| Are you sick of hearing about the environment? Do | | | | fuels like coal and oil, which are NOT RENEWABLE? |
| you roll your eyes every time someone declares that | | | | What can we do to change these dynamics? Not in a |
| we humans are fouling the air we breathe, the water | | | | decade. Now! We can pay attention, be conscious. |
| we drink and the food we eat? Do you rate Al | | | | I've nothing against industrialists, just their |
| Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" an | | | | short-sightedness. I'm neither an environmentalist nor |
| alarmist film to appease the greenies and scare the | | | | a scientist. Like everyone else, I'm someone trying to |
| rest of us? If you answered yes to any of the | | | | breathe and eat clean stuff so I won't have so many |
| above you are neither a narrow-minded conservative | | | | allergies so I don't have to purchase medication I |
| nor a boring hackneyed liberal. You belong to the | | | | can't afford, medication that is packaged in plastic |
| party of the powerless, living in denial because you | | | | that is NOT BIO-DEGRADABLE! |
| simply don't know whether to move right, left, | | | | When I was on Mount Kilimanjaro in the late 1970s, it |
| forward or stay the course. | | | | was covered with snow. Today there is none, even |
| Despite dire reports from our intrepid astronauts, | | | | on the summit at 19,335 feet! In 1953 Sir Edmund |
| who see clearly what we cannot, most of us remain | | | | Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay |
| in a state of suspended paralysis. We think because | | | | were the first men to reach the 29,035-foot peak of |
| we are watching on television the glaziers melt, the | | | | Mount Everest. Every inch of the highest mountain in |
| polar bears starve, the seas rise and the planet | | | | the world was sacred and pristine. Today it is littered |
| convulse in one cataclysm after another, that none | | | | with the 200 frozen bodies of those who paid over |
| of it is real, none of it impacts us directly. It's | | | | $65,000 each for the privilege. They and other |
| entertainment news! Never mind the staggering | | | | climbers have left a trail of filth, frozen excrement |
| number of fires, floods, twisters and storms at home | | | | and toilet paper (locally called the white man's prayer |
| and abroad. The Weather Channel presents these | | | | flags). A clean-up crew recently brought down over |
| man-versus-nature disasters as exciting programming | | | | two and a half tons of that garbage. |
| you won't want to miss. It's all entertainment news! | | | | In the musical, "The Lion King," the following dialogue |
| So let's continue the entertainment fantasy. What if | | | | between King Mufasa and his son, Simba says it all |
| a wacko like me told you that a violent hurricane is | | | | with great simplicity: |
| the virtual purging by mother earth of the insulting | | | | King Mufasa: "Everything you see exists together in a |
| impurities of chemicals, pesticides and toxic waste | | | | delicate balance. As king, you need to understand |
| that are poisoning her seas and killing her pet fishes? | | | | that balance and respect all the creatures, from the |
| What if I said that in virtual reality, an earthquake is | | | | crawling ant to the leaping antelope." |
| the planet groaning under the impossible weight of | | | | Young Simba: "But dad, don't we eat the antelope?" |
| the concrete and steel that's replacing the plants that | | | | King Mufasa: "Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When |
| provide us with (gasp) OXYGEN? | | | | we die, our bodies become the grass, and the |
| Have you boated down the Amazon lately? What? | | | | antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected |
| Where is it? Have you ski-boarded in the Sahara | | | | in the great Circle of Life." |
| where every sand storm in the encroaching desert is | | | | For information about renewable resources like |
| carried by wind currents across the planet to North | | | | Biomass, Geothermal, Solar and Wind, visit The U.S. |
| America? Jeez, plant a tree why don't they? What if | | | | Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency |
| an alarmist like me told you that every volcanic | | | | and Renewable Energy manages the website of the |
| eruption is the sound and fury of earth vomiting the | | | | Renewable Resource Data Center. There's even a |
| carbon monoxide we force down her gut because | | | | Kidzlink. Kids know more than we do anyway. It's |
| gluttonous industrialists insist on burning finite fossil | | | | just that we don't bother to listen to them. |