greenguru.org

It’s true, the times they are a changin’ and the giant field of green jobs: jobs that produce something vital to our future like food, clean water, and energy, is blossoming with opportunity. In the green movement we are re-defining what’s important. Jobs that take care of our basic needs are what Americans are going to be seeking out in the future. Whether it’s the economy, climate change or peak oil, we are bracing ourselves for big changes; changes in our lifestyles, changes in our incomes, and changes in our worth. For a list of green-collar jobs like those in organic farming, alternative energy, alternative fuel, and water harvesting, go to www.urbanhabitat.org/node/528.

People ask me quite often how I think they should prepare for a future of food shortages and high fuel prices. Are we going to all lose an average of 30 lbs. like the people of Cuba after the Soviet Union cut them off? It depends, is it going to be a future where we have been visionary and acted ahead of events, or a future where we have let events overtake us? I don’t think you can compare our present lifestyle with that of a carbonless future. It seems impossible, but didn’t our President at one time, say, “we are going to the moon in this decade!”? Why can’t we say some 40 years later, “We are going to be energy independent in this decade with wind and solar power!”?

No one can predict how we will survive what comes, but what is vital to our survival is strong, visionary leadership, and the willingness to live within our means and our descending carbon quotas. Ours is a future where ingenuity and creativity will replace apathy, self-reliance will replace self-gratification and community gardens will replace golf courses.
I have to say that I’m actually looking forward to this dramatic shift in resources, I think it might just give us an invaluable sense of collective meaning and individual purpose, and that is something many of us have been craving for a very long time.

Quote of the Month: “We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.” -the slogan on t-shirts worn by people in the office of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights