The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

- Marcel Proust

Fools fear fate. The hero overcomes it. Be bold! Be fearless! Be free! Awake! Arise! and march forward.

- Yesudian

We can and are changing the direction of the present environmental crisis. We can heal our personal and global traumas. We can and will bring peace to our world. We must simply be willing to acknowledge what is happening on our planet, and begin, without denial, to take personal responsibility for the transformational process. We can no longer afford the comfortable illusion that our problems are not that bad, or that they will simply go away by themselves. All of us collectively must be willing to acknowledge and embrace the reality of what we have created, the pain of what we have destroyed, and the fact that it is not too late to change our direction.

Don’t give up thinking things are so bad they can’t be changed, or there is nothing you can do to make a difference. Don’t take on that common “cynical edge” in your attitude toward life. Please remember, that every effort, no matter how small or insignificant it may appear to be, is always a welcome addition to the positive momentum we are collectively generating. We each play our part in whatever way we can, and whatever effort one makes is a valid and welcome part of the whole. The “critical mass” of awakened people it takes to be able to change our world is growing larger every day.

We desperately need people courageous enough to embrace a victorious personal and global vision. We need those with the vision to see through the horrors of our global situation and instead of giving up or becoming cynical are able to retain the ability to inspire others toward the positive potentials we can create. We need those who hold the attitude and vision of victory, rather than accepting the so-called inevitable future of pain and destruction. We need to go forth as a team, seeing and doing without denial, the work that is required of us. Any amount of denial will continue to perpetuate ecological destruction.

Remember, the best way to teach is by example. The first step always begins with ourselves. Taking responsibility for our own unhealthy habits and attitudes on a personal level is the best place to start. Take one step at a time. Do what you are capable of doing. Be gentle and patient with yourself and others.

Step by step, hand in hand, heart to heart, we will make it; our planet will make it. Together we will bring forth the necessary changes in our emotional and environmental attitudes that will help transform our world into a healthy place to live. It will take faith, hope, vision, and a concerted effort from every one of us, but we will do it! Open your heart and your mind to infinite, creative possibilities, and let’s create a harmonious journey into a cooperative, clean, and peaceful future!

INTRODUCTION

“The world is finally becoming globally aware that exponential resource usage in combination with finite reserves is a recipe that ensures our great grandchildren won’t be born.”

We can’t really measure what potential there ultimately is in our resource base because technology facilitates such a vastly increased utility. As Buckminster Fuller pointed out in “Critical Path”, pg xxiii:

“A one-quarter ton communications satellite is now outperforming the previously used 175,000 tons of transatlantic copper cables, with a 700,000 fold reduction in system-equipment weight providing greater message-carrying capacity and transmission fidelity, as well as using vastly fewer kilowatts of operational energy.”

But what we can measure is how fast our existing resources are being used up at the current rate of efficiency. We can calculate how fast resources critical to the eco-system such as wetlands, and the old-growth forests and the rainforests are disappearing, etc. And obviously we need to restructure our society to use these resources in a more sustainable fashion or we are in serious trouble. The truly frustrating thing about this issue is that we are not just talking about maintaining our survival, but about realizing our true potential. Again, as Buckminster Fuller puts it in Critical Path”, pg. xxv:

“Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize that sum-totally the omni-engineering-integrable, invisible revolution in the metallurgical, chemical, and electronic arts now makes it possible to do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material, ergs of energy, and seconds of time per given technological funciton that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a ‘higher standard of living than any have ever known.’”

I’d just chalk it up to harsh lessons in sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It doesn’t take much to upset the dynamic equilibrium and bring about catastrophic effects, therefore we should learn to walk softly and err on the side of caution.

“Yet the more we succeed in numbing ourselves to our deepest human responses, the more powerless, futile and isolated we feel. The more we avoid our pain for the world, the more disconnected we become and we repress our own painful feelings by filtering out the information that provokes them. Yet it is the very information, painful though it may be, that cries out for our response.”

- John Robbins

Most of us intuitively trust that progress is a sign of increasing order in our lives, of an increased ability to control our immediate environment and its effects upon us, but what many of us do not realize is that the progress of civilization and the control of our immediate environment is not a free ride that is guaranteed to by the government.

