Daily Loaf

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Fixing sprawl and redesigning suburbia- Grant Rimbey CNU explores a possible strategy towards improving existing sprawl. Fixing the sprawl that we have, along with sprawl demolition and recycling, are strategies that could be employed in the future as a new green industry.

Nation’s largest solar facility to be in DeSoto County by next year- Florida Power and Light is currently building the nation’s largest photovoltaic plant in DeSoto County, a $173.5 million, 25 megawatt solar generating facility.

Fresh: New Thinking About What We’re Eating screening – What’s wrong with the mega-industrial food industry- Struggling small farms, problems with food safety rules and the mega-industrial food industry, and a film about all of the above.
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Scattered about me are books and magazines. On one the poster child of the climate change movement, the polar bear swimming in icy clear water. Audubon chose the title Sink or Swim: Another Assault on the Arctic and How You Can Help Stop It. In all honesty, I think it’s too late. We are currently witnessing the fifth or is it the sixth mass extinction since life first emerged from the slime or rocks or whatever that latest scientific findings happens to suggest. But remember when compared to our life spans this extinction will take an insanely long time. So the urgency just doesn’t seem to be there, because if it did, then we would all be in the streets marching on Washington, D.C. and the United Nations demanding that something be done yesterday.

Another magazine, the April/May 2009 issue of Free Inquiry, has a time bomb on its cover. The number on the clock 6,790,064,816. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of August 16, 2009, at my time of 10:15 a.m., the human population is 6,845,146,634.  In 1960, it was 3 billion. By 2044, 9 billion. That’s a 6 billion jump in less than 100 years. For me, this is the number one problem plaguing Homo sapiens. There are just too many of us, which leads to greater and greater demands on water and food, both quite finite. And the energy demand will only increase GHGs if viable alternatives are not found – think China and India. If human population growth does not slow down, we will not have the resources to feed everyone. I have to smile when I think about the town hall meetings and the misinformation being propagated with end-of-life issues and death squads. If we don’t stop breeding who knows. Sounds like a great story for a movie, though. Oh wait! It’s already been done - Soylent Green.
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Since 2006, one book has held a prominent position in my library, as well as my nightstand because of its eloquence and forthrightness. That book is E. O. Wilson’s The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.  Environmental books have become as ubiquitous as Florida strip malls, so its position at the top of my all time greatest list (not included in this article) shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s a small book, which can be easily finished in a day, but it’s packed with such insight that its hard not to refer back to it. It has been my inspiration when I have strayed on past ventures in sustainability and good stewardship of the planet. In fact, many of my dinner guests have been subjected to readings from its pages.  So, I begin my article/commentary/blog in the same vain with an excerpt from the book.

According to archeological evidence, we strayed from Nature with the beginning of civilization roughly ten thousand years ago.  That quantum leap beguiled us with an illusion of freedom from the world that had given us birth.  It nourished the belief that the human spirit can be molded into something new to fit changes in the environment and culture, and as a result the timetables of history desynchronized.  A wiser intelligence might now truthfully say of us at this point:  here is a chimera, a new and very odd species come shambling into our universe, a mix of Stone Age emotion, medieval self-image, and godlike technology.  The combination makes the species unresponsive to the forces that count most for its own long-term survival.  (Wilson, 2006)

That part about the Stone Age emotion, medieval self-image, and godlike technology can fuel a discussion for hours. Welcome to the age of Homo sapiens, especially our last hundred years.
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