Rex Weyler has vision. (Look at the last thing of his I posted -- trust me you wont be sorry even if you just take a fast peek: http://theconversation.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=199&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.)

This piece here o­n peak oil isn't a woe-is-me, although all the categories where we are threatened are front and center:

Our massive growth economies were built with cheap oil. Poorly planned development left behind disappearing forests, toxic lakes, soil erosion, species loss, foul air, dead rivers, drying aquifers, and creeping deserts.

But what Rex presents embraces all of that in a bigger picture of how it would be if we intelligently deal, in systematic ways, with what our oil situation calls for:

Human society can change. Witness the historic changes to establish democracies, end slavery, secure civil and womens rights, or eradicate polio and AIDS. Humanity can harness its resources to change destructive habits and improve living conditions. The crisis of peak oil provides an opportunity strengthen the two pillars that nourish real quality of life: local community and wild nature.

Rex is quite a guy. He was o­ne of the founders of Greenpeace, and, surprise surprise, his newest book is The Jesus Sayings: A Quest for His Authentic Sayings.

In The Jesus Sayings, I raise two more questions, presuming that we might approach some understanding of Jesus’ authentic message.

How did that message get confused or misrepresented?

What relevance does that message offer us in the twenty-first century?

To answer these questions, I’ve examined the research of scholars such as Crossan and Reed, Robert J. Miller, Elaine Pagels, Burton Mack, Bart Ehrman, Karen King, Margaret Starbird, Nicholas Wright, Robert Funk, Westar Institute’s Jesus Seminar, and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion’s Jesus Project. These scholars attempt to answer the questions raised by Reimarus: What can we reasonably say about the historical Jesus, and what did this person teach?

Our modern ecological crisis appears as a crisis of spirit, failing to see the miracle in which we live. Our destruction of the earth follows hording over sharing, private ego over common sense, dominance over humility, and addictive consumption over simple pleasures. Human civilization looked for paradise in all the wrong places, in power, wealth, in myriad heavens. We have failed to worship — to ascribe worth to — the o­ne thing that sustains us: the living earth. A new reformation in religion and spirituality will recognize the inherent value of the earth itself, life itself, other beings for their own sake, not for private glory.

So, with that as background, see if you aren't nodding yes to this vision Rex is presenting here. And, if you'd like to create a community along the lines he proposes, please invite me to be in it:

Peak Oil drastically changes global economy

By Rex Weyler

As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.

Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed non-renewable resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.

World oil production increased for 150 years until the spring of 2005, when world crude oil production reached about 74.3 million barrels per day (mb/d), and total liquid fuels, including tar sands, liquefied gas, and biofuels reached about 85 mb/d. In spite of the efforts since, and tales of "trillions of barrels" of oil in undiscovered fields, liquid fuel production has remained at about 85.5 mb/d for three years, the longest sustained plateau in modern petroleum history. Discoveries of new fields peaked 40 years ago.

Meanwhile economies everywhere want to grow, so demand for oil soars worldwide. The gap between this surging demand and flat or declining production will drive price increases and shortages. That’s peak oil.

Peak experience

Peak oil is not a theory, but rather a simple observation of a common natural occurrence. Peak oil is o­nly o­ne symptom of an exponentially growing population, with exponentially growing demands, reaching worldwide limits of all resources.

"Peak oil has long been a reality for the oil industry," says Anita M Burke, former Shell International senior advisor o­n Climate Change and Sustainability. "To believe anything else belies the facts of science." In 2007, Dr James Schlesinger, former US Defense and Energy Secretary stated flatly, "If you talk to industry leaders, they concede … we are facing a decline in liquid fuels. The battle is over. The peakists have won."

Global warming, caused primarily by forest destruction and the burning of fossil fuels, now aggravates natural limits and the human turmoil that these limits provoke. o­ne might think that peak oil will solve global warming because less oil means less carbon emissions. Sadly, this is not so because humanity took the best, cheapest, and easiest oil first, leaving dirty, acidic, expensive oil in marginal reserves that require vast amounts of energy to recover. In the 1930s, 100 barrels of oil cost about 1 barrel in equivalent energy to extract. That ratio is now about 20:1 and sinking fast. The Canadian tar sands produce barely 1:1 net energy. By the time someone burns tar sands oil in his or her vehicle, the industry has burned nearly an equal amount retrieving it.

When we account for the net energy left after production, and population growth, we discover that the world peak for net-oil per-capita occurred three decades ago, in 1979. Many oil suppliers – Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and others – recognizing the limits of the resource, are now keeping more of their oil for domestic use, and saving it for future growth. Regardless of energy alternatives – ethanol, nuclear, solar, wind, tidal – humanity will never again enjoy the current consumption rates of cheap, convenient fuels. This fact changes everything.

We witness the impact in the increasing scarcity and cost of food and other critical resources that rely o­n oil. Most trucking firms now add a fuel surcharge to hedge against fuel price increases. As fuel prices soar, airlines cancel flights or simply close down. In many cities, police add a gas charge to traffic tickets because police departments have already spent their annual fuel budget o­n high-priced gasoline.

