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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Do what makes you feel right
  • Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 16:28:15 -0500

DO WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL RIGHT

The British Petroleum oil well drilling catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico
could turn out to be for the good. That possibility depends on several giant
IFs. IF the enormity of our continued reliance on oil for our energy needs
sinks into the collective consciousness and causes many of us to make serious
changes, and IF the oil industry finds that there is diminishing profit and
increasing liability in drilling deep-water oil wells, and IF the members of
the DC Whorehouse and their corporate customers understand that the present
course is a calamity, then through seeing the horrendous environmental,
economic and social damage we may find the will to do the right thing.

Which in this case is reducing our reliance on oil and increasing our use of
renewable resources.

What will that require from each of us? Well, how about pledging to drive
twenty fewer miles each month for the rest of this year? And then how about
raising the number next year and in each subsequent year? How about making a
survey of all our energy usage and pledging to reduce that usage by, say, ten
percent the rest of this year, and more next year? How about replacing just
one night of television each week with reading and discussing these issues
with family?

In the end, as with recycling, bicycling, turning down the thermostat in the
winter and up in the summer, our actions will be predicated on what makes us
feel right. If we don’t take the energy issue seriously on a personal level,
if we don’t do these things because if makes us feel right about ourselves,
then energy improvement won’t happen and we will end our lives with our
grandchildren dealing with the issues that we blamed on others and to which
we paid only lip service.

Whether the issue is voting, recycling, bicycling or learning how to do more
with less, we must do what feels right, what makes us feel good about
ourselves. If we reach deep we can find that contentment.

It starts with us, that unblinking, noble person in the mirror. Individually.
If we wait until everybody is doing the right things we will die with those
things undone.

This is our time.



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