c.Figallo

Archive for January, 2009

Like everyone I know, I was on Cloud 9 when Obama took the oath. Finally an oath was sworn that wasn’t aimed at the Prez! And like so many, I’m relieved that things have already begun to change after 8 disheartening years. Ding dong, the witch is dead!

And yet, I don’t feel altogether relieved. Not at all, actually. With the disappearance of one major impediment to progress, the many other impediments come more into focus. If our goals are to restore the American economy and lifestyle expectations to what they were back in the booming late Nineties, we’re setting ourselves up for long-term catastrophe.

This time around, the vision of sharing and collaboration that was elemental in the founding of the USA must become just as important as the market economy in the reconstruction of the American ideal.  We have reached an age of limits; the gameboard has changed. That old bumper sticker – Whoever Dies with the Most Toys Wins – is no longer valid or even cute.

We need to educate ourselves and our children about the realities of living in what John Sterman of MIT describes as a “bathtub.” We can’t go on pouring water into the bathtub if it’s full and the drain is clogged. That’s the situation with CO2 in our atmosphere. People don’t understand the principle and thus don’t appreciate the urgency of our situation and the need for really drastic change.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, ““I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education….”

Can my generation recover the spirit it realized in the Sixties (and was adopted as Obama’s pre-inaugural theme) – that We Are One? We celebrated Earth Day 40 years ago and have allowed those principles to be trampled since then.

Will younger generations see that spirit more clearly because they are not so invested in consumerism and classism? Will they lead the way to an environmentally sane way of living?

Obama is going to be pressured to moderate his changes when what he really needs to do is lead us toward radical change. He can be a great educator if he stands his ground and speaks the truth. We don’t need to be lied to again.

Wikipedia says:

Apocalypse (Greek: Ἀποκάλυψις Apokálypsis; “lifting of the veil”) is a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind. Today the term is often used to refer to the end of the world, which may be a shortening of the phrase apokalupsis eschaton which literally means “revelation at the end of the æon, or age”.

I did not know that. But this revelation at the end of an age is becoming more and more concrete as we go through this relatively inconsequential economic re-ordering. Yes, Obama has a shitload of immediate crises to deal with, but how do we wrap our minds and behavior around the 8-trillion pound gorilla that is climate change?

This Friday I’ll be attending a presentation sponsored by the Long Now Foundation featuring noted inventor Saul Griffith, who has been focusing his considerable intelligence and experience on establishing the gravity of the threat that climate change represents to us. Spoiler alert: “”It is not accurate to say we can still stop climate change,” he says.

Long Now will make audio and video of this presentation available on their Web site soon after the event. I’ll also be reporting here.