The post-peak oil era will require new human development patterns and strategies that cope with limits to growth. Humanity has no new continents to exploit or planets to occupy. Frantic industrial nations may drill in the Arctic and dig into dirty tar sands, but none of this will increase or even match the past abundance of cheap liquid fuel that we have already squandered. Nevertheless, the actual moment that world oil production peaks is less relevant than our preparation for the impact.

Relocalization

Well-financed voices promoting global industrialization claim our economies can grow "forever," or "for the foreseeable future," but these voices cry out against the evidence before our eyes. Our massive growth economies were built with cheap oil. Poorly planned development left behind disappearing forests, toxic lakes, soil erosion, species loss, foul air, dead rivers, drying aquifers, and creeping deserts.

The dream of a globalized world marketplace linked by airplanes and trucks will not endure. Monolithic superstores that rely o­n liquid fuels to ship cheap goods around the world will become the relics of the cheap oil era. These massive chain stores also undermine the local enterprise that communities will need to survive.

"The current solutions being bantered about are inadequate to the conditions we are faced with," says Anita Burke, after decades inside the oil industry. "We must embrace adaptation strategies that immediately create whole new ways of being in relationship to each other and the planet. Buy local, get off of hydrocarbons in every aspect of your life, gather in community, and espouse o­nly love - your grandchildren’s lives depend o­n it."

Communities addicted to cheap oil, especially suburban environments without public transport, will become untenable. Regions that still build highways for cars are simply designing their own demise. Smart communities will design light, convenient public transport to run efficiently o­n the most locally available energy source.

The post-peak oil era will require that we re-establish local manufacturing and food production, and refurbish economies that have been gutted by globalization. Smart urban designers are now planning for the end of cheap energy, global warming, and the human migration that these changes will set in motion. Smart neighbourhood and regional planners are preparing communities for the inevitable transition from escalating consumption to conserver societies, built o­n a human scale and linked to social services and the natural cycles that sustain them..Building communities in nature

I recently walked through an abandoned industrial section of Vancouver, where I live. The empty, poorly designed, decaying buildings seemed depressing, but I noticed how much actual green space flourished with wild plants. Squatters with gardening skills, I kept thinking, could make a life for themselves here.

Human society can change. Witness the historic changes to establish democracies, end slavery, secure civil and women’s rights, or eradicate polio and AIDS. Humanity can harness its resources to change destructive habits and improve living conditions. The crisis of peak oil provides an opportunity strengthen the two pillars that nourish real quality of life: local community and wild nature.

Relocalize: The end of cheap oil means less products arriving from around the world and less jobs making junk to sell elsewhere. Globalization is literally running out of gas. As fuel prices soar, communities will have to supply more food, water, and vital resources locally. If you are thinking of earning a degree in international finance, it might be smart to take some permaculture courses as well.

Preserve farmland: Wise communities will preserve agricultural land, support farmers, provide local food for local consumption, compost all organic waste including sewage, build soils, apply efficient water use, move toward vegetable diets, and restore and replenish water resources. Rather than building suburbs and highways o­n farmland, smart communities will design small residential neighbourhoods o­n the least-arable land, integrated with the life-giving farmland and natural bounty that supports a healthy society.

Change the pattern of community: The entire distribution of public activity, public space, and housing must adapt to less fuel and resource consumption. Past planning in the cheap-oil era created public dysfunction, decaying city cores, foul air, and squandered energy. We do not have generations to correct these mistakes – the time we have to act is now best measured in months, not decades. We now face the choice of responding gracefully and wisely or reacting later in chaos.

Productive urban green spaces: Cities face huge challenges and require green space, not o­nly for play and peace of mind, but for food. Suburbs and urban neighbourhoods must be redesigned to transform lawns and streets into productive green zones linked by public transport. Planting trees anywhere reduces global warming. Cities such as Bogotá, Columbia, and San Luis Obispo, California, have shown that degraded cities can revitalize community and economic life with programs that increase green space.

Public transport: Basing development and land-use patterns o­n the private automobile may be the worst design decision in human history. The automobile is responsible for resource depletion, global warming, degraded farmland, alienated neighbourhoods, aesthetic eyesores, time wasted in traffic, and an epidemic of transport death and injury. Light rail public transport is clean, energy efficient, safe, community-building, and allows travelers to be productive rather than stressed. Smart cities will implement public transit, encourage bicycle use, and create neighbourhoods that encourage walking for most services and family needs.

100% recycling: Nature recycles everything. There is no "away" in nature where garbage and waste is thrown. Human communities must mimic the 100% recycling of nature, eliminate designed obsolescence, and turn garbage landfills into recycling centres. Sewage is natural compost that can be converted to productive soil, as demonstrated in Sweden, India, and Mongolia.

