The Viridian Revolution

By Thor Janson

The religion of our present capitalistic and materialistically oriented civilization is economic growth. It is estimated that the world economy will expand fourfold in the next forty years. The fuel for this economic growth still comes from nature and natural resources. Already we have destroyed more than half of all the planets tropical and temperate forests. Half of all the wetlands and a third of the worlds mangrove forests are gone. Twenty percent of the coral reefs are gone and another twenty percent are endangered. And right now we are poised for the biggest boom in world economic expansion in history with the inevitable proportionate acceleration of the holocaust of the natural world. My dictionary defines the word holocaust as:

destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. The use of this word pushes buttons but nevertheless I think that it is appropriate to describe our acceleration of the destruction of nature to provide the raw materials for exponential economic growth. In the year 1000 the human population was about 270 million souls and the world economic output was about $120 billion. By 1820 the population had grown to about a billon people and output was around $690 billion. Over this eight hundred year period per capita income had only increased by several hundred dollars. But then the industrial revolution exploded upon the scene and rapid economic growth along with increasing exploitation of our natural resources- took off. It took all of human history to arrive at the 7 trillion dollar

world economy of 1950 and from there the exponential acceleration of these trends has continued with little hesitation. Since then all the major charts showing global change have gone into an accelerating acceleration curve: water use, paper consumption, fertilizer consumption, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, ozone depletion, loss of tropical rainforests, great floods, loss of biodiversity, and on and on. By the year 2000 the human population had swelled to 6 billion and economic output had increased to an amazing forty trillion dollars. The size of the world economy had doubled since 1960, and then doubled again. Economic output was at 55 trillion in 2004 and economic activity is projected to quadruple by 2050. There is no doubt about it: we are in an exponentially accelerating acceleration curve towards some kind of cosmic moment of truth. In the year 1800 nature was perceived to be vast and virtually limitless. During that century we managed to extinguish the great herds of buffalo and the skydarkening mega-flocks of passenger pigeons. Stellers sea cow went extinct due to human predation- within years of its discovery. As we are propelled into the 21st Century species extinctions also become exponential. The planet has not seen such destruction in sixty-five million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. The great question for us today, greater even than how to win the worldwide war against terror, is how can we continue on our present path of economic expansion without ruining our planet?

Needed: A Green Manhattan Project for the 21st Century

Manhattan Project was the code name for the American project set up in 1942 to develop an atom bomb. The project culminated in 1945 with the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, at White Sands in New Mexico. Fear that the Nazis might soon develop an atomic bomb motivated the USA to invest the huge resources necessary to develop it first, and in a hell of a hurry. And we did it. Fear that the Russians would dominate the USA in space caused President John F. Kennedy to allocate the massive funds required to put a man on the Moon, and to do it quickly! We dont spend the big money to push forward technological advances until we are in fear of being destroyed or of being invaded by the barbarians. Now we are in danger of destroying the ecological support systems of our planet, the life system upon which human civilization is built, the foundation of our economy. What kind of global ecological calamity will have to happen before we feel the FEAR of imminent annihilation that will cause us to allocate the funding necessary for our ecological Manhattan Project? Katrina was not enough. The tsunamis and earthquakes have not been enough. We are so deeply in love with our economic growth that I fear that only a planetary emergency on a vast scale will be able to slap us awake and make us see the insanity of our present hell bent destruction of nature to power exponential economic growth. What might that be? Scientists warn that the Greenland glaciers are moving toward

the coast at three times their normal speed. The Greenland ice shelf sliding off into the sea causing the inundation of all the worlds coastal cities would probably do the trick. That would be a calamity of truly biblical proportions. Fear would grip the hearts of all humans. We would be forced then to re-think our way of living and to re-evaluate the way humans relate to our planet. A Design Science Revolution for Planet Earth: The Tellurian Transformation
Theres enough for all our needs, but not for all our greed - Lee Scratch Perry

OK. Finally humanity understands that we simply cannot continue to destroy nature if we are to survive here on Planet Earth. The Earth has shown us that there truly are limits to our growth. The Earth has shown us that She also needs to be taken into consideration. She needs Her forests and jungles. She needs her rivers to run clear and clean. She needs Her oceans to be teaming with fish and free of toxic human-generated pollutions. The Earth will teach us that humans are not here to dominate Her. Humans were not designed to manage the planet as if it were an industrial factory. The Earth is a living being. She has Her own way of managing the Planets metabolism. Of course, humans must eat, must cloth themselves, and must have housing. Question: How can we provide for ourselves while at the same time halt all further destruction of nature? Answer: Only by way of a technological

revolution whereby we transform our present ecocidic civilization into a biogenic one, which operates in harmony with the living Planet Earth. At present our civilization is addicted to fossil fuels and we are drinking ourselves do death. We need a 12 step program to help us to free ourselves from our present slavery to nature-destroying lifestyles. All our resources must be focused on developing a new clean source of energy to power civilization. We must find a way to recycle ALL our wastes and completely end pollution of the environment. We must revolutionize agriculture to make it fully sustainable while at the same time phase out all polluting agrochemicals. We have to develop a whole new philosophy about our place here on the Earth and write a new story about humans who love, cherish and protect nature. Our planet is designed to be solar powered. It has been operating that way for a long, long time. We must develop all our solar resources to provide the energy for humanitys economic metabolism. A worldwide energy grid to use our electrical power more efficiently would be part of this transformation. As part of our revolution we can eliminate poverty, which is the root cause of most human conflicts. We can develop worldwide housing industries, which can provide descent dwellings for all people. New ultraefficient and clean methods of providing food, such as the cultivation of spirulina, can be vastly expanded. Only God knows what we are capable of if we really roll up our sleeves and get to work. That we

will not do this until Mother Earth gives us a severe spanking is unfortunate. We are intelligent beings and we could have seen the writing on the wall and taken steps before catastrophe became imminent. But, I fear that we simply will not do so, so strong is our love of money and economic expansion. So, I am already dreaming of a future when mankind will become a positive force on the planet and we will forever abandon our devil-may-care abuse and desecration of this Sacred Being, which sustains all of our lives.

The 21st Century will be the story of human civilizations epochal Transformation into a new structure of synergetic and harmonic viridescence in loving embrace with The Creator and the living Earth. Crucial is the development of a new philosophy based upon the Golden Rule Plus. This would be an expansion of the Rule to include non-human beings and finally the entire living Earth. So always treat others the way you would want them to treat you, That is the message of the Law and the Prophets. Rabbi Hillel