SF Chronicle: We are doomed! Sort of!

[marmar]

We are doomed! Sort of!
Earth in crisis, food and water increasingly scarce, people freaking out. Should you join them?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, June 25, 2008



It would be nice to think much of the ugliness is coming to an end.

It would be lovely to imagine the era of brutal Earth-mauling technologies, coal extraction and petroleum and industrial agriculture and strip mining and clear cutting and industrial fishing and all rest, all the more rapacious and unforgiving notions of how we exist on this planet are, after an era of unchecked capitalistic greed and waste and over-consumption right along with almost zero concern for consequences and the ethics of sustainability, finally moving toward obsolescence -- or rather, are quickly being shoved there by sheer necessity, brutal market forces, as supply runs dry and oil production slows and the Earth groans and spits and says, "enough already."

It is a pivotal time, and now more than ever, you get to choose the lens through which you want to watch it all unfold. Or implode.

Are we headed toward a brighter future packed like a Hooters Energy Drink with a renewed sense of hope and global cooperation? Or is our species plainly doomed to be crushed under the corn syrupy weight of our own gluttony and ego and entitlement? Are we waking up just in time to save ourselves from ourselves, or is that fistful of sociocultural Ambien we downed all those years ago merely causing us to sleep-drive into a wall of nuclear asbestos?

Choose your attitude, baby. Because on the one hand, you can cruise through cool conscious hipster mags like Grist or Treehugger and Dwell and Good and the like, and be happily inspired by all the latest ideas for sustainable development and socially conscious tech -- from micro-turbines built right into the skin of buildings, to amazing new solar panels, cool prefab housing, better batteries, microcars, electric mopeds, eco-nightclubs, dual-flush toilets and CFLs and bamboo everything, wind farms and urban solar initiatives and LEED-certified homes and even some tentative positive ideas from Big Auto. Hell, even toxic monolith Clorox has a green line of products that's actually, well, relatively green. Go figure.

Every major newspaper site has a green section. Every intellectual rag features weighty thought pieces on how we might stave off the encroaching calamities. Every pop culture magazine pumps out a heartfelt "green issue," despite how said magazine is usually printed on sweet virgin wood pulp and coated in petroleum-based wax and Chinese-made ink and if you lick the pages you will likely get cancer of the teeth. But hey, check out that sweet profile of Leo DiCaprio. Mmm, grass-fed hunkiness.

The goodness is spreading. Nearly all formerly soul-deadening supermarkets from Safeway to Wal-Mart to Ralph's now have large organic sections and multiple recycling bins and swell-sounding sustainability policies to match their new, softer lighting and friendlier layout, all designed to create a more welcoming vibe so you can feel like you're not contributing quite so painfully to the global petroleum-based corporate mega-economy when you buy that flat of strawberries in January. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/25/notes062508.DTL

[The River]

1. Always A Good Read/Rant

from Morford.
TY