Last year I wrote several posts about ‘turning green’ and why not everybody is doing it yet. But I really believe that more and more people are turning green.
One small indication is that the number of green blogs and websites on the Internet is multiplying so fast, now, that no one person can even attempt to keep up with them all any more.
It is a very good sign indeed. It is as though the revolution we have all been yearning for is finally getting going in earnest.
Mind you, every now and then I still find myself being sucked back into feeling disheartened about things. Things like the rapidly-melting polar ice caps, our lack of progress in curbing CO2 emissions and our corporate culture’s seeming inability to let go of its fantasy of eternal, economic growth and to embrace the goal of global sustainability instead. (If only governments would be bold enough to level the playing field for corporations by imposing limits, then I think a lot of them would start competing to be green. Right now they are all too afraid of losing their market share.)
But whenever I am tempted back into pessimism, I take another look at this wonderfully inspirational video clip of Paul Hawken addressing a Bioneers Conference.
I just love to watch that endlessly scrolling list of organizations working for a green world, for social justice and all the other causes that we ‘Cultural Creatives’ care so much about. There are millions of us. It is important to remember that. We don’t all necessarily care equally about exactly the same things. And we don’t all agree on priorities. But if you were to interview every one of us I am sure you would find a surprisingly huge degree of consensus about the sort of world we are hoping to create. And we are all beavering away, each in his or her own little patch, working in one way or another to bring that about. We are all envisioning a cleaner, greener, more peaceful planet where resources are fairly shared and co-operation is the ruling paradigm.
And I still believe it can and will happen. The signs are everywhere.
(Thanks to Pam Gallagher for the beautiful photo of a regular green visitor to her garden)
