it worth the effort.

McKibben really belabors the point that we think of economic and political systems as "big" and therefore unalterable. That's not true. For example, many who live in the Western suburbia take for granted that groceries come from supermarkets that purchase from hundreds of miles away, or that energy come from thousands of miles away (i.e. Saudi Arabia), or that urban "modernity" is the only civilized reality there is. I really appreciate how McKibben comes out saying the stupid things and actions that actually characterize 21st century comfortable American homes. It certainly wouldn't hurt to pay your neighbor local farmers for fresh produce, or to put up solar panels, to drive less and less faster, to live a simpler life and spend time with family instead of the TV.

Why haven't we done this though? (or least not enough people) or why aren't we doing this now? Is it that much skin off your nose to change an affluent lifestyle that's terrible for the world, and at times yourself? I mean if your diet mainly consists of boxed "chicken" pot-pie, take-out pizza, and coke, isn't that like walking on the path to destruction? I know so many people who do that though; it's scary. I wonder what people coming out of Wall-E feel like, or maybe they just forgot about it in a few hours....

Bill McKibben: Eaarth

In the book's first chapter, what really struck me was not the slew of statistics, which I believe many of us are already somewhat exposed in science classes; it was the case by case scenarios that fleshed out the realities of what global warming might mean to a specific place. Place matters, especially when those who live there have cultivated a sense of attachment--it's home, an abode of the soul, where we belong.

Atwood's Oryx and Crake

What are we doing to the environment? —Consider over population, genetic engineering, species extinction, climate change. This one’s no big mystery, though the novel is good for raising it for those who haven’t thought much about it.
Over-population did not seem like a big theme in the novel, or at least I didn't catch much of it. From the narrator's perspective, the elites, or the "knights" and "lords" lived in insulated high-tech domes that protected the residents from diseases and natural disasters which infested the pleblands, ghetto-like areas with weeds and high crime rate. The biggest problem, instead, I believe, lies in an uneven distribution of wealth: the affluent West and poverty-stricken Southeast Asia being the prime example, contrasting the life of Crake and Oryx. It's the powers that be, authority, political and technological advantages that wreak the most havoc. From fake food to the game that Crake becomes a master at, Extincathon, one can already see the trend towards the destruction of the planet. He can manipulate just about any genes to achieve the desired affect.Earth actually becomes so unlivable, its heat reducing the normal human to "snowman," that a new species, tailor-engineered, must be produced to combat the harsh environs. I don't think it will take that long, either, to reach such a state.

God and Here

Text: For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care by Steven Bouma-Prediger 
     Theologically, this book is traditional, but something about the author's reverence and communion in relation to this world of God's moves me... I found the stories of these three patriarchs particularly to be profoundly integral to a faith-filled vision for the land in which we live.

Place Under the Sun

Quotations from: For the Beauty of the Earth, etc

"Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are." - Ortega y Gasset

"An individual is not distinct from his place; he is that place." - Gabriel Marcel

"Settle down, get to know your place, and dig in." - Gary Snyder

Lake Bonny: Light, Shore, and Senior Homes

It's amazing the things that happen right under and above our eyelids.

I've biked around Lake Bonny countless times, or no, not around like the nearly perfectly round Lake Hollingsworth paved with a neat path for the town's leisure and exercise-conscious, the civilized. This one, though, is not manicured, not family-friendly, but... a little wild.

Eco-activism?

I don't even know if that's a word. Anyways...

Texts: Terry Tempest Williams' "Clan of One-Breasted Women" and Leopold's "Marshland Elegy" and "Land Ethics"

     Aldo declares that "the trend of evolution is to elaborate and diversify the biota.... Evolutionary changes, however, are usually slow and local. Man's invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope." Our mass consumption is scary. Is this where campaigns, marches to Washington, and protests targeting the Kyoto-nonsigning come in, then? I can't help but notice that those who do care, who do march and protest are considered hyperactive liberal hippies--at least from the conservative Christians' eyes. What's the craziness about a vegetarian diet or organic food? The advocacy for a completely different lifestyle threatens people used to the middle-class, suburban comfort zone plush with cable TV and diet coke. I feel the tension and either side thinks it's right. The conformists cannot comprehend what's the big deal about using the refrigerator; the activists cannot comprehend how one can continue using refrigerators in view of the ozone-depletion. This almost reminds me of the abolitionist movement little over a century ago in which economic interests have completely blinded people to their moral obligations.