It is a fundamental law of the universe that closed systems, or those that do not exchange appreciable amounts of energy with their surrounding environment, are governed by what is called the law of entropy. This principle of nature guarantees that everything around you is continually becoming more disorderly. Entropy is considered by some to be the supreme law of life, since it controls every aspect of what we do. Since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one configuration to another, the irreversible arrow of entropy guarantees that whatever energy you have available for useful work will, if used, be transformed into a state that is going to be less usable. Life, it would seem, is always moving from being useful to being useless.

But all of our efforts to bring about the progress of civilization have, and most certainly will continue, to ultimately bring about control of our environment and a more perfectly ordered society. We feel instinctively driven toward such goals, and it is not somehow bad or wrong to want such things, but a new consideration is beginning to emerge in our awareness: At our present level of technological prowess we do not have an unlimited supply of resources to continually draw upon. Our planet does not exchange an appreciable amount of material with the rest of the solar system, so any reasonable person must admit that we live in an enclosed system. Because of this our present rate of growth which is being propelled by a rapid consumption of fossil fuels cannot be sustained beyond another few hundred years, probably even less. Therefore, within our enclosed system (planet), all of our efforts towards progress will ultimately come to naught unless we quickly begin to reorient our present world paradigm to include a consideration of entropy.

Up to now the vast majority of us have managed to be blissfully unconcerned about the damage we are doing to our system. The world seemed such a big place, and we spent so many years fighting the virtually omnipotent forces of nature for our survival that it seemed impossible that us tiny little human beings could possibly upset the balance of nature. Thus we managed to get away with dumping millions of tons of toxic waste into our oceans and streams, managed to cut down thousands of square kilometers of rainforests and pollute the atmosphere with the byproducts of fossil fuel consumption while the greenhouse effect looms imminent. We even managed to create on a massive scale what we thought was an innocuous little molecule to use in our refrigeration and propellant systems, chlorofluorocarbon, that once released into the atmosphere has apparently become capable of destroying the ozone layer at a frightening rate. (While to some this is still controversial, it is now accepted by many scientists that certain models indisputably show that each molecule of chlorofluorocarbon that is released into the atmosphere is capable of catalytically facilitating the reduction of approximately 100,000 molecules of ozone, O₃, to molecules of molecular oxygen, O₂. This goes a long way towards explaining the apparent hole in the ozone layer now being measured by satellites in the Antarctic.) There are even some estimates, based on the amount of CFCs that have already been released but have not yet dispersed into the upper atmosphere, that we are already irreversibly committed to a minimum 30% loss in the ozone layer. One begins to wonder if our technological progress is ultimately going to bring about the downfall of our species, or, as Jeremy Rifkin explains, if we are even biologically suited to living in the world we have created:

“The health prospects for the immediate future are grim. Homo sapiens was not made for a highly industrialized petrochemical environment. Our anatomy has not changed since human beings first appeared on earth several million years ago. We were biologically designed for a hunter-gatherer existence. Each successive stage of economic and social development has only increased the physiological strains on the human being and further eroded our chances for long-range survival as a species.”

Painfully aware of these issues now, as little as thirty years ago when the industrial age was at its peak we seemed arrogantly unconcerned with the damage we were doing. But the law of entropy must ultimately prevail, and now we must face the facts: Because of the excessive use of nonrenewable energy sources, because of the inefficient manner in which we institute and apply our technological capabilities, and because of our predisposition toward short-term profitability over the long-term viability of our ecosystem, we are presently creating small pockets of order, such as the building of our cities and towns, in one part of the system only at the expense of creating a dangerously unnecessary corresponding disorder in the rest of the system. The average home, for example, can be built with our present technology only by exploiting or utilizing some 10,000 board-feet of timber – the equivalent of 10 to 15 average-size trees – for the average three bedroom home. There is also a considerable demand on our mineral deposits and petroleum reserves, since the same house also includes some 4,800 square feet of drywall and 42 cubic yards of concrete. Thus it becomes apparent that we cannot sustain our present levels of economic growth and also maintain a healthy ecosystem, as Fritjof Capra explains in his book, Uncommon Wisdom (in a presentation of E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful):

“Current economic thinking, according to Schumacher, is obsessed with unqualified growth. Economic expansion has become the abiding interest of all modern societies and any growth of GNP is believed to be a good thing. ‘The idea that there could be pathological growth, is to [the modern economist] a perverse idea which must not be allowed to surface.’ Schumacher continues in his scathing critique. He acknowledges that growth is an essential feature of life, but he emphasizes that all economic growth must be qualified. While some things ought to be growing, others ought to be diminishing, he points out, and he observes that ‘it does not require more than a simple act of insight to realize that infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.’”

