How We Failed Our Children

Will,
Thanks for this post! It is so refreshing to hear an honest, passionate, TRUTH espousing voice. I think what you say all the time and often feel foolish and idealistic when I express these ideas. You embolden me to continue to speak up and out for change so we can move beyond the insanity of our current way of doing things.Thanks for being a ray of hope for our future and our children (who afterall, are our future!)
Peace,
Barry

Will,
You are spot on with this post. Perhaps, your daughter, and millions of others will read this and see that there are choices to be made and consequences of those choices. Seeking employment where one could walk or bike to work is one way to reduce our oil dependancy. Civic and business leaders can facilitate this by permitting business and housing to coexist and creating jobs near population concentrations. Oil will be with us for a long time because it has a very high energy density. We could reduce our consumption of it markedly if we managed to delink conspicuous consumption and status. Take pity on a giant SUV owner, and offer a ride in your carpool. Personally, I’d like a veggie diesel Messerschmitt Kabinroller, but the closest thing out there now is a Smart car.

More investment is needed in alternative energy and conservation, I hope people will read your post and make it happen.

Will,
I always love to read your posts because they make me think about things that should be important to all of us. I too believe that money invested in alternative energy, conservation and education for same would be money much better spend than on funding a war that can’t be ‘won’. Thanks for keeping me informed and inspired.

We need to restore our vision. Decades ago Buckminster Fuller pioneered effemeralization (doing more with less). Almost as long ago, a Japanese architect designed a self-sufficient city (a city that got it’s energy from converting it’s own garbage and waste). I wish I still had the article. To me the core of Freedom is the core of America, i.e. doing the impossible. We must have a new vision is we are to have a new and different world.

[…] The American Dream Project Blog: Today’s Post RE: Oil Anyone ever see Will Marre on PBS? How We Failed Our Children @ American Dream Project […]

I have been inspired by your writings and the situation with oil to move close enough to work to bicycle or ride an electric motorcycle (near zero carbon) when weather permits (3/4 of the year). I figure the savings in fuel and time allows me to live a less stressful life. As individuals we can make choices that lessen our impact on the earth, improve our health, and outlook on life without making sacrifices. I relish the added hour a day I can use to strengthen my personal relationships.

Unfortunately, the average person in the U.S. is not visiting blogs like this one and thinking critically about energy issues and adopting practices that will lessen the drain on our energy resources. Which is why I think those who are interested in maintianing the status quo, ostensibly because they personally gain economically and socially for doing so, can continue to maintain their leadership position and power.

Dependency on/addiction to fossil fuels clearly has multiple negative implications for the world order and health of the planet, however how many people are willing and capable of proactively making new and different lifestyle choices that no longer fuel the dependency?

When we’re talking about the health of the planet and trying to mobilize people into doing something to improve and sustain the environment, we are really at a disadvantage, because the average person does not actively choose to improve and sustain their own health. The luminary mental health scientists will tell you that behavior modification is typically at best a very difficult process, which only a small percentage of people are able to achieve.

While we indeed have some great thought leaders in our country with regard to energy and environmental issues, the average person is not tuned in, I don’t believe. Most people are caught up in their own personal daily drama to notice. Consciously observe people going to and leaving work, on the elevator at the office, in the supermarket or other public places: most seem checked out, not vital and alive, inured to a tread mill existence, and I think this reality is getting worse.

Can someone explain to me why, for example, if the majority of U.S. citizens no longer support the war in Iraq and our dependency on fossil fuel, we are not assembling in public and yelling at our government as a collective whole? While many complain about the situation, most of us are sucking it up, including the higher gas prices and the serious limitations it’s putting on our lives.

I think most of us are all working so hard that, at the end of the day, we just want to be comforted in whatever way we can … working out, eating, watching t.v., playing video games, other entertainment … and, for many, relief comes in the form of some insidious addiction … I won’t list the range of them here.

People, in general, need to hit rock bottom, before change can occur. The average person isn’t motivated to action until there is a crisis and that crisis touches their lives directly. With regard to the environment, when the crisis point hits, it may be too late, which is why people who are educated and in the know are becoming increasingly anxious, right?

Yes, when an environmental crisis point arrives, the average person may be powerless to do anything about it. I’m right now thinking about the Louisiana residents who were displaced, following Hurricane Katrina — an environmental crisis for sure that impacted the lives of many disenfranchised people. To this day, many of the Louisiana residents are without permanent homes and struggling to survive. Are they concerned with what they can do to conserve energy and contribute to environmental stability and health?

Perhaps the Katrina folks aren’t a good example because they’re not the ones that are directly taxing the earth’s resources. It’s the economically franchised folks that are, and, as I’ve been maintaining, the majority who could possibly contribute to affecting positive change, adopting an environmental praxis of care, are at a disadvantages or a loss to do so.

Change begins with the individual average person. And, in an unwell planet, filled with unwell people — mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually unwell — it is sometimes very challenging to adopt an attitude that positive change is possible. Sometimes, I think, the damage is done. In some, the will to survive, however, is so strong that, even when the ship is sinking, they’ll be holding on to hope that there’s a way out and a new day.

I recently heard someone say “the sooner the oil is gone the better”,and “we should all spill some on the ground the next time we fill-up to help the situation”. In other words, nothing will happen until disaster strikes. Don’t we all know this to be true?

[…] after I made my post on the end of oil I found this great post talking about the negative things that our dependence on oil has caused. Here are a couple of quotes: The engine of modern prosperity runs on oil. That may have worked in […]

Failed Our Children? Most definately. I recently received an email of an enormous hotel, actually it was a house. The house belonged to a Saudi Prince, who paid for this house, we did through price gauging at the pump. This Prince also had a car (Audi) made entirely out of Silver, not painted Silver, anything metal was made from Silver. He acheived this level of wealth when gas was below the $2.00 a gallon price. The only explanation for this is greed. The government could do something about this, and I am sure they are trying, but in my book their is no such thing as trying, you are either doing it or not. We cannot rely on the government for a solution, they don’t want one. It is time as Americans we start taking control of the situation discover new alternative fuel sources, they are out there!

Will, Forgive me, but what on earth is the matter with
little old Cuba and Venezuela? These countries only respond
to our excessive clandestine nonsense. All the money pumped
into intelligence in our country is spent accountability free. It is the hand of tyranny to these countries. Do you believe that all men are created equal or that all men who are American are created equal? Don’t forget. We hold by force a piece of cuba’s rightful land. Guantanamo.