Winter Waning Wolf Moon
At the Woolly meeting last Monday I said it encouraged me that a movement had begun to build that saw protecting the environment as a priority personally and politically. Then I read the Pew and Rasmussen polls that said support for renewables and work against climate change has softened over the last six months to a year.
That contradicts my statement and made me sit back a moment. Of course, one way to interpret that data takes into account the sudden, severe shock that the financial crisis has dealt our country and so many families within it. With immediate peril something abstract and seemingily distant could have less priority. I imagine that’s part of it.
Another possibility fingers the cynical disinformation crowd that works so hard to discredit the science. They hope confusion and doubt will cause people to back away from the issue or at least set it down as one to complicated to consider.
The cold winter (.22 degrees above average according to Paul Douglas this morning) and thickening of the Arctic sea ice has affected some people.
Whatever the reason I do know that I have met more and more people who have dedicate serious amounts of time and energy and wealth to moving this country in the direction of Thomas Berry’s Great Work: making sure we see in our lifetime the transition from a malign human presence on the earth to a benign one. Whether an increasing movement or not, I’ve thrown my lot in with them and choose to remain there as long I have health and time. Numbers do not now and have not ever determined truth.
