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March/April 2006 Editor's Viewpoint
From the Editor: It’s Noah’s Fault!

Miriam Knight

If Noah hadn’t gone and built The Ark we wouldn’t have to worry about global warming… or anything else, for that matter. As it is, trying to figure out how to keep your head above water in this day and age is enough to make your head spin. If the stakes weren’t so high, curling up in a fetal position and pulling the covers over your head might seem like the only sensible response. Unfortunately ignoring the unpleasant side-effects of chasing the good life is one of the things that got us into deep water in the first place.

We stand today at the edge of an abyss, and that is more than just a figure of speech. The sobering article by Mark Goldes [Runaway Methane Release from Melting Permafrost Threatens Human Life with Extinction Within 50 Years] puts this in perspective, but this is just one more of the many warnings from scientists and humanists around the globe that have been suppressed or ridiculed by our government and its corporate puppetmasters. We are almost certainly on the brink of catastrophic climate changes.

Global warming and natural disasters, petrocollapse, deforestation and desertification, toxic substances in our food and environment, increasing disease and birth defects, poverty and exploitation in the name of economic development, mental illness and depression, crime and drug abuse, war and violence at home and abroad – this is the price we are paying for the obscene enrichment of the few as well as for our own unbridled consumption.

We can close our eyes and deny any causal connection, but that doesn’t make it all go away. Getting righteously indignant and finding someone to condemn or to blame won’t solve the problems either. In an equally sobering interview in this issue [Unlearning the Blame Game] Gay Hendricks suggests that we put blame aside and ask ourselves “What have I been blaming others for that I need to own responsibility for creating?” What choices do I make day by day that perpetuate these problems? How do I need to change my lifestyle and my values to create a world that is sustainable for everyone?

Make no mistake; preserving our American lifestyle at the expense of the rest of the planet is not a viable option if we ever want to live in peace, security and good conscience. For a nation whose leadership professes Christian values, we seem to have conveniently ignored the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” There is a saying in the Ethics of the Fathers that asks, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me; but if I am only for myself, what am I; and if not now, then when?”

Just think what we could do right now if we focused all our effort on solutions rather than on blame and covering our backsides. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me …” – certainly not governments or big business. The solutions must start at the individual level – how we shop, how we vote and how we relate to eachother.

We must seek out and understand the truth of our situation – however unpalatable – and come together to deal with it proactively. We are at a critical juncture in human history, facing choices that will test us – both individually and collectively – more harshly than at any time in recorded history. The tests will be harder because our capabilities for creation and destruction are orders of magnitude greater than ever before. If we fail these tests, the consequences could be extinction – not of obscure plant or animal species, but of the human race.

So yes, it is Noah’s fault, but if you don’t want to end up on some rooftop with water swirling around your feet with no one responding, we’d better start patching up the holes in the fabric of society and the planet.

---Miriam Knight