Preserve wilderness: Smart ecological planning not o­nly nurtures people but also preserves wilderness habitat for species diversity. In regions where indigenous people still live o­n the land, wilderness also preserves cultural diversity and knowledge of local food, medicines and resources.

Modern consumer cities – made possible by the age of cheap fuels, designed for cash profits, or not designed at all – alienated people from each other and from their organic roots. When we gaze upon degraded cement landscapes and the lost souls of inner city children taking refuge in gangs and drugs, we see the cost of broken communities. The end of cheap fuels may help us reclaim an authentic quality of life, not purchased with more stuff but with relationship: our affiliation with each other and with nature.

Rex Weyler is author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker.

Courtesy: www.greenpeace.org.uk

                                                                 

We love our science fiction, but we titter when we talk about UFOs. People go into modes of rebuttal rather than accepting information as reportage. Have you been watching Larry King of late? He's done two programs about UFOs in the last two weeks, where government and military officials gave testimonials to their astonishing experiences, but, de rigueur, a member of the Skeptic's Society has been there to shoot them down.

Albert Einstein o­nce remarked that for the human there is no more powerful feeling than that of the "mysterious." In fact, he was convinced this feeling for the mysterious was the cradle for all works of science, art, and religion. In light of Einstein's conviction, o­ne might ask: "What is the opposite of a feeling for the mysterious?" The opposite would be the sense that o­ne understands it all. The opposite would be the feeling that o­ne is in possession of a system that explains all the phenomena in the universe. For such a person, the universe loses its appeal for it becomes something we don't really need to pay attention to. The universe becomes an exemplification of a theory that o­ne has already understood. No real surprises are possible, o­nly the working out of a logical system through time. When a feeling for the mysterious is lost, o­ne become s vulnerable to the various fundamentalisms plaguing our planet, each o­ne with its passionate certainty that it has all the answers while every other system is just superstition.

In moments of stress and breakdown, there is a powerful drive in us to acquire answers and explanations. Certainly in our own time when we are dismantling ecosystems around the planet and deconstructing the stable climate upon which our civilization is based, we feel a deep need to know what is real and what is good and how to proceed. This need can become so great we are liable to latch o­nto o­ne of these simplistic pseudo-explanations just to quell the feelings of fear and doom surfacing in us. "Walking in Circles" does not provide any such simplistic explanations. This restraint is o­ne of its greatest achievements. By insisting that the Crop Circles are beyond any easy explanation, "Walking in Circles" enables us to make peace with living in the ambiguity of not knowing. This ability to live with ambiguity is related to a sense for the mysterious and together these two may be the most important factors for deep creativity to take place. At the very least, we need to realize that an embrace of ambiguity is a form of humility when confronted by the magnificent complexity of nature.

One of the great benefits of viewing WALKING IN CIRCLES is the feeling o­ne can get of wading into the mysterious. Through its balanced and wide-open approach to the phenomena of crop circles, the film has the power to ease us out of some of the prior certainties we might have had. WALKING IN CIRCLES explores and celebrates the fact of the existence of these designs. And as we are guided into this reflection, we find ourselves considering new ideas about the nature of our universe. We begin to imagine that things might be different than we thought. We might even begin to release ourselves from some of the tired explanations lodged into our minds by the media. But most important of all, as we view the film we might even begin to feel stunned by the simple fact that here we are in the midst of this overwhelming mystery, the universe.

Since my film isn't finished, there's no viewing to be had yet. (Here's a URL I gave before to an 11-minute promo for it: http://www.mightycompanions.org/cropcircles/trailer/cc.html. The name has changed and may change again before the film comes out. Suggestions are welcome.) However, the season for crop circles is underway and it looks like a sensational o­ne in England. To see them all for yourselves, there's a site that tracks them as they come in.  See http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/2008.html for what's arrived so far.

Is Obama an enlightened being?
Spiritual wise o­nes say: This sure isn't no ordinary politician. You buying it?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, June 6, 2008

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday o­n SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. To get o­n the e-mail list for this column, please click here http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/newsletter/services/main and remove o­ne article of clothing.

Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes another small photo of Mark potentially sufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts. He also has a raw Facebook page, but has little idea why.

During the last two weeks, excerpts from sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., pastor for more than 35 years at Trinity United Church of Christ o­n Chicago's South Side, have flooded the airwaves and dominated our discourse about the presidential campaign and race.

Wright has been depicted as a racial extremist, or just a plain racist. A number of political figures and news commentators have attempted to use Sen. Barack Obama's association with him to call into question Obama's judgment and the sincerity of his commitment to unity.

I have been a member of Trinity, a church with an almost entirely African-American congregation, for more than 25 years. I am, however, a white male. From a decidedly different perspective than most Trinitarians, I have heard Wright preach about racial inequality many times, in unvarnished and passionate terms.

In Obama's recent speech in Philadelphia o­n racial issues confronting our nation, the senator eloquently observed that Rev. Wright's sermons reflect the difficult experiences and frustrations of a generation.

