Sunday, May 2, 2010

Earth Policy Institute

I was doing some research on Arctic wolves today while my porn was downloading and I see that I'm deluded if I think there will be an Arctic wolf in Labrador. Not a chance. They probably never existed in Labrador. I figured I would see a wolf and maybe it would be an Arctic wolf but unless the wolf hired a single prop plane to visit The Hudson Bay then there is no chance in the world I'll see an Arctic Wolf in Canada outside of a zoo. It would be like looking for a bald eagle in the Hampton Beach Club Casino.

The Arctic Wolf exist so far north it takes three days of flying to reach their habitat. Really, they live near the North Pole. On a map of their habitat you can't even see the United States. I want to point out that Labrador, the almost inaccessible part of Labrador is in the far lower right hand corner next to the Hudson Bay tag. I am about 1500 miles from that point and it would take a jet engine on my 1969 Econoline to get to the little dot marked 2006 trip way up at the top where there are known Arctic Wolves. This is from one of the few devoted Wolf researchers named L. David Mech

The latitude circles are getting awfully small at that point. It's like 5000 miles from New Hampshire over totally uninhabited tundra.

So, that's just a trip few people in the world get to take and they all have $20,000 disposable dollars.

Anyway, looking at Mr. Mech's site I saw a link for the Earth Policy Institute and decided to see what kind of hippie agenda they were promoting. This is what I found..

"The United States completely restructured its economy within months once it decided to enter World War II, changing the course of the war. We, too, can change the world, but we need to start now. The choice is ours—yours and mine—to either adopt Plan B and move the world onto a path of sustainability or go along with business as usual and allow further destruction of our natural support systems. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.

The overriding Plan B goals are to:

- stabilize climate

- stabilize population

- eradicate poverty

- restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems"


I found it very interesting that Lester Brown, the Institute's president chose to compare the mobilization of America in 1941 to what we are capable of in the sustainability field. Brown probably witnessed that mobilization first hand and while I've witnessed mainly sloth and drunkenness I did watch the WWII Ken Burns series and agree that it was an incredible effort. When I first watched it I felt that yes, Mankind is capable of the kind of mobilization needed, but lately I think it was precisely this kind of mobilization that has run amok into a compulsive production and consumption and reproduction. So, it's a double edged sword like a power so great that it can kill or heal, but it can't do both.


As if I needed something else to read I've checked out Brown's book, "Plan B" The words "Saving Civilization" appears about five times on the back cover. The opening paragraph details how the arctic saw an area twice the size of Great Britain melt in one week.

A "catastrophic" water main failure in Boston just happened. 2 million people boiling water like they did in 1740. Malaria is looming. It'll be fixed but when it rains it pours.

These events relate to the central mission of my life to experiment in low impact modes of living. Maybe I'm a little radical and that would explain the unanimous disapproval of my living in my van. I can see the point the Police are trying to make but it does sting a little when you've got research supporting the theory that an apocalyptic event is on the horizon and only a radical (See WWII) kind of change in lifestyle will prevent it, and if I try to take the advice of Lester Brown and Al Gore then I've got the the police banging on my van door. Ok, more than half of the RV gypsies were drunks and stoners and junkies, but we were all essentially low impact people, playing guitar and crying ourselves to sleep.

I'm about to get kicked out of the library now so I'll take this up again later. Please check out the EPI feed I've put on. I think I've got too many blog feeds as it is. I know people have to work. I'm trying to make this easy on y'all.

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