My Sixth Cornerstone

My Sixth Cornerstone:
Shall We Be Heroes, Or The Worst Generation Of Parents In The History Of The World?
Personally... I think "heroes" has a nicer ring to it. Let me go back to my preface to the section on my Three Insights. I was discussing the natural emotional obstacles we all face to addressing our lives with excellence head-on. We worry: What if we fail? Isn't it easier to strive for less and minimize the risk? And I answered:
No, in the long run, it's harder on you to take the easy route. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our collective approach to the greatest challenge this or any other generation in human history has faced: climate change. I've been forced to add a sixth cornerstone to my life -- environmentalism. In my personal life, I am saving up and making changes to my energy consumption and carbon emissions. In my social and professional life, I've committed to share what I've learned to anyone who will listen. And so I address it here. Quite unimpressively, but like most of us, it took me far too long to properly own up to the stark reality that wiser members of our global society have been trying to get into our short-sighted human brains for decades.
Like many of life's great "a-ha" moments, this sixth cornerstone -- which I largely ignored in my first four decades of life, aside from a decent voting record on the subject -- is so much more important than my other five cornerstones that it reveals them as self-centered and small-minded in comparison. It has been yet another example of a known truth among the truly wise, which is: A person seeking real knowledge and growth is frequently humbled.
Our collective environmental negligence has thrust upon us a responsibility that no previous generation has faced: The responsibility to save future generations from a potential extinction of our own creation. We are on a clear course to leave our children a life far worse than ours if we continue to ignore the obvious signs and established scientific facts about the precarious state of our planet. If you have the courage to read it, there is nothing more important you can do with your day than read Global Warming's Terrifying New Math from -- of all places -- Rolling Stone Magazine. Can't get the cold hard facts from politicians? Go to Rolling Stone Magazine. That in itself is a sign of the times...
And if you want a lighter appoach -- with both good facts and good humor -- I highly recommend you visit the life's work of the voice of Doctor Noize's own Bottomus and Lenny, Ben Evans' YERT site.
You should read the details, but here's what the Rolling Stone article says, in a nutshell: A majority of climatologists agree that we are very close to a tipping point of no return regarding our environmental pollution. This moment will not be catastrophically discernable to most citizens, which presents the great conundrum: We are going to have to respond to facts with our intellects to solve this problem, instead of respond emotionally to an obvious impending armageddon with our biologically built-in crisis response. Humans are great at joining forces for emotional reasons; not so great at joining forces for intellectual ones. We're going to have to evolve into more rational beings who see the world as it is, and less emotional beings who see the world as we want to see it. And we're going to have to do it in our lifetime or our kids will face the consequences.
Unfortunately, there will be no clear-cut moment when aliens hover over our planet in giant spaceships telling us they are the universal stewards of the earth, and they will destroy humankind to save the planet if we don't stop burning oil immediately. If that happened, most human beings would get scared and stop burning fuel. There would be a brief but trying adjustment period where we developed alternative energy sources with our incredible human spirit and ingenuity. There would be some difficult economic ramifications for some people -- mostly people who make a ton of money right now in the petroleum industry -- and we would temporarily have to live a very different and less comfortable life of less transportation options. This would alter business drastically. But five or twenty years later, we'd have an entirely updated transportation and power industry that allowed the planet to survive. It would be a blip in history, and a heroic moment.
Conversely, we could look at this as a tremendous business proposition for this country. Whether our motivation is scarcity of natural resources, dependency on foreign oil, or a wise response to scientific observations and facts, the best long-term response is clear: The first country to develop and mass produce economically viable clean energy -- and sell it commercially on a large-scale like petroleum -- is going to be very, very rich. And those who continue to focus on "last century" sources of fuel will become poorer. This approach, of course, requires us to look at our economic future in twenty year terms, rather than two year terms. Long-range planning and thinking is not a human strength, and a look at the average American credit card debt shows that we are no exception.
So whether we're responsible parents or not, the truth is that we are the stewards of the planet. We must take bold and immediate steps to take care of the earth. If the world community continues to decide not to take responsibility for stewardship of our world, life as we know it will cease to exist, and we'll deserve it.