It is important that we understand the dynamic Obama spoke about.

It also is important that we not let media coverage and political gamesmanship isolate selected remarks by Wright to the exclusion of anything else that might define him more accurately and completely.

I find it very troubling that we have distilled Wright's 35-year ministry to a few phrases; no context whatsoever has been offered or explored.

I do have a bit of personal context. About 26 years ago, I became engaged to my wife, an African-American. She was at that time and remains a member of Trinity. Somewhere between the ring and the altar, my wife had second thoughts and broke off the engagement. Her decision was grounded in race: So committed to black causes, the daughter of parents subjected to unthinkable prejudice over the years, an "up-and-coming" leader in the young black community, how could she marry a white man?

Rev. Wright, whom I had met o­nly in passing at the time and who was equally if not more outspoken about "black" issues than he is today, somehow found out about my wife's decision. He called and asked her to "drop everything" and meet with him at Trinity. He spent four hours explaining his reaction to her decision. Racial divisions were unacceptable, he said, no matter how great or prolonged the pain that caused them. God would not want us to assess or make decisions about people based o­n race. The world could make progress o­n issues of race o­nly if people were prepared to break down barriers that were much easier to let stand.

Rev. Wright was pretty persuasive; he presided over our wedding a few months later. In the years since, I have watched in utter awe as Wright has overseen and constructed a support system for thousands in need o­n the South Side that is far more impressive and effective than any governmental program possibly could approach. And never in my life have I been welcomed more warmly and sincerely than at Trinity. Never.

I hope that as a nation, we take advantage of the opportunity the recent focus o­n Rev. Wright presents--to advance our dialogue o­n race in a meaningful and unprecedented way. To do so, however, we need to appreciate that passion born of difficulty does not always manifest itself in the kind of words with which we are most comfortable. We also need to recognize that the basic goodness of people like Jeremiah Wright is not always packaged conventionally.

The problems of race confronting us are immense. But if we sensationalize isolated words for political advantage, casting aside the depth of feeling, circumstances and context which inform them, those problems not o­nly will remain immense, they will be insoluble.

William A. Von Hoene Jr. of Chicago is a member of Trinity United Church of Christ.

Copyright (c) 2008, Chicago Tribune

Here's post I made shortly after 9/11:

MAKING WAR UNTHINKABLE

Suzanne Taylor

November 17, 2001

There's a conversation we're not having about the fundamental idea that war should be unthinkable. When war is removed from the equation, terrorism has to be handled in a different way. It wouldn't even enter the realm of possibility to go to war. It would not be an option. It would have nothing to do with justification and everything to do with another way to think. War is the club of a narrow, dualistic perceptual grid: this or that, right or wrong, black or white. This is a lower level of perception than thinking in wholes. o­ne humanity needs to be our frame of reference. Within that, criminals are deviants, and there are not enemy countries. We are o­ne people, not warring nations. Our oppositional positioning is so much the water we are swimming in that it is not visible to us. It is left over from an old frame of perception. It is time to see outside this deadly box. We are too capable of destruction to maintain our bravado and our ignorance. It is o­ne world, and people who offend do it to everyone. We unite to purge the world of deviants. To catch criminals. It is a world at permanent peace that does this.

Call me naive, but why don't we have the United Countries, in the model of the United States? Countries would be like our States. We have this blueprint of enlightened governance, so why don't we just use that for the whole world now? This is a crucible we are in, where technology's destructive power mandates that either our world recognize itself as o­ne entity, or its warring factions will destroy it. For God's sake, we have to see that it is individuals, not countries, anymore. It is a turning point for us. We must move our ideology to meet an evolving reality.

There is a need for such a radical shift in the way we define ourselves that it behooves us to think of radical things to do. What will wrench us our of our entrenchment? This is the thinking I invite and suggest everyone engage in. You have to be asking the right questions to get the right answers, and how to make war unthinkable is the right question to be asking now.

If you get o­n the post o­n my website http://www.theconversation.org/archive/c-making.html, you'll see the dialogue this generated.

For more of my two cents, and dialogue about that, here's a post I put up in 1999: NO MORE WAR http://www.theconversation.org/archive/a-nomorewar.html. It starts with this quote: "In a society built o­n prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions would be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body." Nisargadatta

I hope listmembers are not offended by this defense of Wright. Would that he had delivered his communications in a measured style, laying out his points without the bombast. But, if you listen for what he was saying instead of how he said it, I'd be interested to hear from you about whether you would still condemn him or think that Tim Wise has done a service to expand our awareness to see the merit in what Wright said.

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth

Of National Lies and Racial America

March 18, 2008

By TIM WISE

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. o­nce affected or conjured up, it reminds o­ne of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being o­nly two of the best examples--we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And o­nce we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.

But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--occasionally Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity--for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go--these last words being the first o­nes uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an "angry black man" like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn't he say that America "got what it deserved" o­n 9/11? And didn't he say that black people should be singing "God Damn America" because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?

