Sustainable Earthfest?

Earthfest: And how is this sustainable?

This weekend was Iron Range "Earthfest", ostensibly showcasing  and encouraging "sustainability".  This picture shows the United States' primary problem; its fundamental building structure is the unsustainable use of fossil fuels.It is the problem most Americans cannot understand; the way we live and do everything in the U.S  can never be sustained as it is now. 

Despite the good intentions of the organizers, the Iron Range itself is the perfect example of non-sustainability. Ignoring such obvious signs such as the oversize vehicles popular here, one  needs to ask some really fundamental questions. Why are people here? Why do the communities exist? What are they based on?  The answers are fairly obvious, of course. There is only one reason these communities exist and that is resource exploitation. And no, taconite lasting another century or so does not make it "sustainable". All the fossil fuels, food and other material feeding the great bloated cow  called modern America is built on over-exploitation.  Hauling the average pound of food 1500 miles by truck automatically makes it non-sustainable. But basing local income on resource exploitation is by definition non-sustainable. The Iron Range, is in fact, an example of the very definition of non-sustainable. It exists to tear a resource out of the ground and send it elsewhere and for nothing else. In this case, placing a band-aid over an amputation doesn't work. 

The Earthfest board also turned down money from the Sierra Club so as not to anger the mining companies. This, of course, is called co-option, and it undermines the meaning of Earthfest as a "grassroots" organization. It is no longer grassroots when it must show allegiance to the most rapacious organizations on the planet. It is having Ratko Mladić  sponsor a human rights event. It also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of  sustainability; like most Americans, they assume that life can and will go on the way it has since the 1920's...consuming more and more. Now, of course, if we just recycle and compost the world will be saved. This simply is not the case and it is especially true for the range.

Earthfest should choose another name.

Happy Easter
As my child once said while telling the truth only the youth often speak, Easter is a holiday where people eat chocolate bunnies, paint eggs and eat ham. So this morning I wish to say this: I don't want to hear imaginary stories of a vaguely known Yeshua of Galilee rising from the dead. What we have is a story, repeated and never seen, where a couple ladies go back to a cave, see a rock removed, see no body, and then start spreading the rumor the person has risen from the dead. Somehow this tale, told by a stone age desert cult of fanatics, passed down repeatedly and  becoming the official truth by a committee vote of the late Roman Empire, has meaning for mine and other's lives. As the holiday has become an excuse for purchasing more plastic crap, processed sugar, smoked pork and marketing to children, we now get the cliched pictures of praying hands and myths.

I sit this morning in a city, surrounded by skinhead methheads, SSI receiving addicts medicated by drug dealing psychiatrists,redneck drunks with oversize trucks, harley riding baby-boomers dressed like gay leather porn stars, groups of children looking for hidden plastic containers filled with crap and the occasional devout cult member tottering off to church to worship the imaginary deity. I am  obligated to enjoy the holiday.

I am not.

The culture, a seething mass of commercial trained, tv watching happy robots who buy things they don't need to fill the emptiness of their souls, is at its zenith of freedom as we hand 10 year olds cell phones and flat-screens to watch psychologist designed marketing campaigns aimed at forcing parents to buy more plastic crap to fill the landfills of the world.

The supposed adults destroy the world to gain an adrenaline rush driving large metallic objects, fueled by hydrocarbons which might end this great destructive circus we call civilization. They proclaim freedom, wearing overpriced commercial products, sold to them in a marketing campaign designed to implant delusional images in their passive minds and hold them in an eternal debt cycle.

So here are some numbers for everyone to think of:

Around a minimum of 16,000 children will die from starvation today.
About 1.5 species it took eons to evolve will be killed off today; this will be forever.
America has around 5% of the worlds population and uses around 30% of the world's energy; most of it is wasted.

Happy Easter.