EaArth

Back to Peak Oil and Climate Change.

Quite honestly, it just blows my mind! I feel like I have spent a good portion of my life in a deep sleep and now I feel like my eyes are WIDE OPEN. I've lived with blinders on for my entire adult life up until a few years ago.... and it's heart breaking to me. It's heart breaking and exhilarating all at the same time.

Yet, I have so many questions too.... How did I grow up NOT knowing this? Why did it take me, and you, so many years to finally just start to understand what so many scientists, environmentalists, scholars, and so many others have known for decades? How do we as a WHOLE WORLD plan to embrace this change? How do we fix it? How can I ALONE help in this battle against Mother Nature (and boy oh boy is she PISSED)?

Well John checked out this book from the library:

"Eaarth" by Bill McKibben

Simply put, it's pretty amazing. I've still got one chapter left but for the first time in a long time, I am so interested in this book that I'm proud to say I HAVE NOT been speed reading! It's too important to me to understand exactly what is happening that I have to read it slowly, absorbing every fact, re-reading every statistic, and learning how to be progressive in this life on a new planet.

I will warn you, the first few chapters are very morose. Very "if we don't change we will all perish on this great earth" attitude. Very IN YOUR FACE.

But it's awesome. It opens your eyes even farther and lets you in on how and why this is such a drastic and monumental time in history. The author also makes it so easily understandable. He takes the hard to decipher statistics and facts and brings it down to reality for you. Takes you out of the big world and says, "Look around you! Look at where you live! Look what is happening right in your back yard and tell me global warming isn't happening or that peak oil isn't happening." To look at it locally for a second... For some of my local readers.... flooding? Torrential rains and storms? How many floods did our parents encounter living here on the Mississippi? Now how many have WE encountered? Read this book, it will tell you EXACTLY why we have so many more floods then our parents ever dreamed they would.... Don't like the heat? Summer's are getting more hot? Well get used to it peoples, it's the way it's gonna roll....

Yet, it's scary. It's SO scary. Every time I look at the kids I feel my heart going out to them in hopes that we as human beings can change this course so that they might have a chance to live just as full a life as I have been given.

This book makes me want to change deep down inside. More change then I've already done. A full and complete change in life style.

Yet, that is hard too. It's not just so easy to give up our everyday lives and give everything we have away and learn to function on a whole lot less.... yet that's why it's so exciting!!! I can't tell you how much LESS stress it is to function in a more simple manor then living in the modern world... soooo much less stress.

So onwards and upwards! When I'm done with this book, I expect a whole lot more ramblings to come out of my mouth... look out!

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Things I have done, or will do, today to reduce my oil dependence/live a more sustainable lifestyle:

1. I have NO car today! I'm actually not too upset about this one. Sure, it's stressful having to plan a day around this with children and the fact that we usually have both cars, but I'm excited to HAVE to learn to do with out. To rely on community and family to help my children get to where they need to be. To rely on my own two feet to get to places I need to be today. Exciting! And also good for my butt may I add :)

2. Yesterday, since I was busy, John blanched and froze some of our green beans and squash for use at a later date.

3. I learned to can pickles! (Which if anyone knows me, canning scares that crap out of me....)

4. "Eaarth" is from the library. Borrow, trade, barter. Awesome.

5. I'm hanging clothes to dry today.

6. As is everyday, I recycle, I help my friends, I support my community, and I try to enrich my children's lives with education every single chance I get.