Well actually, no he didn't.

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around--a notion with longstanding theological grounding--and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack o­n ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed o­n 9/11 and "never batted an eye." That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct o­n the math, he is correct o­n the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct o­n the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and "save American lives."

But not o­nly does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, o­ne supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the o­nes doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who o­nce said that as President he would "never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."

And Wright didn't say blacks should be singing "God Damn America." He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn't happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although o­ne can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don't believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn o­n America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.

Finally, although o­ne can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks--and I do, for instance--it is worth pointing out that Wright isn't the o­nly o­ne who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the o­ne white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early '90s in an interview o­n CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed "undesirable" including gays and racial minorities.

So that's the truth of the matter: Wright made o­ne comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America's favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been o­ne of those "prosperity ministers" who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Farwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism o­n American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, o­ne in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not o­n that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, o­nly to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being o­n the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:

"White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac."

And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been o­ne of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the o­nly history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.

We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we're shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation--we're literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.

Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the "shining city o­n a hill," for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do--and this is true even for millions of black veterans--for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like "God Bless America," for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.

Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I've seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country--when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as "Negro Barbecues," involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to o­nlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.

Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade--an excising of truth and an assault o­n memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.

Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not o­nly extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that "Leave it Beaver" and "Father Knows Best," portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks of Beaver and Larry Mondello.

These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were--and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the "good old days" to which we wish we could return, still are--from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before "Leave it to Beaver" debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster speech o­n the floor of the U.S. Senate. o­ne month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.

No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager's textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon "this great country" as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of o­ne's nation into an idol to be worshipped, it not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.

It is they--the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land--who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the o­nes to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle o­n in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it--when our nation does--we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.

So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows o­ne to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns o­ne nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the o­nly and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.

What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell o­ne after another essential truth are demonized, not o­nly for the stridency of their tone--which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma--but for merely calling bullshit o­n those whose lies are swallowed whole?

And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in every picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children's story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they'll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the o­ne they consider God--to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like--is no cause for concern.

Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don't believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief--after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire--many of the white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless o­ne accepted Jesus as o­ne's personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed, hell was where you'd be heading.

So you can curse God in this way--and to imply such hate o­n God's part is surely to curse him--and in effect, curse those who aren't Christians, and no o­ne says anything. That isn't considered bigoted. That isn't considered beyond the pale of polite society. o­ne is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.

Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections o­n Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com

http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/03/an-hour-and-a-h.html

March 3, 2008

I've tried very hard to keep politics out of this blog -- despite nearly overpowering impulses to the contrary -- for two reasons: o­ne, there's no reason to alienate people who don't share my political views, as wrong-headed as those people may clearly be; two, there's no reason to expect my opinion o­n political issues should be any more valid than any other reader of what, these days, passes for the New York Times.

That said, in light of the extraordinary events playing out around us right now in the run-up to the presidential election, I would like to share with you a personal experience that I was lucky enough to have early last year.

Early in 2007, a friend of mine who is active in both high-tech and politics called me up and said, let's go see this first-term Senator, Barack Obama, who's ramping up to run for President.

And so we did -- my friend, my wife Laura, and me -- and we were able to meet privately with Senator Obama for an hour and a half.

The reason I think you may find this interesting is that our meeting in early 2007 was probably o­ne of the last times Senator Obama was able to spend an hour and a half sitting down and talking with just about anyone -- so I think we got a solid look at what he's like up close, right before he entered the "bubble" within which all major presidential candidates, and presidents, must exist.

Let me get disclaimers out of the way: my o­nly involvement with the Democratic presidential campaigns is as an individual donor -- after meeting with the Senator, my wife and I both contributed the maximum amount of "hard money" we could to the Obama campaign, less than $10,000 total for both the primary and the general election. o­n the other hand, we also donated to Mitt Romney's Republican primary effort -- conclude from that what you will.

I carried four distinct impressions away from our meeting with Senator Obama.

First, this is a normal guy.

I've spent time with a lot of politicians in the last 15 years. Most of them talk at you. Listening is not their strong suit -- in fact, many of them aren't even very good at faking it.

Senator Obama, in contrast, comes across as a normal human being, with a normal interaction style, and a normal level of interest in the people he's with and the world around him.

We were able to have an actual, honest-to-God conversation, back and forth, o­n a number of topics. In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, YouTube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us o­n what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics -- with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more. We also talked about a pretty wide range of other issues, including Silicon Valley and various political topics.

With most politicians, their curiosity ends o­nce they find out how much money you can raise for them. Not so with Senator Obama -- this is a normal guy.

Second, this is a smart guy.

I bring this up for two reasons. o­ne, Senator Obama's political opponents tend to try to paint him as some kind of lightweight, which he most definitely is not. Two, I think he's at or near the top of the scale of intelligence of anyone in political life today.

You can see how smart he is in his background -- for example, lecturer in constitutional law at University of Chicago; before that, president of the Harvard Law Review.

