Mission Statement

The story is told (whether apocryphal or not) that Benjamin Franklin was approached by a woman outside the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia who asked him: "What sort of government do we have?" To which Franklin supposedly replied, "A republic madame, if you can keep it."

It is impossible to prove that Franklin even said this, much less to know precisely what he meant, but there are at least two immediate dangers inherent in our form of government: First, a republic requires competent, honest leaders to make policy decisions that serve the nation's best interests. Second, in a democratic republic the electorate is responsible to inform themselves on the issues of the day and to choose those leaders wisely.

This blog is not intended to be primarily political. Its purpose is to empower readers to move toward sustainable lifestyles and a sustainable future. If the government was capable of enacting the necessary reforms, this outreach would not be necessary. However, government inevitably has a role to play, if only to stop making the situtation worse by continuing to subsidize destructive practices of the past.

Viewed in isolation, the steps one can readily take toward sustainability may have little impact. Conversely, an individual's contribution to a disastrously unsustainable future might seem equally insignificant -- yet it is the sum of those individual inputs that has us careening toward the collapse of modern civilization if not the mass extinction of all complex life on the planet.

A country where 5 percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's annual extraction of oil has no moral right to excuse itself from international energy planning simply because emerging economies such as India or China currently may not be participating. Similarly, individuals should and must do what they can regardless of how many others may choose to deny that a problem exists.

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama said, "This is our Sputnik moment." The cable news chattering class immediately criticized the speech saying that no clear goal was stated, such as President Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. They missed the point: There is no televised spectacular that will signal our success. We need to transform society piece by piece from the ground up to meet the challenge of the current crisis.

There is no doubt this can be done. There are plenty of people who have been clamoring for action since Pogo first declared, "We have met the enemy and he is us," on or about Earth Day 1970. The question is whether or not it will be done. Environmentally unsustainable policies have been widely recognized for at least 40 years, and very little has been accomplished so far. Engineering a soft landing starting today will require not only an Apollo program, but a Marshall Plan as well with a couple of Berlin Airlifts thrown in for good measure.

With some 38% of the public still scoffing at the very idea, the time for fiddling with small incremental changes around the periphery of environmental catastrophe is long since past. I fully expect to see Florida disappear beneath the waves in my lifetime. Sorry, Pogo.