Is it all fracked up?

You could change the words in this story very slightly and it would be one I heard far too often in coal country. I learned in the early 90's what is becoming evident to everyone, everywhere, now.

"The DNR," he (Ron Koshoshek, of Wisconsin's Public Intervenor Citizens Advisory Committee) says, "is now a permitting agency for development and exploitation of resources."

Not only "is now", but from what I can tell, maybe always has been. Variations of this story are repeated everyday, across the country and the planet. Global warming or not, we are devastating the planet by closing our eyes to the fact that the system we are in is built on the infinite growth needed to create constant shortages of resources to drive demand, to drive prices, to drive profits. It is unsustainable. We are squandering a whole world's worth of resources in a few short lifetimes, the blink of an eye in planetary time.

I don't have a lot of answers, except to try to live in more sustainable ways, but then we are back to one of the ultimate questions: where is the line between need and greed? Like most Americans, I live in ways that help make this environmental devastation happen and I don't like knowing it. I've had a pass to Disney. I like fireworks. I drive *way* too much.

I try to help keep the balance by planting trees, and doing other service to public lands, as a hobby. I've planted hundreds in my life, in Ohio and throughout Central Florida (join me June 1 & 2 my area), But the older I get, the more acutely aware I become that this doesn't make my indirect participation in the devastation disappear.

I am making slow but sure moves. I'm learning to garden, an art of it's own in Central Florida's sand country. I pay close attention to how much I drive, combining trips at every opportunity. I picked my cars for their mpg's and will drive them until they are worn out. I'm learning about where my food comes from and trying to shop closer to home. I'm trying to buy more from local vendors and less from big boxes. I try to steer onto a path that seems to trend toward a more sustainable, and therefore, to me, better, world, one that cherishes mountains and prairies and oceans and deserts and swamps and artic "wastelands", instead of viewing them as cash cows.

But most days that still doesn't feel like enough. So I try to bear witness. I take the time to filter the massive information stream that comes in through my diverse collection of sources and share it with all of you. Because I know that the first step to change is understanding the need, and that need seems to be becoming desperate. The tensions are rising, here and abroad. But I know sometimes the way is dark, and especially so in the times of greatest transformation. Change is afoot in the system, and we, the people of the Earth, perhaps for only a brief moment, have the ability to communicate across the planet as never before.

Share what you see, and change what you can. *We* are the people we've been waiting for. We are the saints and heroes and champions of our day and we must live our lives remembering that. We must find a path to a better world, or watch our planet be fed into the ever-hungry maw of the unsustainable system we implicitly accept every time we power up from the grid or fuel our cars.