Forget Shorter Showers -- http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/discuss/4801/

Photo by Chris LaMarca

[...] We can all jump on whatever life-sustaining, world resus[c]itating
bandwagon we wish; but if our behavior does not change...well then? Our demands are the industry's purpose, becau[s]e that is where the money is. What we pay for, they produce. This will go on ad infinitum until we say stop with our cash (hence, our behavior), not our vote.
I used the word "addict" for a reason. What is it you feel you cannot live
without? And, once you answer that question, what is its footprint via
water, carbon, air and whatever other resources we are depleting as collective?

If you wonder why things don't change, look at what you pay for and why.
We all play a part in the character that is destroying the world. No matter
what we protest, no matter our good intentions, if we do not act as
described above, we change nothing.
You can see the comment at the following URL:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/discuss/4801/



Maybe we need to work a bit harder on distinguishing among needs (what keeps
us safe and alive), culture (good familiar home cookin' and even mon's
roast beef), and created WANTS (all the stuff in those relentless consumer
culture surround-sound ads - credit cards, sexy cars, seductive short-lived
widgets, fast food, no down payments, getaway faraway, just do it, I'm
worth it, syrupybubbly bad-for-your-teeth drinks, happyfication, sing-along
team songs) that persuade us that we should call ourselves (even in school
curriculum) "consumers." We can, if we chose, become discriminating
choosers of all the pieces of our lives: the food we eat (knowing more about
it), the clothes we choose (maybe those workers in Dacca, Bangladesh won't
have died for nothing), the products we buy to look better (are they
healthy?), the idea of endlessly renovating our spaces (old and homey used
to be charming), what's important about how we keep warm and cool and get
around (how can we reduce our fossil fuel consumption?).
All of this is possible and, now, urgent. Urgent if we care about the future
and our kids. Easy to find out since if we're here we're on the internet,
we can all can quite easily find how to be responsibly, ethically, fairly,
discriminatingly, honestly green.

I once read that to become vegetarian should take seven years: that it's
good to spend some time learning how to cook some things that are great,
that you love, that aren't meat. Then eating less meat (or no red meat, or
no meat at all) won't be much of a sacrifice. (And yes, it does mean being
willing to spend more time cooking. Indians and Asians are champions at
making fantastically delicious non-meat food: we can learn from them. Get a
good, sharp knife, and learn to be adept at chopping vegetables! Or get two
- and invite your mate, kids, friends to chop together.) You might discover
(as I did) that it's good food that's addictive, not just the taste of
meat.

 For a few years I taught a course where everyone had to do his/her
"Ecological Footprint" calculation – for some it was quite a poke in the
conscience - if everyone lived like you, the quiz asked, how many planets
would we need ? Most of the students, who recycled and therefore thoght they
were green, were shocked to discover that, even as students, they were up at
three or four Earths. It taught me some things, too. It's not really
comfortable staring at your own unthought-through habits and their
consequences. But it's a good place to start.

Good intentions are a good first step. After that, being an ethical
“unconsumer” is an ongoing adventure in discovery, creativity, chopping
and surprising new kinds of satisfaction. (I'm still working on it, but now
I can grow carrots and eggplants and can spaghetti sauce and bake bread and
make some pretty mean vegetable, lentil (+sometimes tofu in assorted Asian
styles) -spicy-saucy-dishes.
If you're up for new cooking ideas, one of my faves is the Moosewood
Restaurant New Classics cookbook – a mix of familiar and interestingly
ethnic food.
http://www.amazon.com/Moosewood-Restaurant-New-Classics-Collective/dp/0609802410
It can be fun to shop at farmers markets, or garden, and eat local, organic,
low-meat (or meatless), homemade, spicy, tasty, healthy
good-for-everyone-including-

planet food.

You can see the comment at the following URL:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/discuss/4801/P408/

DGR - Deep Green Resistance

Environmentalists fight as hard as we can to protect the places we love, using the tools of the system the best that we can. Yet we do not do the most important thing of all: we do not question the existence of this death culture. We do not question the existence of an economic and social system that is working the world to death, that is starving it to death, that is imprisoning it, that is torturing it. We never question the logic that leads inevitably to clearcuts, murdered oceans, loss of topsoil, dammed rivers, poisoned aquifers.

When most people ask, “How can we stop global warming?” they aren’t really asking what they pretend they’re asking. They are instead asking, “How can we stop global warming without stopping the burning of oil and gas, without stopping the industrial infrastructure, without stopping this omnicidal system?” The answer: you can’t.

Ninety percent of the large fish in the oceans are already gone. Where is your threshold for resistance? Is it 91 percent? 92? 93? 94? Would you wait till they had killed off 95 percent? 96? 97? 98? 99? How about 100 percent? Would you fight back then?

If salmon could take on human manifestation, what would they do?

What would we do if Nazis had invaded, and they were vacuuming the oceans, scalping native forests, damming every river, changing the climate, and putting carcinogens into every mother’s breast milk, and into the flesh of your children, your lover, your mother, into your own flesh? How much worse would the damage have to get? Would you resist? If there existed a resistance movement, would you join it?

Link to the book:
DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE: Strategy to Save the Planet 
by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen http://deepgreenresistance.org/

Derrick Jensen Movies: END:CIV

The Tyranny of Entitlement | Derrick Jensen | Orion Magazine

Derrick Jensen

Endgame

I’M CONTINUALLY stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do. ~ Derrick Jensen