I wouldnt want to pull the rug out from under anyone (or would I?), but I worry about us with our pretty little town, manicured flower gardens, and our certified organic holiness. Salt Spring Island has shades of the smug tones of self-congratulation... but we’re not as perfect as we think we are. Can anyone think that sitting pretty in their shambhalic gardens is enlightenment enough, while there is a massive struggle for mere survival going on, here, on our very own planet? Scientific consensus is that weve got, at most, a fifty-year window (many say more like fifteen) to make radical shifts away from fos sil fuel dependency. We can be using our resources and our connectedness to build those alternatives, now. Having been in Africa, where all those dire consequences predicted by climate scientists — pandemics, droughts, famines and resource wars — are taking place live, in real time, I am driven by an urgency that feels lunatic here. Very few people in this society seem personally disturbed enough by poverty and ecological collapse to actually take risks and make the significant changes that are clearly required for our species to survive. Yet, we are more responsible than any other society for the catastrophes that face our planet. How is that disconnect possible? I want to drag everyone on this little island to this brink, this edge on which I am living, so when people ask how Im feeling they can get a taste of what I mean when I say vertiginous. I have moments when I literally am nauseous, standing, feeling the room Im standing in reeling away from me. Its a pit-of-the-stomach kind of vacuum suck, where the unreality of all these padded surroundings is displaced rudely and suddenly. Yet. Im appreciative. I appreciate the people on the fringes here, who walk their talk, powering their straw bale dwellings with micro-hydro, growing their own food for the year in makeshift greenhouses and recycling water from their roofs and baths. Hail the eco-scientists, the green activists, and the maverick trades-people: these people are demonstrating how it is possible to shift into a more equitable relationship with the earth, with each other. The island is talking sustainability, were crunching down organic apples and we actually sing together at potlucks. All of these travels fellow travellers have embarked upon, to India, Guatemala, Cuba, Belize: these voyages have created connections all over the planet. Sustained by the Internet, our ability to meet in this global common ground is unprecedented, and goes a long way towards extending our altruistic networks, and plain neighborliness beyond our borders. There are many people on Salt Spring who are living principled lives. There are little community organizations set up here that were created out of the recognition that our small island is capable of great things: ‘Seeds for Malawi’ supports women farmers, buying tools and seeds with proceeds from their annual plant sales; a group of retired locals support buying solar ovens for African grandmothers. There are local doctors who spend a portion of their year in Africa, and former tree planters who have adapted their outback skills to help Doctors Without Borders. What we do have on Salt Spring is the remains of, and hopefully the beginnings of, an interconnected, self-reliant community. Where people help each other because they know they will be helped in turn, where the kind of changes needed to bring us into ecological balance are being worked at in a deep way by some individuals, and gradually, but surely, by the majority. The ripples caused by our actions in every moment dont have far to travel before they intersect. There is potential here.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 09:32:04 +0000
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