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Two recent articles from the Grist blog:
Article the first: an essay by Mike Tidwell entitled “Forget the light bulbs: Part II “, which draws a comparison between the current environmental crises and the civil rights movement, in terms of the value of both voluntary personal change and radical and wide sweeping changes in legislation.
The problem is we’ve somehow forgotten how it’s done. Martin Luther King famously and repeatedly asked, “Why should we wait one more day for our freedom? Why?” King resisted public pleas to go slow; to let voluntary measures work; to understand that some people just can’t change very quickly. No, King said, America must have a new set of laws that address the great moral urgency of now!So why — with Arctic ice vanishing, and hurricanes getting bigger, and sea levels rising — why are we still politely urging Americans to change a few light bulbs and voluntarily spend a little more for a hybrid car? What breakdown in ethical thinking prevents us from insisting that all serious conversations on this topic focus on demanding governmental standards that allow only 50 mpg cars into the marketplace? In other words, given the great ecological, economic, and moral implications of global warming, why should we wait one more day for clean, efficient energy? Why? (More…)
The second article is a comparative piece by Jon Rynn entitled “Is this an emergency?”. In it he compares the massive and ultimately essential actions undertaken by the US Federal government upon our entrance in to World War 2, and the large scale changes that must be enacted to save some vestige of the natural environment.
Can you imagine a U.S. president summoning the car companies into the Oval Office, forging an agreement to stop making automobiles for five years, and instead convincing them to pump out high-speed rail, light rail, trolley rail, and buses? Can you imagine construction companies agreeing to not put up any more single-family houses, but instead putting up Platinum LEED near-zero-emissions apartment buildings and commercial buildings, each with geothermal exchange systems for heating and cooling and solar roofs for electricity? What if road construction companies agreed not to pave any more space, and instead built the rails for the new rail systems? And what if the coal companies and nuclear energy companies agreed to work with GE and others to put up only wind power and solar thermal farms? What about ADM and ConAgra agreeing to help the agricultural sector eliminate the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and factory farming? (More…)