fixing the economy

To: hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
December GreenWay article for
HazelwoodHomepage.com
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Restoring our Earth and Economy

Ask yourself, which is bigger - the Earth or the world economy? The answer is obvious. The money system we humans have is only a small part of all the things happening on Earth. In fact, our economy is dependent on our environment. Every good or service we buy or sell is based on the Earth's resources. When we deplete or destroy any of these resources, it hurts the economy. Behind the economic crisis we face is the environmental crisis. No matter what conflict you look at in the world there is an environmental mess in the background. We've been fighting with bigger and bigger weapons, for more than a hundred years, over oil and other of Earth's resources. The United States was many years ago the largest producer of oil in the world, and so we were able to be the strongest. But we pretty much used up the most easily obtainable of our oil and so became dependent for this nonrenewable resource on the foreign market . Now the whole world is running low and the competition is becoming increasingly brutal. Having becoming so thoroughly addicted to this resource, we, like those addicted to other things, are losing our freedom to get off of it. And as the supply becomes ever more constricted due to more demand, we find our local economies in crisis. Where did we go wrong? Nobody deserves to go hungry, yet more and more Americans and others in the world are finding themselves without. Those dying in Darfur and many other parts of the globe are victims of human-caused drought and other weather changes, and also conflict over resources such as the precious materials needed to make our cellphones and other goods.

How do we get out of this nightmare?

The answer is so simple it's mind-blowing - love. Love of all life, not just human beings. Each of the millions of species exists for a reason. As we have taken down the trees and other life forms of the world's forest, we have come to discover we need them, even for our air. Now that the entire ecosystem of the Earth is becoming unstable, we need to be open to reversing many of the ways we look at things. And one is our mistaken opinion that we humans are somehow better than the other species, when in fact we are all part of the same family.

Were we unafraid to enjoy (love) the wildlife around us, we wouldn't be destroying every non-human thing that moves in our neighborhoods. We have been convinced of a whole range of fears that are self-fulfilling prophecies. Our fears help to create the monsters we fear. There really are terrible dangers in the world today, but they were created in part by our having made enemies out of peoples and species that could have just as easily become our friends and allies.

The same has happened to us as far as getting along with each other. We fear and so fight Muslims, adding to whatever reason they may think they have to fear and so fight us.

We fear and fight disease microbes, in the process causing so much collateral damage that beneficial microbes are killed off and super resistant disease microbes are encouraged.

Now that the economy has slowed, let's use this opportunity to think about what we need to change. We don't need more:

expensive clothes manufactured overseas by people literally describable as slaves;

lawns kept green and weed-free by chemical fertilizers and pesticides which poison us;

junk food made sickeningly sweet by taxpayer subsidized ingredients which cause obesity, heart disease, and diabetes - and which can be purchased with food stamp dollars also subidized by the taxpayer;

food shipped from around the world when we can grow it here;

high-tech weapons when we already have enough to near sterilize Earth's surface now;

another taxpayer supported sports stadium to entertain those of us who can afford it while the Earth's ecosystem collapses;

another investor to build another casino for our citizens to flush money down;

traffic jams of people trying to get to other places because they can't make a living where they live;

armed drug dealers and addicts imprisoning us when we're inside and threatening us when we're outside;

Geez, look at all the money we can save by not doing things!

What we do need is to stop doing the dumb things and start doing more of the sensible things. More fresh fruits and vegetables. More food locally grown. Less lawn mowing and more food gardening. Less throwaway plastic wrapping and soft drinks. Less cans that need to be recycled. Less canned food. More neighborhood whole grain bakeries. Less newspapers for which forests have to be cut down to make, and more communication via the internet. More edible weeds such as Lamb's Quarters, which has 40% protein. Less organic waste going to the landfill. A restoration of the web of life by encouraging Nature's return to the city. Better nutrition for all so that people are more physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy enough to work together on these terrible problems we have. More sharing of usable goods and services such as second-hand clothes and carpooling.

We should, as a country, resolve that no one, absolutely no one, should not have access to good healthy real (not processed, adulterated, refined) food. Then we would be on the way to returning to a sane economy. Now that we have elected an honest peacemaker rather than an honest warrior President, it's time to make our country safer by working to make the whole world safer. Let's cut the military budget drastically. We can't make peace by threat alone; we have to make friends with other peoples. Instead of stimulating the arms race for the profit of a few of our corporations, we need to lead disarmament negotiations. The belief that the world is full of dangers is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. By acting on our fears we actually help make enemies of other people. Those who made money selling arms to any side of any conflict have often fallen to the temptation to exaggerate the differences between people for profit. So we have a world which is - unnecessarily - desperately fighting over resources and in the process destroying the sustainability of those resources.

As melodramatic and even silly as it may sound, it's love (not money) that makes the world go 'round.
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