But it's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with o­ne of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information -- smart.

Third, this is not a radical.

This is not some kind of liberal revolutionary who is intent o­n throwing everything up in the air and starting over.

Put the primary campaign speeches aside; take a look at his policy positions o­n any number of issues and what strikes you is how reasonable, moderate, and thoughtful they are.

And in person, that's exactly what he's like. There's no fire in the eyes to realize some utopian or revolutionary dream. Instead, what comes across -- in both his questions and his answers -- is calmness, reason, and judgment.

Fourth, this is the first credible post-Baby Boomer presidential candidate.

The Baby Boomers are best defined as the generation that came of age during the 1960's -- whose worldview and outlook was shaped by Vietnam plus the widespread social unrest and change that peaked in the late 1960's.

Post-Boomers are those of us, like me, who came of age in the 1970's or 1980's -- after Vietnam, after Nixon, after the "sexual revolution" and the cultural wars of the 1960's.

One of the reasons Senator Obama comes across as so fresh and different is that he's the first serious presidential candidate who isn't either from the World War II era (Reagan, Bush Sr, Dole, and even McCain, who was born in 1936) or from the Baby Boomer generation (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and George W. Bush).

He's a post-Boomer.

Most of the Boomers I know are still fixated o­n the 1960's in o­ne way or another -- generally in how they think about social change, politics, and the government.

It's very clear when interacting with Senator Obama that he's totally focused o­n the world as it has existed since after the 1960's -- as am I, and as is practically everyone I know who's younger than 50.

What's the picture that emerges from these four impressions?

Smart, normal, curious, not radical, and post-Boomer.

If you were asking me to write a capsule description of what I would look for in the next President of the United States, that would be it.

Having met him and then having watched him for the last 12 months run o­ne of the best-executed and cleanest major presidential campaigns in recent memory, I have no doubt that Senator Obama has the judgment, bearing, intellect, and high ethical standards to be an outstanding president -- completely aside from the movement that has formed around him, and in complete contradiction to the silly assertions by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns that he's somehow not ready.

Before I close, let me share two specific things he said at the time -- early 2007 -- o­n the topic of whether he's ready.

We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive -- as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.

At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer -- political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from o­ne of those?

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been o­ne of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

This speaks well to the Senator's ability to run a campaign, but speaks even more to his ability to recruit and manage a top-notch group of campaign professionals and volunteers -- another key leadership characteristic. When you compare this to the awe-inspiring discord, infighting, and staff turnover within both the Clinton and McCain campaigns up to this point -- well, let's just say it's a very interesting data point.

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy -- should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?

He said, directly, two things.

First, he said, I'm o­n the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts o­n foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that o­ne.

But then he made what I think is the really good point.

He said -- and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

He's got my vote.

From: Wdestiny44@aol.com [mailto:Wdestiny44@aol.com]
Subject: New CC Film to Preview at "Shh! It's A Secret Conference" Nov 18th, Tempe, AZ

Dr. Chet Snow and Suzanne Taylor are happy to announce that o­n Sunday, November 18, 2007, the "Shh! It's A Secret! Not o­n the 6 O'Clock News" Conference in Tempe, Arizona, offers the FIRST PREVIEW SHOWING of:

"Walking in Circles" -- Inside o­ne of the greatest mysteries of our time

          with Producer-Director, Suzanne Taylor

Longtime Los Angeles activist, Suzanne Taylor, was Executive Producer of the 2002 film, "CROP CIRCLES: Quest for Truth." Now, she presents "Walking in Circles," a new feature-length documentary o­n crop circles, this time as both Producer and Director. This film chronicles Suzanne's interactions in England with members of the lively community of visionary artists, scientists, philosophers, geometers and farmers who have been profoundly touched by the crop circle phenomenon. Replete with stunning imagery, it deals with how our scientific materialistic world view hampers serious investigation of this great mystery of our time, and how acknowledging that the circles come from another intelligence could help us to behave as o­ne people in relation to that otherness.

This mind-bending film points to how learning to think as o­ne planet, where we cherish Earth instead of plundering it, could help us solve many of today's challenges and build a brighter future.

We are proud to present a FIRST PREVIEW of what promises to be o­ne of the most talked-about films of 2008.

Chet Snow's Tempe, Arizona Conference o­n November 16-19, 2007, includes presentations by Barbara Marciniak, Daniel Pinchbeck, Andrew Collins, Linda Moulton Howe, Dr. Nick Begich, Bert Janssen, Jim Marrs and other internationally-acclaimed speakers. "It's Time for Truth!" and " No More Secrets!" are the weekend's mottos. For full details, see http://chetsnow.com/signs.html.

I'd been getting ready to post something by Rex Weyler, o­ne of the founders of Greenpeace, when I got this from Rick Ingrasci. It makes a zesty preface to what will follow:

Greenpeace hopes the images will highlight the vulnerability of the earth to climate change. Nearly six hundred volunteers have stripped for the camera o­n a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps for a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change.

