“Why are you placing so much hope on Barack Obama becoming President? It is up to you, and all the other citizens to make changes.”
This is a refrain that comes up a lot, including from some La Marguerite readers.
I say, this is a false debate. The answer is, we need both a competent leader, and responsible citizens. A new President who understands and places sustainability, climate change solutions, and energy independence on top of the national agenda. Citizens who believe in their power to make a difference, in their support of new environmental policies, and in their daily lives. One without the others won’t work, and vice versa. The last few years should be proof enough.
La Marguerite 
Can sustainability and diversity become family values in the heartland of America?
Even though I’m fairly confident Barack’s gonna win, I recognize we U. S. citizens have a great deal of healing to do = we’ve got to mend the wounds that have been created by divisive political operatives (for their own gain with little, if any regard for the public good, they exaggerated differences into divisions and then exploited those divisions via fear and spin) = healing by lifting the veils of ignorance about the actual values we consciously and commonly hold dear as human beings.
Abe Lincoln once said something like ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’, so we’ve got some serious home-renovations to do here in America if we have any chance of experiencing ourselves as United states again.
Here’s a good article I found out about several weeks ago via Thom Hartmann’s radio show. I believe it contains some valuable tips on effective (i. e., consciously reflective) use of language and appreciative (i. e., empathetic) understanding of feelings when exploring and sharing the fuller dimensions of actual social values in mutually beneficial ways:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
Go ‘Bama, Go ‘Bama!!!
Let’s go green, super-seriously and have a whole bundle of fun while we’re at it!!!
Before the party candidate was finally decided someone told me that the difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was inspiration vs. perspiration. His philosophy is to inspire and hers is to work hard. Either one should work but with the country in the mess it is right now, I think we need some inspiration.
On another note, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley told me there is no way we can get out of this mess in four years. I hope the voting public understands that.
If the last eight years taught me anything, it is that government does matter and policies do matter. Just look at the environmental destruction the Bush adminstration has laid upon our land. The EPA, under Bush, has become Environmental Destroyer rather than Protector. In virtually every big business vs. environment case, the latter loses.
Sustainability requires a 3 pronged approach – policies, technologies and individual actions.
I totally agree with CindyW – Government and policies do matter, but also we need a leader who is willing to lead Americans, and the world to a greener place. The individual must lead the people – they wont go on their own.
Here’s hoping Obama wins, and that he recognises the historic place we are at. The world is watching – the planet is dead without a strong proactive environmental US President. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
But whoever is elected – the job for US citizens doesn’t end at the ballot box. The new president needs to know what issues you think are important. Write the letter now – send it when you know the result of the election.
History — and Hope!
Yahoooooo!
same here Jeff. 😀
Watched it until 7am this morning. Couldn’t believe it… Awesome speech.
Post November 4th, I think if the public reaction to Obama being elected is any indication, the fact that we now have an inspiring – Carolyn, love your distinction . . . – leader bodes well for our future. And of course, it is going to be a long hard road, but we will be on it all together, and that will make all the difference. Also, the fact that green will play such a preponderant role should be music to our ears.
United we stand. Divided we fall folks. We need to stand together for the greater good. As happy as I am that Barack is president, no man is an island. We all have to do our part to turn things around.
Dear Friends,
The election of Barack Obama gives hope to many people at time when hope appears to be in short supply. Perhaps there are ways we can assist the President-Elect by speaking out loudly, clearly and often about what is true to us. For me, good science has a “ring of truth” about it and has been something upon which I have come to rely.
Science is indisputably the finest source for gaining an adequate understanding of the way the world we inhabit actually works and for accurately enough grasping the “placement” of the human species within the order of living things on Earth. But, as others have noted with such clarity and coherence, too many world-class scientists have treated the human overpopulation of Earth as a taboo topic and, even worse, perniciously participated in the politicization of the science of climate change. Barack Obama cannot know whatsoever could somehow be true, in large part, because so many scientists have failed to reasonably assume their responsibilities to science as well as to sensibly fulfill their duties as scientists.
Rather than do what I have been doing over the past 7 years by extolling the virtues of good science, today I am going to try something different.
What follows is a brief artistic expression that is intended to convey a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more significant than, the literal meaning.
Please consider an allegory: that a titanic struggle between human beings and the natural world is in the offing. It seems this struggle is fulminating now precisely because too many leaders of the 6.7 billion {soon to be 9+ billion} members of the human family generally do not share the distinctly scientific, evidence-based perspective of many within this community. Many too many of our brothers and sisters, especially those with great wealth and power, pompously and erroneously believe that human organisms are separate from, and somehow superior to, life as we know it on Earth.
At least to me, it appears that an epochal contest is taking shape on the far horizon between the ‘team’ of “mother culture and father profit” on one side and ‘Team’ Mother Nature on the other.
This could be the greatest show on Earth in 10,000 years.
The team of “mother culture and father profit” appears adamant in its willful intentionality to stay the same old business-as-usual course of recklessly overconsuming limited natural resources; relentlessly expanding large-scale production and distribution capabilities without regard to physical limitations of the natural world; and overpopulating our planetary home, come what may for children and coming generations, biodiversity, the environment and the Earth’s body.
Team Mother Nature simply is.
Which team will likely be seen by reasonable and sensible observers as winning the contest for success in 2012, 2020 and 2050, if the human community continues its idolatry of distinctly human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities by choosing forevermore unbridled overgrowth activities just as we are doing now?
If the leaders of the family of humanity do not choose change, do you have any ideas about which team will prevail and when will the outcome of the colossal contest no longer be in doubt?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://literature.lalisio.com/oai.html?o.0.au=Salmony%2C+Steven+Earl