Therefore we must learn to reorient our thinking and begin to appreciate the damage we are doing to our fragile ecosystem. We cannot sustain our present levels of “pathological growth” any longer without threatening our future because we live in an enclosed system within which we cannot forever escape the effects of our actions. Many aspects of our society, such as the population explosion and the proliferation of transportation based upon the ridiculously inefficient internal combustion engine, are like cancer cells within a body that rapidly multiply without concern for the overall health of the individual they reside in. We swim in our own soup, so to speak, and the answer is not to somehow do away with technology and go back to living on the land, but to discipline ourselves to live more efficiently with less reliance on non-renewable energy sources. This does not imply that we must become impoverished, as Buckminster Fuller explains in Critical Path:

“Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize that sum-totally the omni-engineering-integratable, invisible revolution in the metallurgical, chemical, and electronic arts now makes it possible to do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material, ergs of energy, and seconds of time per given technological function that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a “higher standard of living than any have ever known.”

Therefore, we have the means at our disposal to create the progress, the society, and the standard of living we all desire, but in order to accomplish this we must learn to do what I am going to call ethical science. The ethical scientist is concerned not only with the efficiency of his results within his immediate concerns but also with the overall efficiency of his methods. He strives to maintain a more holistic viewpoint, to continue to produce maximum results but with a minimum of damage to the overall system in both the short run and the long run. Entropy cannot be avoided (at least within our present understanding of thermodynamics), but its effects can be reduced to the minimum if we do not squander our resources.

For this reason it is imperative that we concentrate our energies on the development of alternate sources of energy. Technologies dependent upon the influences of sun, wind, and water derive their power from the effects of outside forces acting on our system. While the earth can in respect to material be considered an enclosed system, in respect to energy exchange it can be considered to be a part of the enclosed system of our solar system. The increase in entropy due to the gradual decline in available energy in our sun is creating pockets of decreasing entropy (or negentropy) on the planets. In other words, as the energy in the sun becomes gradually more disordered, the energy it releases provides the impetus for the planetary systems to become more orderly. The switch to technologies based upon this aspect will give our system the greatest amount of long term viability because we will no longer be spending our reserves of non-renewable energy resources but spending our income.

Just as a human body will grow to an optimum height and weight and then switch to creating an optimum level of health, so too must we retrain our thinking to place more emphasis on the quality of our growth as opposed to the quantity, as Fritjof Capra explains in his book The Turning Point:

“The restoration of balance and flexibility in our economies, technologies, and social institutions will be possible only if it goes hand in hand with a profound change of values. Contrary to conventional beliefs, value systems and ethics are not peripheral to science and technology but constitute their very basis and driving force. Hence the shift to a balanced social and economic system will require a corresponding shift of values – from self-assertion and competition to cooperation and social justice, from expansion to conservation, from material acquisition to inner growth. Those who have begun to make this shift have discovered that it is not restrictive but, on the contrary, liberating and enriching.

Thus we see that the full realization of ecological sustainability will be brought about only by a concerted effort to minimize the effects of entropy. This will only be accomplished by individuals cooperating instead of competing, by maximizing efficiency and quality instead of short term profitability.

While reading through this site, it is likely that you will be deeply affected reading about the serious conditions we have created upon our planet through our lack of environmental sensitivity. Though the statistics and explanations given are somewhat enlightening and educational, one must realize that facts on paper are only a dim shadow of the actual reality. The full truth and impact of the crimes of environmental destruction are not conveyed when described after the fact in books, newspapers, magazine articles, or on television. These modes of communication are obviously somewhat removed from the actual reality, and allow us to be removed as well.

The living facts, the full-force impact of our environmental ignorance is clearly available and crawls under your skin demanding attention when you have have been there, experiencing it first-hand…Hearing the dolphins cry while drowning in fishermen’s nets; Watching the trees go down and viewing the aftermath of a clear-cut; Having a child born with birth defects as a result of a so-called “thoroughly tested” drug, or from exposure to dangerous chemicals; Visiting a slaughterhouse; Breathing in carbon monoxide during a rush-hour traffic jam; Cleaning up crude oil from spills with your own hands and seeing the fatal effects of that atrocity upon wildlife and the environment; Picking up enormous amounts of trash off of our beaches; Or living in a community where it is your family and friends who are the ones having to cope with increased cases of cancer caused by a local industry which is poisoning the soil and water by dumping their toxic wastes.

