This year on August 19th, 2014, Earth’s Annual Resource Allotment Runs Out Today. For anyone who took Home Economics, you know that can;t be good.
\”Like maxing out a credit card, Earth has spent its allocation of resources for the year as of today, according to international sustainability think tank Global Footprint Network.\” (read more here.)
If my family has fallen into debt, the first thing to do is cut up the credit cards, and stop digging. Let\’s do what we teach our children to do. Set a budget that doesn\’t allow the hole to get bigger, and saves enough to start paying off the huge debt that piled up.
Just imagine if we each lived within our means, taking only what we need, how amazing the world would be, so different from today. We see a pale shadow of the vital, lush, and thriving organism capable of sustaining infinite diversity, vibrating with life, diminished and compromised, as we launch the 6th Extinction. Around the world, clever humans have managed to consume more than locusts or pine beetles ever could, and leave behind us poisons that won\’t be cleaned up by anyone. From pole to pole we fight over every inch of sea and land and what lies buried under it. We frack, clear-cut, mine, drill, ship and spill. We remove mountains and fill lakes with whatever leftover toxic sludge we can\’t sell.
Every thing we take, from today until December 31, takes more than the planet can put back.
How will our children live with what is left for them a few short years from now? We evolved to a point where we make machines that do more damage than they can live with. When will we evolve to belong again to the place we live? Can we care for our home and our children as much as we care for our machines and our money?
If we each choose to live within our means (not what we can afford to buy with paper money, but what we can afford to take from the earth and truly replace) we will find our new moral compass. One that shows each of us how to live, not placing one above another. Our conscience, our understanding of what is good for our place, our children, and our self compels us to give up polluting, hoarding, destroying and wasting the very things that sustain us, water, air, and land.
Long after we are gone, water air and land will remain. But what sort of land? How will the water taste? And the air, will it smell sweet and cool? What will we leave for our children?
I want to leave this place better than I found it. At no time in history has that been more important for survival. And I get up every day ready to take action, so that I consume less and produce more good.
Want to make a difference, but don\’t know how? Giant steps matter. Be bold.
- Stop driving flying and boating with gas for fun.
- Grow and Eat local food. Share your garden.
- Stop buying stuff you don\’t need. Give away what you don\’t use.
- Work less. You\’ll make less, enjoy more, and stop wasting important time.
- Heat and cool your house with renewable energy, no oil coal and gas.
- Insulate and conserve energy.
- Unplug to connect with the world. That means now.
- Influence your friends, neighbors, and leaders who need to know what you are feeling and doing.