Thomas Friedman: "The Earth Is Full"
Terrific article in the NYT by Mr. Friedman. We're all aware of the global sustainability crisis-- we've put too much pressure on the earth's ecological and energy/resource system. And it's no longer just a matter of fact and consideration, it's a raging, planet-threatening disaster. As I've said before on this blog, and as I will continue to say, we need to step up and do something-- change our large-scale behavior and the way we think about energy/consumption solutions. Our times demand it. Below is an excerpt from the article.
"You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.” '
