SEF News-Views Digest No. 111 (11-25-15)
Like most Americans, Bettye and I greatly enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving, our favorite holiday. We welcome an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate our good fortune, especially when sharing a festive meal and stimulating conversation with close family members.
I imagine that readers of this newsletter are very thankful for enjoying a level of freedom, opportunity, and physical prosperity that, sadly, is not available to a majority of world citizens. Of course, our high level of physical comfort has come at a high cost, which we rather innocently transfer to future citizens.
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Most citizens are deeply concerned about learning how to create more resilient, sustainable communities. Since you’re on this mailing list, there’s a good chance you consider yourself a sustainability activist—or at least a semi-activist. Although most people are too busy to volunteer much time in advancing solution-oriented projects, almost everyone can make time available, at least occasionally.
I hope you’ve missed receiving our informative newsletter for the past three weeks. For respite, Bettye and I spent two memorable weeks (Oct. 15-30) on a river cruise, from Budapest to Amsterdam. Throughout the entire wonderful adventure the ship’s crew enthusiastically providing first-class services, and treated all passengers as royalty. Not being accustomed to receiving such intentional pampering—or desiring it—we were keenly aware of some obvious wasteful, unsustainable practices.
This catchy title caught my attention when checking out Netflix documentaries, which I selected and finally got around to viewing. What an eye-opener this film proved to be! I try to remain abreast of all developments related to creating sustainability, but I inadvertently failed to comprehend the full impact of livestock agriculture on global warming, which exceeds that of fossil-fuel use.
Some well-informed people are convinced that we humans are our most dreaded foe, unknowingly of course. I tend to agree, as did Pogo, a possum cartoon character created by Walt Kelly in 1948. The long-running popular comic strip featured humorous anthropomorphic animal characters that inhabited the Okefenokee Swamp, an actual national wildlife refuge located on the Florida-Georgia border. The strip often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of the many animal characters. For example, the above cartoon depicts the drainage of polluted water and careless disposed of trash, some typical human waste products. In this case, the saying “As you make your bed, so must you lie in it” might be paraphrased this way: “As you consume and discard more stuff, so must you live and deal with it.” And deal with it we must.