Sunday, June 15, 2014

Green tech

Along with the mushrooming interacting problems in the world today, there are also quantum leaps in the number of potential solutions to those difficulties. And the quantum leap in humankind's communication capacity makes those solutions ever more easily applied where they're needed. Technological progress has miniaturized computers (which when they first came out took up the space of whole rooms) so that they can now be made small enough to fit in your pocket. That same technological capacity is now exploding with solutions to the environmental problems we have. Applied research is allowing us to do what we want to do with smaller amounts of materials. If we humans manage as a species to get past our belief in conflict (belief that fighting - including economic competition - is necessary), then we will not only be able to survive all the perfect storms in our present and near future, we will be able to thrive in a paradisical world of our own making. We can literally together create a heaven on Earth.

Central to our being able to work together is the humility to see past our own contexts to the bigger world we each are a part of. It is our unconscious arrogance that makes us so sure what we think is right. It is arrogance to think that our group, whatever it is, is the best. And it is sheer (if unconscious) arrogance to think that we humans are the greatest piece of work the whole Universe has managed as of yet to throw up. Once we grow up and stop being afraid to face the fact that we humans are the ones doing the damage to Spaceship Earth, then we will start noticing there are many other ways of doing things that are less harmful or even healing. Once we stop being afraid to think because we're afraid to change, then we'll find ourselves with millions of others sharing so many amazing solutions. Then the times will feel miraculous.

We don't need nuclear power; perhaps somehow it could be re-designed to be safe from cradle to grave, but that's not happening right now. We don't need natural gas, coal, or oil; we need to minimize combustion processes generally. Our suffering from climate change will keep increasing because of changes already in the works. But we can lessen, and adapt to, those changes by making drastic lifestyle changes such as going to local distributed energy and food. Our problems are ultimately spiritual. The extinction event we are in makes it clear we're approaching The Final Exam, as Buckminster Fuller put it. Universal Intelligence is leading us to a renewed reverence for all life, so that we can regenerate the ecosystem of which we are a part.

Once again, come see Everyone's Garden and celebrate this little corner full of Nature's Beauty at W. Elizabeth and Lytle Streets. Growing at Everyone's:
an evergreen tree and bush, stinging nettle, hyssop, squash, radishes, sunflowers, pumpkin, sunchoke, roses, okra, peppers, asparagus, collards, lambs quarters, garlic, cleavers, purslane, onions, strawberries, endives, arugula, 6 peach trees, mints, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, dill, fennel, parsley, coriander (cilantro), fennel, tomato, rose-of-sharon, sage, eggplant, 2 apple trees, 2 apricot trees that are not fruiting yet, a bunch of fig trees that (barely) survived the cold winter, thyme,...and rabbits,...and wild kids who sometimes pull up garlic and pick fruit before it's ready...

Jim McCue
412-421-6496

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