Hot, Flat and Crowded

One of my favorite quotes is by Winston Churchill: “I’m an optimist, it doesn’t make much sense to be anything else.” Imagine all that he went through in his lifetime and that’s what he had to say (I don’t actually know when he said it, so perhaps it was after the war. I tend to think he said it in the midst of war!)

With that in mind, I want to shamelessly plug the latest book by Thomas Friedman:"Hot, Flat and Crowded." I just finished reading it and think everyone in America should be required to read it. In it, he lays out just how desperately our world needs a green revolution but also a really practical, optimistic vision of how it could come about (and help our country to be the best kind of global leader - for the good of all!) If you’re like me and you’ve bounced back and forth between “this is too much to take on” and “how bad can it be?” well….Friedman helps you to get out of that ping pong game with an honest look at just what we need to do to save our planet. And it does need saving. And it’s going to take all of us. And we have to do it now.

Before you write this off as the lunatic ranting of the girl voted “class crusader” in high school, please read the following speech written by a 12 year old Canadian girl to a rapt audience at the 1992 earth summit:

Hello, I’m Severn Suzuki, speaking for ECO – the Environment Children’s Organization. We are a group of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds trying to make a difference: Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money to come here five thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across the planet because they have nowhere left to go. I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my dad until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct every day – vanishing forever. In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rain forests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry about these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you….You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now desert. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!...
At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us: not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share – not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? Do not forget why you’re attending these conferences, who you’re doing this for – we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we are growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying “everything’s going to be all right,” “it’s not the end of the world,” and “we’re doing the best we can.” But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities?
My dad always says, “You are what you do, not what you say.” Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you. Please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you. " ("Hot, Flat and Crowded" pg 724)

Please, let’s do it for our kids. We can no longer afford to put it off.