"The Silver Lining"

This from Discovery News


The Silver Lining
January 28, 2009

If you're like most folks these days, your reality is looking kind of warped. One year ago most informed folks around the world frowned on Americans for consuming too much and not giving a damn about it. Today Americans are smarting from economic troubles and consuming less. Is the world applauding? Nope. The world now wants us to consume more to stimulate their economieAughnaguns. Damned if we consume, damned if we don't. These are strange, twisted times. But before you rattle off all the economic arguments for this, let me say something from a more practical natural resources perspective: It's all nuts.

As much as it hurts, the economic downturn has been good for planet Earth and created a rare and wonderful chance for us to avoid a far bigger, global environmental calamity. Here's the big lesson of our times: When Americans consume less, there is less fossil fuel burning, less trash, less wasted water and less destruction of wildlife habitat worldwide, just to name a few effects. When economists and politicians, then, talk about stimulating the economy to return us to some fabled status quo, they are being foolish or dishonest. The status quo was unsustainable and leading us straight into a global environmental collapse.

So what we have here is not just a crisis but an opportunity. It's not just a dip in the road but also an intersection with another road which goes to a far better destination. I think the general concept our new president has for taking advantage of this opportunity is pretty good. It remains to be seen if we'll all pull together and make it work. This could be our last chance to do the right thing for our planet and those who will inherit it. So we must do it, you know. Now.
-Larry O'Hanlon