These are the living experiences of visible, tangible, devastation that speak louder than any printed facts or statistics ever could. These are the raw experiences which have been the catalyst for bringing people to the point where they will no longer tolerate the lies and the blindness of corporate and political greed, or the actions of those who have selfish vested interests and the power to keep major issues which need immediate attention silenced and at the bottom of the priority list. It is the blatant insensitivity to life and our environment exemplified by so many of our political leaders, industries, multi-national corporations, and individual citizens, that motivates people to become passionately and actively involved in taking action against the devastating effects of environmental ignorance. Let us hope that it does not take more of these intense experiences to encourage larger numbers of us to become actively involved. Hopefully, the continuation of human suffering and ecological destruction are not what is required to finally motivate us at a mass level to make our decision to stand up and say together,

“The destruction of human and animal life and the degradation
of our global environment are not acceptable and we will not tolerate this any longer!!!”

It is beyond debate that our mechanistic view of our Earth and everything upon it is primarily responsible for the decline of human health and our global environment. Reducing our beautiful planet and its wonderful array of plant and animal species to nothing more than “resources to be utilized and exploited for human use and profit” is certainly a most dysfunctional outlook, not in any way conducive to creating a healthy world in which to live.

We must drastically shift the ways in which we look at our planet and its role in our continuing evolution, drastically shift the ways in which we view and treat each other as fellow human beings, and finally, we must change the way we view and treat ourselves on a personal level. All of this is interconnected.

The truth of this interconnection becomes apparent when we are able to understand that the conditions existing in our global environment are the external reflection of the same conditions existing within the bodies and minds of humanity. For as we cultivate a deeper respect and sensitivity for the “internal ecology” of our bodies and minds, ceasing to harm and pollute ourselves with processed and refined junk foods, synthetic drugs, and negative toxic attitudes, we will naturally find ourselves capable of sharing that same respect and sensitivity with our fellow human beings and animal species. As we choose to move beyond harming and polluting our own internal body/mind environment, we will arrive at the point of awareness where we will not tolerate or continue to take part in the harming and polluting of our external global environment either.

Our internal processes are inextricably linked to the external; the external is linked to the internal. Everything influences, and is a vital part of everything else. Nothing is separate. Our planet, and everything and everyone upon it, are part of a beautiful, interrelated totality. Whether we choose to accept it or not, all of us are a united global family, mutually dependent upon each other and upon our planet for support and sustenance. We so desperately need to understand this connection in our hearts and minds, for this will be the “awakening factor” that shifts our present direction onto a course that will ultimately lead to a more harmonious and ecologically sustainable future!

Please understand: Our world is in ecological crisis! Each and every one of us continues to take part in perpetuating this crisis as long as we accept it without taking some form of personal action. Please do not fall into the lethargic stupor of inaction, simply allowing the degradation of our environment and our health to continue. Stop buying products from those companies and manufacturers who are perpetuating ecological destruction at any level. Do not give your support to the “profit at the expense of health and environment” attitude!

As you educate yourself and become more aware, you will set an example for others. Our collective numbers will continue to expand, and our voices will continue to grow louder and clearer. Together, we have the power to shape the future of our world and bring the present trends which are damaging our biosphere to a welcome close. It starts with you!

Though the environmental issues presented on this site may seem gloomy and on the negative side, it is important to realize that becoming aware of the “dark side” of a problem or situation is always the first step toward positive solutions!

With love and inspiration,

Douglas, Neil and Taryn

Notes:

1. David E. Fisher, Fire & Ice: The Greenhouse Effect, Ozone Depletion, & Nuclear Winter, (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pgs. 55-56.

2. Rifkin, Jeremy, Entropy, A New World View, (New York: The Viking Press, 1980), pg. 180.

3. Soviero, Marcelle M., “The Recycled House”, Popular Science, April 1991, pg. 69.

4. Capra, Fritjof, Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations With Remarkable People, (New York: Bantam, 1988), pg. 210.

5. Fuller, Buckminster, Critical Path, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), pg. xxv.

6. Capra, Fritjof, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture, (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), pg. 397.