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Newsletter #18
In This Issue:
-Confessions of a Swing Voter
-A Sustainability Pop Quiz
::CONFESSIONS OF A SWING VOTER::
It’s a presidential election year here in the U.S., and I happen to attend a very liberal and politically active college in New York. I find myself pressured on all fronts to be politically active, and everyone seems to have a very clear idea of who I should vote for.
But when I look at the two main presidential candidates, I feel like I’m being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. Neither one makes me feel confident in their ability to run a country.
On an environmental note, I know many of you might be waiting for me to trash the notorious environmental offender, George W. Bush, who seems to behave as though things like global warming don’t really exist. Yes, it’s true: When it comes to handling our situation with the environment, Bush acts like a major idiot.
But what are my expectations? Am I looking for a candidate who’ll “save” the world?
It makes me wonder, what IS the role of government in getting us out of this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, anyway? Sometimes it seems like there are people out there who think that voting for the right candidate is the ONLY way that things are going to change.
But I am not convinced.
No major change, as far as I know, in the history of humankind has been sparked by the initiative of any government.
The Industrial Revolution didn’t arise from strict regulations forcing businesses to innovate. And I don’t think there even WAS any semblance of a government when the Agricultural Revolution took hold. These events, rather, were born of a new worldview that spread like wildfire. The government can support, develop, and reinforce our worldviews, but it cannot impose one on us—and if it tried, we’d have a whole other kind of revolution to worry about.
For the past 30-40 years, the U.S. government has been, at best, reinforcing the perception that human impact on Earth is negative, and that it must be reduced. When we’re looking at candidates from an environmental aspect, we’re usually looking for the one who’ll reduce more (i.e., make things LESS bad), not one who will really seek to change our impact from negative to positive. And if a political candidate like that DID come along, he/she probably wouldn’t get much support because the majority of the people in this world (including many environmentalists) are stuck in the “making things less bad” mindset.
I suspect that a new worldview—the one that will change our role in the world into a sustainable one—will have its beginning outside of the political arena.
Until then, selecting a more environmentally-minded candidate is just a matter of buying more time before we shoot ourselves in the foot—OR find a better way to do things.
::A SUSTAINABILITY POP QUIZ::
If you were on the Titanic, in the middle of the ocean, and you noticed that there was water leaking into the ship, slowly but steadily, what would you do?
The first reaction would be to get a bucket and start dumping out the water. As more and more people started to notice, you’d probably get some kind of bucket brigade going, and you’d try to bring this leak to attention of other passengers who haven’t seemed to notice yet.
You might even try to find out where the leak is coming from and make some kind of patch. But as you patch one leak, another pops up somewhere else on the ship. You’re busy and tired from passing buckets and patching holes, and you suspect that the ship must have some kind of design flaw, and is going to sink eventually, no matter how many buckets you pass or leaks you stop.
What do you do?
(a) Try to get everyone on the ship involved with the buckets and patches—if we ALL chip in, we can keep this ship afloat.
(b) Have a big chunk of the passenger population airlifted by helicopter, to reduce their weight on the ship—maybe the ship can only support a certain weight.
(c) Analyze what’s wrong with this ship, and design a new one that won’t start sinking under the same conditions.(d) Get your butt on a lifeboat so that when the ship sinks (and you know it will), you won’t be on it.
All of these things would help somehow, although to a different extent. And we all probably want to do a little bit of each of them, but how would you prioritize?
I challenge you to think about it, and tell me what YOU would do, and why. In my next newsletter, I’ll share my own priorities, and elaborate on this analogy. But don’t read too much into it—try and stick to the ship scenario for now.
I really look forward to hearing (or rather, reading) what you think.
Till next month!
-Krystle C.
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