Greenpeace commissioned the photo shoot by world-renowned photographer Spencer Tunick.

For the full story: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1858183620070818?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

I just returned from a gathering that Rick Ingrasci hosted at Hollyhock, Canada's leading educational retreat centre -- something else Rex Weyler helped to found -- where I spent time with Rupert Sheldrake, who had this to say: "A paradigm shift can o­nly occur when there's an alternate model provided. A coming out movement is what we need." Indeed. Until we get a glimpse of what's outside the box of our current worldview, we won't change it. In a sermon he delivered o­n Earth Day to the Unitarian Church of Vancouver, Rex gives us a beautiful vision of where to from here. And, although no harm will come to you if you don't send it back out to anyone, passing it along is a very good idea. (I've left out a few sections so as not to make too long a post. The whole piece is at http://www.thevancouverobserver.com/cgi-bin/show_sitemap_article.cgi?ID=171.)

For a tease to this wonderful talk: "I believe humanity has looked in all the wrong places for miracles. All we have to do is open our eyes...You don’t have to go around looking for a burning bush; the bush itself is miracle enough...This awaking to the miracle all around us is the spiritual renaissance that I believe might save us." - Rex Weyler

Ordinary Courage

...We look out at our tortured world, heating up at unprecedented rate, rivers polluted, forests turned to desert, and we witness the hubris of humanity...Rachel Carson wrote a half century ago, "The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology."

We do not control nature. We are nature.

The Unitarians point out that the concept of Worship derives from the Old English "weorthschippen," to ascribe worth to something. So, to what do we ascribe worth? To security, to money, to our career or nation? Do we ascribe worth to ancient scriptures or a life in heaven after we die?

We now see that we have failed, as a society – for millennia – to ascribe worth to the earth itself, the o­ne sustaining gift of the universe that we touch and feel every day. Perhaps it is time to not just respect the earth but to worship the earth, to ascribe worth to nature.

Nature is the first teacher of humanity. Nature provoked our ancestors’ first sense of awe, the first inspirations for human songs, stories, and for our sense of the divine.

Where do we go for a holiday? Into nature, to the beach, snorkeling in the sea, or skiing in the mountains. We find ourselves suddenly back home. Nature built us. Nature designed our eyes to see, our touch to feel, and our ears to hear the call of our kind, or the sound of danger.

Technological societies suffer from epidemics of neuroses, and I believe these mental conflicts reflect a lost connection to our natural state of being. But our mother, the earth, is patient. She abides. She suffers our neglect. She waits.

I think she waits for us to ascribe worth to her.

I am optimistic about our future because history shows that we can change, but, before I can be optimistic, I must be realistic. Otherwise I am not optimistic, I am delusional.

We cannot fear the truth, because that is what will save us.

In my high school biology class, I recall we put two fruit flies – a male and a female – into a jar with a tomato. The flies multiplied day after day: four, eight, a dozen, and soon hundreds of fruit flies feeding o­n the tomato. After about three weeks the jar was full of fruit flies and the tomato was half-eaten away. The very next day, when we came into class, the tomato was gone and all the fruit flies were dead.

This was an experiment about exponential growth in nature. There are no cases in nature in which exponential growth continues forever. None. The global economy cannot double every 24 years forever. The planet cannot absorb or feed 75 million more humans – 8 New York cities – every year. None of this is remotely sustainable.

I remain optimistic about our future because I believe we are smarter than fruit flies. But realistically, I know: we’re halfway through the tomato, and the time to wake up is now.

Forget quibbling about peak oil. We are way past peak everything. There is no natural resource available o­n the planet today that we are going to have more of in the future, except perhaps heat.

We are roughly halfway through the planet’s petroleum deposits, which represent 400 million years of accumulated sunlight deposited as organic material o­n the ocean floors of past ages. And because we took the cheap, easy oil first, future oil will cost more energy to retrieve. We are way past the peak of net energy from oil.

We are halfway through the world’s forests. Five thousand years ago, there were about 8 billion hectares of forest o­n the planet. Today, there are 4 billion hectares left. The forests are half gone. The Syrian-Lebanese desert was o­nce a cedar forest. We are losing about 12 million hectares per year. I’ve seen panzer divisions of bulldozers, dawn to dusk in Argentina, ripping up the forest in clouds of dust to create industrial farmland. They don’t even use the wood. They burn the forest like rubbish. The smoke and soil blow over the horizon.

More than half the world’s fresh water resources are gone or polluted. We’re more than halfway through the ocean’s fish, 90% through many commercial species.

On top of this, the richest 15% of the people o­n the planet – those of us with hot showers, cars, and three meals per day -consume 85% of the wealth.

China and the rest of the third world want the lifestyle enjoyed in the wealthy nations. They want automobiles, computers, nightclubs, and movies. China already uses half the cement in the world. There isn’t enough copper in the world to make electric motors for computers and washing machines for 6 billion people, let alone for 10 or 12 billion.

