Recently, radio newscasters have reported that drought has captured 78% of America’s arable land. Resulting from our cultural decisions that have exacerbated climate change, every species’ habitat is impacted, the glaciers are melting, and our global food production systems are stressed. At the current measure of 392 parts per million of CO2 equivalent, we must reduce that down to 350ppm to survive. Whatever combination of strategies we use individually and collectively, each of us must actively create solutions for a more sustainable world.
I put on my “fossil fuel detecting glasses” and realize I’m “wading” through black goo every time I turn on a light, strike a match to light a burner, eat industrially produced food, or drive to do an errand. Most everything that runs our economy is based on fossil fuels. With my glasses, food with high fructose corn syrup created by the industrial food industry, our heating or air-conditioning systems, or a car powered by electricity or gasoline become pools of oil when these turbo boosts of energy are used. Our consumptive lifestyle in the US is equivalent to 4.05 planets[1] – AND we only have one planet!
Throughout centuries, and in many cultures, the observation that everything we do impacts everything else has been deeply held and ingrained in our DNA. But our current path of disconnection to ourselves and each other became culturally ingrained more than three hundred years ago with the onset of the industrial revolution. After World War II, an outcome of the industrialized food system policy “to feed the world” increased our national disparity of income. We now have national food injustice, pandemics of obesity and diabetes, and the dissolution of social and ecological communities. For instance:
• The $6 Billion Farm Bill that supports mono cropping propped up by fertilizers and pesticides destroys both our rural communities and the innate farm knowledge held in those communities.
• The industrialized corporate food system is destroying the topsoil — the slender nutrient medium that transfers its nutrients to the foods on which we depend for survival.
• Lower-income areas have less access to healthy, affordable food and inner-city communities only have access to processed food that indentures them to disease and marginalization.
As a result, the gaping chasm that must be addressed from “here” to “there” is a very real one. The supposedly endless oil pipeline drives climate change as well as the deep decline of our infrastructures, transportation, and food systems. As Wes Jackson says in his book, Nature as Measure, “After 80 to 100 centuries of a decline in our terrestrial dowry, and at a moment when the decline is at an all time high, it almost appears as though nature has invented humans for two purposes: to return nutrients to the sea to become sedimentary rock again, and to return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning the fossil fuel. It is ironic that our actions in the name of progress are accelerating the return of this planet to conditions similar to a few billion years ago.”[2]
So how do we participate in cleaning up our own contribution to this mess? How does each of us rediscover our personal and collective power to make a difference?
Deciding to go on a fossil fuel diet to reduce my global footprint, I notice the place where I live – my food and my possessions – and I consider my impacts on all the people and ecosystems that have been so horrifically damaged and marginalized. I have committed to cross a bridge and be one of many who will lead us out of a fossil fuel culture and into a solar society where we can replenish each other, our systems, and the world. And I am committed to wearing my fossil fuel detecting glasses always!
I breathe deeply for a few minutes and consider how my long-term participation can help this transformation. By aligning my values and passion to take back my personal power, I can invest all of my capital that includes intelligence, experience, assets, and the ability to educate and enroll others.
So I make lists, and attempt to read food and product labels (with unreadable multisyllabic words). Because I want to know what I’m eating, I advocate for labeling genetically modified (GMOs) and processed foods. I undertake activities that are more in alignment with my work and am committed to creating sustainable food infrastructures that will grow healthy, local food for all. We have to get products more specifically labeled, stop buying what we don’t really need, and find a way to responsibly dispose of (or recycle) what we already have. Julia Butterfly Hill once said there is “no away in throw it away!”
Anyone can focus their passion to support “community benefit” by using the power of all of our assets (everything we have that is worth money) to make investments in any arena that nurtures and protects our global commons. Every dollar defines our economy. So whether your passion is to grow fertile arable soil, healthy food and watersheds, climate stability, thriving and habitable ecosystems, vibrant communities, cultural values of creativity – or art, music, empathy, dignity, or practicing democratic values – you are growing vital systems.
Steps to take for powerful and positive impacts through financial actions that support community benefit include:
• Reassessing your values and drawing out your passion by understanding what motivates you. Capture your values by journaling, exploring your heritage, meditating, or naming what you love. What are your strengths? What patterns of behavior define you and what would you like to change? What brings up strong emotions? What do you fear or love in the world that captures your imagination? Through this reflective process, what areas call to you to make a lifelong commitment? With this inquiry, you can begin the processes of focusing all of your capital to respond to that call to action.
• Grow your financial management skills and align them with your area of passion so that you are effective in using your financial power to create the change you want. How do you spend your money? Is how you spend your money aligned with your values? How do you overcome personal issues around money? How can you begin apply all of your capital by including your intelligence, experience, assets, and the ability to educate and enroll others? You can start by identifying others who share your concerns and passions and investigate communities of purpose around your commitment. Then, to build your financial capacity, you can learn to budget, look at self-directed IRAs and ensure that your money is held by local banks. You can request from your fund managers the criteria under which your investments are held in your portfolios and align those criteria with your values.
• Align your impact investing with the infrastructure vulnerabilities in your area of passion. What and where are the infrastructure vulnerabilities that are connected to your commitment? What are the systems involved in your area of concern? How would you investigate being of service in remediating some of these vulnerabilities? Can you educate, advocate, or become a policy leader in that area? Once you have made a case for a particular investment, then seek other individuals, communities and agencies to participate in your strategy that have the capacity to shift the system or remediate the vulnerability.
On an energetic and spiritual level, we can also learn from the teachings of our indigenous elders. They understand that we are one living system and we must protect all living beings. They give gratitude to the spirits of life, and are thoughtful about all of their relations with each other and the natural world. They consider the impacts of their actions on the next seven generations, as should we.
Although what we think is often what our culture thinks because we are embedded in it, we need to realign our perspectives and behavior to ways that ecosystems work. We have the ability to make individual and collective choices and can participate in active debate, build vital infrastructures for the Commons and appreciate the stewards among us. We can challenge the status quo and provide support for each other to bridge our behaviors to responsible and sustainable ones.
Let’s exchange fossil fuel diet recipes as we grow towards a receptive, focused way of life, crossing over the bridge from a fossil fuel culture to solar systems. This will require investigation, evaluation, education, collaboration, and investing and acting from our own innate personal power. We must educate ourselves to train teachers and trainers, who then teach members of their networks. We can fill in the chasm from here to there by honoring and valuing interconnectedness and our relationship to community as we offer our gratitude to Mother Earth.
This is the work of the rest of our lives.
Article by Theo Ferguson, the founder of Vital Systems (www.vitalsystemsca.com) and the creator of the curriculum, Owning My Money, Saving My World.
Article Notes:
[1] Footprint Network/Trends/ United States/ accessed August 13, 2012, www.footprintnetwork.org/images/trends/2012/pdf/2012_unitedstates.pdf
[2] Wes Jackson’s quote from: Nature as Measure book, COUNTERPOINT, Berkeley, p. 29. http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Measure-Selected-Essays-Jackson/dp/1582437009
