One of the premises behind this magazine for the past
30 years is that helping readers to rethink, reimagine and rework the
way towards sustainable, healthy lives is a better use of paper than
reciting a litany of the environmental and social problems we have
collectively created.
For about 29 of those years, we often felt quite lonely
in that mission. But not now! Everywhere you look or listen, someone
will be eagerly providing you with information, advice or products
designed to help you green the Planet, or at least your shopping cart.
Even so, the unprecedented public demand for green and organic products
is, as we report in this issue, far outstripping supply, reminding us
that we have just started along the path to true sustainability, in
spite of the green giddiness we’re currently experiencing.
And there are still some who don’t get
it. North American automobile manufacturers are still making
gas-guzzling behemoths that some nose- thumbers are still buying. The
Canadian government seems to have no sense of the urgency of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, no sense that they’re flirting with disaster
by playing their cynical game of politics with climate change. And there
is a huge element of greedy greenwashing involved with many of the
corporate environment-friendly claims.
But the dinosaurs and bandwagon hoppers
notwithstanding, a profound paradigm shift is underway that will create
– perhaps already has – fundamental and permanent change in the way we
live on this Earth, even after many people’s attention has moved on to
another flavor of the day.
Green entrepreneur and writer Paul
Hawken certainly thinks so. In his new book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
(2007,
Viking Press), he writes that something earth-changing is afoot. And
that, he says, is the newly cohesive and burgeoning collection (he
hesitates to call it a movement) of tens of millions of individuals and
groups worldwide who are creating a sustainable and just society. Hawken
writes that the principles and goals that underlie this “movement” will
soon “suffuse and permeate most institutions. But before then, it will
change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of
centuries of frenzied self-destruction.”
The next step in that reversal involves
capacity building. We must create the new infrastructure that will meet
the needs of a green society. Each one of us has the responsibility to
work within our respective communities of interest to ensure the
principles of sustainability become embedded at the deepest levels of
our collective psyche.
Wendy Priesnitz, Editor
Read Editor Wendy
Priesnitz's Weblog