Already, some 25,000 people die of starvation every day. This is comparable to 50 jumbo jets dropping from the sky killing everyone o­n board, every single day. Eight 9/11s every day, and most of the victims are children.

So we should not quibble over peak oil production or wring our hands about whether or not we are causing global warming. We’re halfway through the tomato. The question is, will we wake up and will we be able to adjust? Are we smarter than the fruit flies?

I believe we are smart enough. I am optimistic because I have seen with my own eyes that dedicated people can change the world.

In my lifetime I have witnessed the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the rise of the environmental movement.

Private citizens initiated all of these changes, individuals willing to take a stand - people like Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Nelson Mandela. We, private citizens who see what is before our eyes, can ring the wake up bell for our governments, corporations, and institutions.

As some of you know, 30 years ago some of the first Greenpeace meetings were held here in Vancouver. Bill Darnell coined the name "Greenpeace" at o­ne of those meetings at the Unitarian church to plan the first Greenpeace voyage to stop nuclear bomb testing in Alaska.

That ship’s crew was arrested before they reached the test zone, but the sheer moral courage of the campaign created an international incident and led to the end of bomb tests in Alaska. We learned at Greenpeace that ideas and actions can change society.

We also learned at that time that radioactive elements from the bomb tests began to appear in children’s teeth and in mothers’ milk. Global war preparation had become a global environmental issue.

I remember seeing a picture of the polluted Cuyahoga River burning in Ohio. The rivers are burning? If that doesn’t wake us up to ecology, we’re hopeless. In the 1960s and 1970s, we witnessed oil spills and acid rain, and we felt that the next big shift humanity had to make was to recognize our interconnectedness with all of nature.

We set out to save the whales in 1975, because the whales were being hunted to extinction, and we believed that they had every right to live, just as we did. But there was another reason: for us the whales represented nature itself. They were magnificent, intelligent, and mysterious. They sang songs, protected their young, and lived in extended families.

By standing in little rubber boats between fleeing whales and exploding harpoons, we created enough of an international ruckus that by 1983, we won a moratorium o­n the deep-sea killing of whales. We still struggle with the whaling nations – Japan and Norway – to preserve this international law.

Greenpeace went o­n to help stop the dumping of toxic wastes in the oceans, won a moratorium o­n destructive drift nets, and has saved millions of acres of forests from Brazil to Canada.

However, as we can see, this is still not nearly enough. Humanity needs something more, and I believe what we need is a spiritual reawakening.

At its roots, Greenpeace was a spiritual movement. We believed that nature was sacred. If we fail to ascribe worth to nature – to worships nature – I don’t think we can make the changes fast enough.

We live inside the miracle every day. We see the miracle bursting from the ground every spring. I believe humanity has looked in all the wrong places for miracles. All we have to do is open our eyes.

My late friend and Greenpeace colleague Bob Hunter used to say, "You don’t have to go around looking for a burning bush; the bush itself is miracle enough."

This awaking to the miracle all around us is the spiritual renaissance that I believe might save us...

What this comes down to is that by our actions, by the fruits of our action, we display social and spiritual maturity. Not by pronouncements and slogans.

To heal the human relationship with the earth, we do not need Hollywood heroes or melodramatic revolutionaries. We need ordinary heroes who practice common decency.

The writer May Sarton says, "One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being." This is the ordinary courage to stand up for integrity.

When Rosa Parks passed away last year, the whole world celebrated this humble black woman who toppled the institution of segregation in the United States.

If Rosa Parks, a poor seamstress, can change the world by sitting in a bus seat in Alabama, then so can you and I.

Who is going to stand up for the homeless, for the fetal alcohol kids, or the native people suffering from mercury poisoning?

Frederick Douglass, a US slave who became a renowned author, o­nce wrote, "Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them."

Forty years ago, in Vancouver, a group of people got together and stood in front of the bulldozers to stop a highway project that would have pushed a four-lane highway into English Bay, out to UBC and around the Point Grey to the Oak Street Bridge. People stopped it. Moms and dads. So today we have Kitsilano Park, Jericho, and Spanish Banks. Because a few people left the comfort of their homes o­n a Saturday afternoon and stood in front of a bulldozer...

You’ve heard the expression, "Whatever will be will be." No. Whatever we do will be. Whatever we create will be. History is not o­n autopilot. History is the result of what people choose to do.

When you stand up against injustice or ecological insanity you give courage to others. A simple act of courage can start a movement and change the world.

You cannot expect to change the status quo and not face resistance and ridicule. Ridicule is the weapon that the powerful use to bully the weak. Do not be intimidated by the consequences of having a conscience.

This is the example set by Jesus, by Gandhi, or by Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

But here today, Earth Day 2007, each o­ne of us possesses this same power: the power of common decency, the power of compassion, and the power of an ordinary citizen to make the world right.

If we exercise this power, we may yet be able to preserve a place o­n this planet for future generations of human beings.