Archive for August, 2008
Beyond Climate Change 101
As with all meaningful change, there is no simple fix for our climate change crisis. There is no pill, band aid, 12-step formula, or “expert’s” advice to heal Earth or its life forms. There is no “clean” nuclear power that will preserve our current luxuries without risking even more environmental disaster, no green product that will redeem generations of overconsumption, no fluorescent light bulb that will reverse the excess of our industrialized systems, no recycling process that can restore forests, no zoo or seed bank that can preserve our world’s biodiversity, no replacement planet we can relocate to. For worse and for better we are stuck here with our mess and our weakness, our solutions and our strength.
Trust Your Kids: Raise Them Cage-Free!
Parents are a jumpy bunch these days. Even before I had my daughter I was troubled by the prevailing attitude among parents that the world has become a place too dangerous to let kids be kids anymore. Popular opinion seems to be that it is now too risky to let children do time-tested things like play outside unsupervised, climb a tree, explore on a bike, or walk to school alone, all things I and my friends enjoyed as kids. Once I became a mother I began to witness first-hand the stifling paranoia among other parents about their kids’ safety and to see the effect it was having on kids.
Planet Earth Hung Out to Dry
Blue Planet Run, a U.S-based foundation that supports clean water access projects worldwide, estimates that these water collectors spend 6 or more hours and walk an average of 6 kilometers a day to get water for their families and communities. Their water-collecting journeys often put them at risk of attack from predatory men and animals and make it difficult or impossible for them to go to school or earn money, perpetuating cycles of illiteracy and poverty.
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