SpaceCollective: recent activity

I love Stumble and the stuff I find as a result. So my new year's resolution is to actively reduce my imprint on the earth. Especially since I fly so often so have a relatively large footprint. But flying all the time also gives you a front seat to the impact of growth on the landscape. So while I have always tried to recycle etc, I am committing this year to a much more active change in lifestyle. I am moving to where I can walk to town and to a train to go into the city. I am aiming to not use my car except where absolutely necessary, buy more locally grown food (Which yes, means learning to cook outside a microwave) and if schedule permits, to get involved in my new community on an environmental level.

SpaceCollective: recent activity:
"Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn't easily moved. This human inability to foresee—or watch out for—long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begins to suffer.

- Ronald Wright, A Short History Of Progress, pages 108-109"