There's a broken oil rig in the Timor Sea that's been pumping oil into the ocean for the past 10 weeks. It's now on fire.

 

 

It's funny how you never see a wind turbine on fire. Or read about a leaking solar farm dumping poison into the environment. When's the last time you saw a news report about a geothermal plant venting dangerous gasses and chemicals into the air?

 

If we're to survive through the next century with our comfortable lives intact, we need to spend the next two decades utterly transforming the way we do everything. That doesn't mean we all need to recycle even harder, it means we need to make large-scale changes to the underlying systems that support our lives (see the difference between greener and green). One of the biggest changes that has to be made is to completely stop using fossil fuels. No more oil, no more coal. No more natural gas. If we're going to make it as a functional modern society, we have to completely drop our dirty energy habit, post haste.

 

What can you do? The low hanging fruit is to get politically involved. Take 10 minutes right now and call your Senators and Representative and let them know you care about the environment and that you expect them to vote for strong climate change legislation to protect our nation's future. Tell them that renewable sources like wind and solar should be our nations future, a future built by a strong base of Made-in-America manufacturing.

 

Calling your representatives in Washington that will do more good for the world than a days worth of eating organic local food, wearing fair trade threads, and practicing sensible thermostat management.

 

(I've been reading a lot of Alex Steffen lately, here's his latest thoughtrant.)