There are some politicians and pundits -- and a small minority of scientists -- who disagree about the projected dire consequences of our current consumption of fossil fuels. I am not a climatologist, and presumably neither are you. There is a remote possibility that all the smartest scientists across the world have gotten together to play the greatest practical joke on humankind in history. Maybe they're in it for the money -- although if you're examining financial motivations, you might at least consider that Chevron and Exxon and the like make billions from oil and gas, while these supposed left-wing scientist professor tricksters make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if you're following financial incentive to throw skepticism over bold claims, maybe you should check your math.
Or, there is the less remote possibility that pundits, businesspeople and politicians are telling you what both you and they desperately want to hear: That you're great, we're great, the planet's great, and you should just feel free to go about exploring your own interests. I suppose, on that score, the environment may ultimately offer us -- one way or the other -- the most authoritative judgment on one of our great social and political questions:
Does pure self-interest and capitalism -- pure competition over cooperation -- create the most excellent human society? If the answer is yes, then there is no reason we should not continue to allow oil companies to drill and produce wherever they want, and there's no reason we should not continue to buy massive amounts of oil to fuel our gigantic American cars every day and drive them to our neighbors' house a half mile away.
Don't get me wrong. I believe in competition, and I believe in capitalism. I know first-hand that some people work harder than others to earn their goals and cornerstones in life. But I also believe in disciplining and regulating our consumption to save us from gorging ourselves to death. Let's fast forward a few years. Your children or grandchildren will learn the answer to this debate. It will not be a theoretical answer. Will you stake your children's and grandchildren's future on those possibilities?
I think of my children whenever I ponder the harsh sentence the Earth will deservedly impose on us if we continue to treat her with casual disinterest. Ask yourself what you'll say to your children in 25 years if you are too self-absorbed to insist on the changes to your carbon footprint that climatologists have informed us for years we need to make. How will you feel if, once you finally look up from your own personal business, the storm is here, and it's too late to stop it? What sort of apology will you give when you look into the eyes of your children or grandchildren with the knowledge that we could have stopped it, but treated their quality of life with casual disinterest and didn't?
"We didn't know" will not be an apology our children will accept. They'll have history books -- e-books, probably. These books will tell them that we know right now what we need to khow -- that we need to reduce our collective carbon footprint immediately -- but that we inexplicably and hedonistically decided we were too preoccupied with our own short-sighted self-interest to pass our beautiful world on to our children. History books will have little empathy for early 21st century politicians, businesspeople and pundits who tell you what you desperately want to hear: that global warming is a scam, or a natural part of the earth's cycle that is not man-made. History will be honest, and paint the rest of us as weak-minded fools and gluttons. We'll be the worst generation of parents in the history of the world.
Don't fail to look something in the eye just because you really don't want to believe it's true. Educate yourself. Be honest to your kids. Inaction born of ignorance is not honesty; it's fear, it's laziness, and it's shirking your responsibility to your children -- and mine.
Instead, take bold steps to help yourself and your kids appreciate and strengthen our national character -- our extended community as Americans. Realize that out of our unique and wonderful American strength comes the responsibility to make good use of the opportunity it provides for us. Make no mistake about it: We are the wealthiest people in the world. We are the most educated people in the world. We are the most powerful nation in the world. And thus we are the nation who will rightfully be praised or blamed by history as those who lead us boldly out of -- or shamefully into -- irrevocable and disastrous climate change.
Shall we be heroes, or the worst generation of parents in the history of the world?
Go be a hero. Today. And... Thank you.

My goals are both personal and professional. Personally, my wife and I have a goal of giving ourselves a responsible carbon footprint within three years' time -- and use it as an opportunity to educate our kids about it. We're exploring and implementing ways to reduce our carbon energy consumption. We're saving up for solar panels and an electric car. In three years, I want to have a tiny carbon footprint, a mere fraction of the one I have now. I am writing this publicly in part to shame myself into doing it.

Professionally, I have been trying to figure out a way to inspire environmental responsibility in my audiences without being a boring preachy family musician. My hope is that I can embody it more than proselytize it. Instead of singing tacky songs about saving the planet, I'd love to tour around with a system that gets almost all its power from the sun. Now that would be cool. If anyone has any great ideas for me... let me know.

Thanks so much for hearing my thoughts.

I'm working toward incorporating more environmentalism in my personal and professional life.