CHASING DOWN THE MUSE: More than words

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work… — Wendell Berry

The giant yellow orb broke the horizon, lighting the eastern sky, as the full moon rose.

Unlike driving straight into the sun, driving directly toward the moon is one of the wondrous experiences of life…for me.

On this night, the far-off moon seemed to direct my thoughts toward the earth and the impending Earth Day.

By the time you read this, Earth Day 2008 will have passed, and we will all have read and heard a lot about it and what we can do to protect this vast planet.

Events are planned from Tokyo to Russia to Los Angeles to Caracas and beyond. These events are intended to increase awareness and promote action. Will they? And for how long?

Too many of us carry our cloth bags to the store, but they never leave the car. We change to more energy-efficient light bulbs and leave them on longer. We keep buying and producing more “stuff,” but to what end? Is there, in fact, any end to massive consumption? Are these small things enough? Just how much can this planet Earth take?

As Paul Krugman stated in his New York Times op-ed piece on oil resources, we are “running out of planet to exploit.” This is true in far more areas than drilling for oil.

Too many. Too much. Too few. Too many people with too much stuff and too few resources, natural or otherwise. What are we to do? Even if you are a skeptic about climate change, there are other alarms going out. And whatever we as individuals can do to change the way we live seems painfully inadequate to the task.

Yet, ever hopeful, we must do what we can. If it is changing light bulbs to more energy-saving ones or carrying a net bag for our purchases or planting a vegetable garden or walking whenever possible rather than drive, we must do it.

Change will also lie in transformational technologies, like solar power, wind power, geo-engineering, to name a few.

We must spend our money on these new energy technologies rather than on military research (currently amounting to roughly 20 times what is spent on energy research, according to some.)

Change will take more than cloth bags and walking to work. It won’t take buying more “stuff” like Earth Day T-shirts and buttons. It will take laws and money. It will take changes in the way we live.

It will take vigilance by all of us, even my doppelganger somewhere down the street or across the planet, who is wasteful and/or does nothing. It will take more observance than just the one day a year set aside for Earth Day.

And so, I hope you will forgive my bending your ear one more time on this subject, days now past Earth Day 2008.

CHERRIL DOTY is an artist, writer, and creative coach exploring and enjoying the many mysteries of life in the moment. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at (949) 251-3883.