You Learn Something New Every Day

Live Earth: where do we go from here?

I had the pleasure of watching the Live Earth concerts on NBC tonight. It was pretty cool to see three hours of TV in which the majority of the material was pro-Earth, pro-environment, pro-love, and highlighting problems and showing possible solutions without resorting to violence or sex to make it “entertaining.” Even the commercials mostly had a green theme. The other 99% of the time, even when you watch an educational show, the commercials hype junk. Seeing the Live Earth show made me feel connected for the first time in a while to the billions of you all out there who really do care about the future of the world. Sometimes it’s just a question of getting connected. And that is the role the Internet can play—to help us connect.

Throughout the show, it was emphasized that the question of global climate change has been a matter of debate for years, but that now there is definitely a consensus that the climate is being radically altered by human activity, even if it’s not always a warming effect, and that we don’t have much time to stop it. But the World Wide Web is key to reshaping history.

When industry brought poor workers together in cities, they used this new unity to go on strike for fair treatment on the job, and later on, for a democratic society.

When the radio and telephones became popular, news spread quickly and millions of people simultaneously said no to World War One, playing a major role in stopping it.

When TV beamed images of black people being beaten and Vietnamese children being bombed, people refused to stand by, and societies were changed forever.

Now, we have another “brand new medium” that holds the power to link people together across the globe, and can help us in the struggle to save it. I dedicate this blog to that effort. What will you do?

We’re just getting started, folks. Keep your eyes open, because when I hear a major newspaper reporting that “the nutritional content of America’s vegetables and fruits has declined during the past 50 years,” I think it is no wonder that autism rates are going up, cancer is on the rise, or that asthma is getting more common. With those less nutritious fruits and veggies accompanying more hormonally altered/irradiated meats and fish with rising levels of mercury, it’s no wonder we are sleeping less, needing glasses more, feeling more anxious, less confident, even getting cancer more often. It’s not a coincidence. We need to do something.

Here are a few sites to check out:

Slow Food

Zero Carbon House

Not Just Global Warming! There are other things we should be paying attention to…

TreeHugger - for serious environmentalists

If you want a plethora of articles and resources on the subject, you can always check the Digg environmental news page. You’ll find a lot there.

Goodnight for now!

July 8th, 2007 Posted by Michaell at 12:10am | Debate and News, Concepts and the Future | 2 comments

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