By Michael Beck

Unlike with the previous Simple Living America blog, I intend to contribute to Postconsumers regularly. As my main focus – and typical of how I gravitate towards the big picture – I will address what I frequently slip and call global warning. It’s a Freudian slip, honest: climate change looms so powerfully in my awareness that when I’m speaking publicly, I need to consciously remind myself to pronounce ‘m’ rather than ‘n.’

At this point let me advise readers who believe that human-caused global warming is unproven or ‘controversial’ that I will unfailingly displease them. Sorry about that. But the problem is that I am simply too scientifically literate to see the mass of evidence for climate change as any more controversial than it is for Darwinian evolution, or for that matter for any number of other unifying premises of modern science such as plate tectonics or the expanding universe. It’s real. No matter how inconvenient that may be for business as usual, no matter how many billions of dollars may get spent on misinformation, political rants or red herring sound bites, climate change simply cannot be wished away.

Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” enraged so much of the American industrial and political heartland precisely because it struck at the raw nerve of our national identity: we consume, therefore we are American. Our self image as the w
orld’s most successful country flows straight out of that cornucopia. Our national psyche expands or deflates in tandem with the GNP. So it’s no wonder that many people fear that the idea of climate change poses as much of an existential threat to our 200-year old American Dream as Communism once did.

At Postconsumers, then, we believe our best hope lies in gentle education, a gradual refocusing of society away from manic consumerism towards a more uplifting American Dream. In this vision possessions take on greater modesty, yet they easily satisfy not only personal dignity but also the yearning for harmony within our communities, with Mother Earth, and especially with the continued stability of our climate.

My future blog posts will range over this entire territory and will include, but not be limited to, the following:
* New developments in the science of Global Warming.
* The politics, not only of denial, but also of an evolving framework fo
r global cooperation.
* Creative solutions for clean energy and innovative techniques to reduce climate-change.
* Roles for the Postconsumers mindset (mindfulness, sustainability, etc).
* Suggestions for personal involvement.

* Other inspirational thoughts for an evolving humanity and sustainable future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo at right: Elizabeth Lake Canyon, north of Los Angeles. This fairly cool, wellwatered, north-facing slope is a relatively less common part of Southern California’s oak/chaparral woodland ecosystem. It is, in effect a cool-temperature-dependent microclimate. Therefore, it is typical of the kinds of local ecosystems most threatened by global warming.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~