New Clear Vision

Where We Stand Two Months After Fukushima

by Jan Lundberg

As we plod along daily in this time of great change, we activists for the Earth often feel paradoxically that nothing is changing. More and more of us fear the clock is ticking faster and faster toward extinction. At the same time there are clear signs we should soon expect a better way of living in balance with the Earth to come about fairly soon.

No one has hit the right lever, it seems, to allow everyone to “break on through to the other side,” as the Doors exhorted. We see tragic trends of destruction persisting at the same time that small bursts of awareness often illuminate a growing number of people paying attention. Some needed an impact in their personal lives to be brought low off their material cloud, while others have steadily kept learning and expanding their awareness of the big picture. The question for those asking is: “What will it take?” (more…)

Despite Appearances, Are We Headed Toward a Better World?

by Kent Shifferd

With the 20th century having been the bloodiest in history, and with bombs falling in Libya, explosions in Iraq, Hamas rockets falling on Israel, and a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, the answer to the question of whether peace is possible seems an obvious “No!” But if you take the long view and look at the totality of trends that have been going on more or less unnoticed for two centuries, it could well be a “Maybe.”

Consider this: after thousands of years of warfare, the first organized peace societies in history began to form and work in the early 19th century.  By 1899 their efforts resulted in the calling of the inaugural world peace conference, and out of that came the first-ever court to adjudicate disputes between nations, the so-called “World Court” (its actual name is the International Court of Justice).  By itself it was not enough to stop World War I, but some 22 more trends developed over the century and are ongoing today, which when viewed together make the 20th century not only the bloodiest, but also the century marked by  more progress toward controlling war than in any other in history.  Ironic and paradoxical, yes, but it was a century of peace. (more…)

‘Heartstorming’ as an Antidote to Denial

by Priscilla Stuckey

We know it’s getting worse; we’re not climate deniers. We’re well informed and aware of the facts. And yet we go about our lives as if nothing has changed. We live the same way we lived five years ago, before the wealth of new climate science confirming that the situation is worse than first thought. Maybe we travel even more than before or live in a bigger house than we did then. (Guilty on both counts.) What’s wrong with us?

We’re obeying the hush-hush rule on climate change. When the President can’t even utter the word climate in his State of the Union speech, at a time when climate change presents emergency levels of economic, health, and national security risks — and that’s just in this country, never mind the millions of people in other parts of the world whose homes and lives are already lost and endangered — you know something is seriously wrong. Even Stewart and Colbert seldom devote time to it. (more…)

A Time to Keep Silence … and a Time to Speak

by Debbie Ouellet

The older I get, the more in tune I become with the finite measure of time — not just for me, but for the place and planet I call home. This earth calls to me — from the most basic joy of placing my hands in dirt to bring life into my garden — to considering the enormity of the threats against this planet’s future. My poet’s mind tries to reconcile the awe of nature and all she has to offer with the fear that this all could one day end. Generations to come may never know the abundance of nature as I have over my lifetime.

This April marks two events close to my heart and soul: National Poetry Month and, on April 22nd, the 41st anniversary of Earth Day. How are these two events connected?

The great bard himself, William Shakespeare, said, “And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” If poetry isn’t about life, this earth, and our connection with it, then what is it about? (more…)

On the Virtues of Self-Sustaining and Simple Living

by V.I. Postnikov

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.” – Rumi

“The environmental crisis is the crisis of aesthetics.” – James Hillman

“The poet knows of no ‘waste’…. Ecopoetics is the way of thinking economically.” – Hwa Yol Jung

It is the right time for poets and artists to engage in economics. We can’t allow the greedy and self-important “experts” and “economists” to push the world to the brink of catastrophe. A lot has already been written and said about the impending collapse — I won’t repeat it.

The idea is that the systemic collapse could be prevented, or, at least, alleviated, by invoking an inner artist in everyone and directing the artistic creativity to the dismantling of the Mega-Machine. Roughly speaking, in order to survive, we need to decentralize the economy as soon as possible by reducing it to an individual craftsmanship. I understand all the objections and losses involved, even fierce opposition, but the gains are superlative. Ultimately, people will see it as the only strategy, whether pre- or post-collapse.

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Reflecting on the Rebirth of My Birthplace

by Raffi Cavoukian

A siren song is this Cairo freedom fire, the Tunisian spark now a roaring flame. A new Mecca in Tahrir Square.

I close my eyes and wander to the city of my birth, and I’m just eight years old in the heliopolis my Armenian family called home, playing in the Cairo sands, my father’s 1940s Studebaker winding up the road to the pyramids. And I’m now back in this moment, wondering what exactly is this social media liberation hour we’re in? The words come like this: (more…)

In Search of a New Beginning … Before the End

by Randall Amster

Undertaking even a cursory review of the news queue evidences the apocalyptic overtones in our collective midst. In the most recent additions to the canon, 2010 ended with semi-sardonic coverage of the so-called “Snowpocalypse” and its aftermath, and 2011 began with perplexed musings over the “Aflockalypse” in which birds and fish seem to be dying in odd ways due to mystifying causes. Not long before, we had the perceptive invocation of the “Shopocalypse” by Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and next year’s 2012 allusions promise to spawn a new generation of nomenclatural evolutions.

While we may be tempted to dismiss the suffix “-ocalypse” being deployed much like “-gate” as an all-purpose distortion device, on another level we can also perceive that its very utilization as both a linguistic tool and interpretation of concrete outcomes is telling about the times in which we live. We’re actually in good company on this, at least historically speaking, as the sense of looming apocalypse has been woven into the fabric of Western civilization since its earliest days of recorded reckoning. And there certainly has been no shortage of cataclysmic harbingers in the modern era, from the inception of cinema itself to the invocation of the “mushroom cloud” as part of political theater. This is, in short, our cultural talisman, and its influence upon us is palpable. (more…)