kicking television

did anyone catch the entire "earth 2100" last night? i only caught the last 45 minutes of it. i'm going to try and find it on the web and watch the whole thing. it deals with the possible environmental ramifications of our actions if we do not accept that our current way of life is unsustainable. i've been making this joke lately that my mom and other baby boomers don't really appreciate, but at least they laugh. the baby boomers experienced the most perfect period of life on this planet. they were raised during u.s. dominance and they matured and grew older when stocks were high, land was cheap and medicine was advancing. they could run their air conditioners all day and they could drive their inefficient cars as much as they wanted. but that period is ending. and the aftermath will fall on us.

i have no scientific data to back this up. but i'm not an idiot. i've seen changes in my life. i've seen the choices we have made about how we live, work and surround ourselves with exploits of life. so i wonder, what will change during my lifetime? i wonder if world leaders are determined enough/smart enough to really get a handle on the seriousness of the situation. do they understand what raising sea levels will be like? do they really understand how fast disease will spread when changing temperatures allow it to permeate and breed much more easier in areas where it used to be uncommon? do they understand that globalization will end overnight if our infrastructure is challenged and compromised? and it really wouldn't take much for that to happen.

one of the reasons i want to leave houston so bad is because i would love to live in a city where a car is not a necessity. i dream of the idea of waking up, grabbing a book and hopping on a train and reading the whole way to work, or listening to a new album. it would make my life so much easier and cheaper and also help the environment around me. i see all these condos going up inside the loop here in houston and i wonder, how do they plan on moving all these people around? cause each high-rise will have about 100-200 tenants and each one of those people will get into their car and drive to work everyday. they have no choice.

we've taken "the old ways" and we've industrialized them. what happens when we have to go back to the old ways? we'll have to have a garden and grow our own crops and possibly raise our own animals to eat. and think of all the advancements that have been stored in some electronic database that will be lost. it all seems so pointless when you think about it in these terms. why did we advance ourselves to the point where we ended our civilization?

and i'm not saying these things as a means of scare-mongering. this is real stuff. our actions have consequences. our choices have consequences. we never realized we were partners with the earth and maybe we never will. but the earth knows we're just renting from her. and she'll evict us eventually if we don't change. i know we have the technology to do this. but do we have the stomach? it's got to be our generation that mandates these changes, otherwise, when we're 70, we won't recognize the world around us.

so what changes can you make right now around you? well not big ones. but you can change your light bulbs. you can insulate your house and install thicker windows that don't leak. you can grow a garden. you can ride your bike or take the bus/train/lightrail if you can. i know in texas that's not easy/plausible. you can use re-usable bags instead of plastic bags. you can turn down your water heater a few degrees and maybe your a/c too. that's also not easy in texas summers. i don't have any grand ideas for your everday life. those will have to come from somewhere else. but imagine a world where your car is electric and you drive to work/home and you plug into something like a carport that is outfitted with solar polars that are used to recharge your car. those are the kinds of ideas we need to get behind.

anyway, i just think our lives will be so much simpler when we do make this leap. our generation will experience the worst. we'll have to work out the kinks and pay the highest prices for this change-over. i'm ready to do it. i can't wait to see it.