We are at a critical time in our existence upon this planet as continued fossil fuel extraction lines up head to head with preserving the last remaining areas of pristine wilderness, a clean water supply and a relatively comfortable atmosphere to live within.
This is the key issue we are faced with in the 21st century, the battle of continued growth against creating a more sustainable existence. It is a time that will call for great and brave leadership and our political representatives will need to be at their most authentic best in order to steer us through it, or more capable candidates will have to be found.
It is by no means an easy task because all our recent culture points to short term thinking and knee jerk reactions to crisis, as opposed to long term proactive solutions being put in place which ultimately are needed. If you live in a culture where it is OK purely to pass the buck onto the next government if you mess up without anyone being held responsible or culpable for their actions, then it is easy to see why the decisions are made that they are. What is needed is an all party select committee with experts in their field advising on the best action to take and not allowing lobbying from bias members of the fossil fuel industry purely driven by profit to affect policy.
Even then people will be scared, fearful and even terrified of the ultimate truth that the global society has been sold up the creek without a paddle with the idea that continued growth is possible in a finite world and that if you base all your policies on that fact then you simply can't lose. It is like continuing to back the hare against the tortoise when we all know what happened in that story.
Why I say brave leadership is called for, authentic leadership, is because sooner or later somebody is going to have to hold their hands up and tell the public the pure facts that the economy has been built on an energy source that is coming to the end of its lifespan and there is nothing, repeat nothing, to replace it with such a high calorific value.
What we see happening in the world now is a last desperate attempt to scrape the barrel of the fossil fuel industry at great cost to the environment. The oil spill by BP in the Gulf of Mexico bears testament to this, the Alberta Tar Sands come quickly close behind and fracking and continued oil exploration into places like Virunga and the Congo just continue to advocate policy that nature will ultimately pick up the tab to our gluttonous lifestyle. The problem is, is that we are a part of and live in nature just like everything else and so when our environment is polluted and wide open spaces shrink let alone the species that live within them, it affects us all directly.
Clean water the world over is in short supply, let alone in Britain, little or no improvements have been made in the infrastructure of our water supply certainly in the UK since there was seven times less the amount of people that are living on Earth today. Fracking will consume a large amount of water and pollute it for potentially decades to come. Instability within the ground structure is a possibility and having gas coming out of your water taps is a high probability.
Continued fossil fuel use will just continue to make us more populated and make us feel comfortable with the fact we are growing economically again as if there is no problem putting our heads back in the sand, but it will just mask an even greater bust coming along in the future to what we are being faced with now.
Unfortunately the majority of us are addicted to growth and all its niceties, but as with all addictions it highlights something within us that we are ultimately lacking and that quite frankly is love. Love for ourselves, our fellow human beings, other creatures on the planet and the Earth itself.
We have been conditioned to believe that once we reach 18 years of age we become adult and therefore are capable of making decisions that we believe to be right and just. However we are a society, certainly in the western world, that no longer goes through any rite of passage, we do not venture out into that same pristine wilderness to find out who we truly are and become the adults we are truly meant to be, we fail to connect with the Earth and our own souls. We remain as Bill Plotkin would put it, within 'a psycho-adolescent society', making decisions where we are not truly adult and this brings the dire consequences within our world we see every day.
Contrary to what many people believe, we all need personal development, we have all been conditioned in one way shape or form and are only aware of part of ourselves and not the bigger picture as to what it is to become truly healed and whole as an individual and capable of making truly responsible decisions. This is as true for our political leaders as it is for our criminals and ourselves, for anyone in fact who hasn't sought to find out who they truly are and where they fit in within the world. For anyone that has, you would know what it is to truly love this Earth and feel your soul and want to love and cherish both and not want to rape and pillage it of all its resources, finding out how to live in harmony with it and restore balance.
The Earth has arguably had enough of being plundered for its treasure of ancient sunlight, such continued borrowing of this magical substance will only leave us permanently in debt and doomed as a society. It is time for difficult decisions to be made and a future beyond fossil fuels to start to be put in place regardless of what this will do to the current state of the economy. It maybe time to hit Ground Zero and start again, people and planet have to be valued equally alongside profit. if not more so, and a new harmony sought for our population to live sustainably, the answers to our problems however as ever lie within our own community and the collective genius we have available to us.As for the likes of Cuadrilla and Soco International Ltd (the oil companies involved at Balcombe and Virunga respectively) it might be time quite literally to 'baulk 'em!' :-)
Our task as ever as human beings remains the same to be the best we can be and find our true life's purpose, only then will we begin to solve our world's problems.
If you are struggling to find your own life's purpose in amongst all that is going on in our world today it maybe time to invest in some coaching with me, why not
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Otherwise until next time.
Much love Sx.
