Friends, if you care about the Earth – or even if you don't
care one bit for this beautiful Earth, but you do care about yourself – you’d
do well to read this article by Bill McKibben. In it he explains
It probably means taking a tea-break to read this, because there’s five
pages of it.
I’ve read it all through, carefully.
It confirms what I concluded a while ago – that commercial
and political interest will destroy this Earth, and the spreading slime-mould
of Mammon will choke the life out of us – unless we, the people, personally and
individually change.
We have to stop. We
have to make a change. We have to learn
to live simply, buy locally, give up jetting around the world in aeroplanes
just to sit in the sun there instead of here or admire the architecture in a
foreign city. We have to return to an
altogether more primitive lifestyle. We
have to learn to be – can you believe this? – unselfish.
There is no-one else to do it, no-one to blame and no-one to
help. It’s us or nobody; our choices,
our path, our call.
As Stephen Gaskin said:
You are this season’s people.
There are no other people this season.
If you blow it, it’s blown.
The future is simple, vegan, local, and wind/solar-powered. There is no other future. The road we’re on runs out into a quicksand.
The only hope left to us is if we, the people, are willing
individually and personally to accept the sacrifice of change, and encourage
each other by travelling together for the sake of hope and life.
I know how weak-willed I am, how lacking in determination, how self-indulgent and undisciplined. I know that by myself I cannot walk the way of life - I've tried for so long and have a string of failure extending behind me trailing back decades.
You my friends, and most of all, you my family - we really need to do this now. To give up the fuel-guzzling, water-wasting, packaging-hungry, unnecessarily international habits into which we've slid, and do this seriously now. Please will you walk with me.
And whoever will or will not, I ask you God my Father, for the sake of all that you blessed and called good, please will you give me the grace to take this path anyway, for the love of the green and growing things, and the miracle of life that you made.
If we don't do this, by the time the Wretched Wretch leaves college, there'll be nothing left to look at but a war in a dust-bowl.
Please.
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Went with the display board I posted as yesterday's item given away.
Hello Pen: I continue to miss you on FB and sometimes run across websites and articles I think you might find useful or interesting, like this one : ) Blessings and Peace to you, Michelle
ReplyDeletehttp://www.becomingminimalist.com/you-are-more-than-enough/
Thank you for directing me to this article. Bill McKibben is brilliant. I was first exposed to him in college and was taken quite instantly with both his content and style.
ReplyDeleteHi friends - lovely to hear from you xx
ReplyDeleteLoved that article, Michelle - helpful, inspiring, and not too difficult.
Beth - he is an extraordinary man; and inspiration and an example. So glad he's there doing all the complicated activist stuff that I can't get my head round.
Pen, I know that you continue to think about the best way to eat in these times, so I hope you don't mind me recommending Meat, a benign extravagance by Simon Fairlie for an alternative view.
ReplyDeleteZillah, I've just gone across to Amazon to read the reviews etc of this book - it looks really good! I think I'll get a copy, because by all accounts he knows his stuff and has a very balanced view. Having thought long and hard about this, I am not against eating dairy or meat of itself, just the farming practices that use up too much resources of land, grain and water, and also the husbandry that is unkind or disrespectful to the animals. It's quite hard to be sure of avoiding those pitfalls, though I know it can be done.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a teenager, we kept our own hens - free-range in the fullest, free-est sense, and raised orphan lambs for meat in our pastures. The animals were happy and loved, and killed humanely and with sorrow. They had a short life, but would have died in the wild, as orphans. And herbivores living always looking over their shoulder, running from the wolf or the lion, surely don't have a better life than domestic creatures husbanded gently.
But for those of us (like our family) on a very limited budget, the vegan option is the realistically affordable sustainable ethical one (I think).
Anyway, I'll check this book out - thanks for the recommendation! x
Gosh - just looked at prices - I think that book is more than I can afford right now!
ReplyDeleteI'll remember it though - I wonder if they have it at the library?
Parts of my life are voluntary ascetic.
ReplyDeleteI like to live honorable and dignigied.
I do not eat any meat at all but I am vegan when I fast.Plain meals
bread and fruit most of the time.
My loved ones live on the other side of the world,yes I use the aeroplane to see them.
Part of my acetic life is not to heat home all the time or use AC( i do not have one)
I wash my self with cold water,beacause i like to be ascetic
it is a part of my religion,to donate 10% of my income to the ones that are poor i hope to do for the rest of my life.
Living plain and simple?
Some people say they do but all the time complain that they are short of money.
I do not think that any animal could be killed humanely.
I like visiting your blog Pen,you know that.
Hi Wimmera - good to see you :0)
ReplyDeleteRe the plane journeys to see loved ones - yes, we here at home were talking about this yesterday. In our house, for example, the Badger works at a worthwhile job for an ethical company. Without its overseas component that company could not survive. This means the Badger has to travel by air two or three times a year. If he didn't do that, he couldn't do his job, and he is not trained for anything else. I accept this, and I can think of examples of journeys where I would go on an aeroplane - and I'd really enjoy it! But I think that with the serious emissions problems we have, people picking out faraway holiday destinations and flying around just to have fun or for a day out seems irresponsible now.
In the same way, back in the 1970s, our family used to go out in the car just for a drive several times a week. We loved the countryside round about us, and enjoyed to drive through the country lanes. But now that has all changed. The English roads are too congested for it to be fun, the cost of fuel is very high, and the carbon emissions make it responsible to use the car only frugally.
Like you, I have got used to washing in cold water - I quite like it now. Our water is heated by solar panels, but it takes so long in our big old house to travel along the pipes to the sink, that we have run all we need into the bowl long before the hot water comes through!
The summer has been too hot.
ReplyDelete:0) Hi friend x
ReplyDelete