Friday, June 11, 2010

Humane Power


The wind blows across your face, sunshine warms you,  people standing by the road look you in the eyes and say hello,  when you reach your destination you feel like you have accomplished something, and you don't feel obligated to go to the fitness center after work to get some exercise – that was my experience biking to work yesterday in honor of Bike Walk Week.   This type of experience doesn’t just have to happen once a year in honor of a special week, it can happen anytime you leave your car at home and take an opportunity to spend some time outside, using the ultimate clean energy machine – our own bodies – to get to work.  

There a several reasons I don’t use this energy source every day.  The biggest is the time it takes me to make my commute this way, an hour and forty-five minutes or so to cover the 23-mile trip.  The other is the weather, when the temperature drops below 40 degrees, or when it snows or rains, the bike commute brings on some less pleasurable experiences.  These obstacles can be overcome through planning - by finding a place to live closer to work, or to design our communities to locate the places we work near the places we live, and through dressing for the weather.      

So the once or twice a week I decide to give up the bus for the bike, I am reminded what a future might be like when we design our communities for people, and not for cars.  That will be a future where we won’t hear another days worth of news filled with stories on the consequences of failed oil wells contaminating our oceans, the latest death tolls from wars fought to secure oil supplies, or people killed in car accidents on highways filled with traffic.  These humane powered commutes give me hope for our future.   

Thursday, June 3, 2010

The Petrochemical Age


In honor of the one year anniversary of the passing  of geologian Thomas Berry from the Earth, I thought I would share some quotes from his book EVENING THOUGHTS.  With the ongoing events related to the oil leaking from the damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico, it seemed appropriated to revisit Berry’s essay “The Petrochemical Age”.

The influence of the petrochemical industry on the human-Earth process is so significant that the period from the end of World War II  until the end of the twentieth century might be designated as the Petrochemical Age.  


In this period, much of the planet, including the land, water, and air, has become toxic due to petrochemicals.

Petroleum is used to make fertilizers and pesticides for the agricultural industry.  It is made into preservatives, varnishes, waxes, solvents, glues, and dyes.  Petroleum is also used in the production of electrical power.  As gasoline it is used in the internal combustion engine to drive our automobiles and power our jet engines.  Petroleum can be spun into fibers to be used in making fabrics for clothing.  (…).  Things as delicate as optical lenses and dentures, as well as machine parts could be made from a petroleum base.  Integrated with fiberglass, plastics could be shaped into boats, automobile bodies, even furniture.

Without the abundance of petroleum and its transformations through chemical processes, our energy systems would be severely diminished.  Our modes of transportation would largely cease.  Agriculture would be profoundly affected.  Our fabrics would be altered in their composition.  The scientific and medical profession would be radically altered.  

The use of this resource in the twenty-first century is such that, within a hundred years or less, some 80 percent of all the petroleum readily available will be exhausted.

(…), learning a way of life independent of petroleum may well be the most urgent issue before the human community at present.

(...), unrestrained commercialism, unlimited technological drive, and unbounded political expediency have been drawn together in the myth of progress that drives industrial societies.  

Nature was a sink assumed to have the infinite ability to absorb and renew any of the refuse of our industrial development.  The ultimate effect not only on nature, but also on human health has been disastrous.

With little concern for these natural processes, we have discovered how to take petroleum and use it for human purposes with insufficient concern for the limited abilities of nature to process the residue of these petrochemical products into natural systems.  Thus the toxins accumulate.

We do not hear the voices – the voices of the surrounding world, the voices of the entire range of natural phenomena.

The problem is how to terminate industrial plundering in such a way that we can go into a completely new sense of how humans should be present to the Earth.

What is available to us is the emerging Ecozoic era, a period of the integral Earth community when humans become present to the powers of the Earth in a mutually enhancing manner.  For humans to do this will require that we appreciate and honor the principle that the Earth is primary and that humans are derivative.  In our economics, in our healing, in our legal and political practices, and in our religious sensitivities, we need to recognize the primacy of the earth community.  


A vast new orientation to the universe and to the Earth will be needed to reorient the human community toward a viable future.