Are we willing to curtail habits we take for granted and see as our right? Will we pay more for environmentally safer products? Will we pay the higher taxes that will be required to mitigate or reduce damage from our style of life?

Some people, probably. A lot of people, never. I still see a lot of empty seats on transit and single car drivers on the daily commute. We want our convenience, freedom, and privacy. Maybe people have tuned out the sound of the alarm bells. Maybe we’re taking a break, a breather, before really getting serious about the problems we will inevitably face.

I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up within walking distance and now live within biking or easy driving distance of the University Endowment Lands. The bush, as we called it, was my second home and playground as a kid. We climbed trees, the taller the better, to the point where we could see the houses in the city to the North. We built campfires in any kind of weather. By trial and error we figured out the best branches and deadwood to use. And we explored endlessly.

During the 60’s and 70’s there were still rotting stumps of old growth with hollow centers big enough for several of us to climb into. And the new growth was strong and tall enough that a fall from the swaying tops we reached would have been sure death. We played swamp tag. We got stuck in mud. We overflowed our gumboots wading through streams. I smoked my first cigarette and had my first kiss in the woods outside my elementary school grounds.

Perhaps that’s why I have a mini forest of bamboo, small trees, grasses, vines, flowers, herbs, and vegetables in season on my patio. And weeds, plenty of weeds. It’s all greenery to me. When I sit at the computer typing and look out my window I see waving branches and hear rustling leaves.

The author of Confessions…, which I haven’t read yet, coined the term Economic Hit Man or EHM for the agent on the ground doing the dirty work of economic manipulation. I’ve never bought into a conspiracy theory mindset. But I knew people from the U.S. and former colonial powers and their local co-conspirators were not above treading all over millions of people to get what they need. To get power and keep power. To get rich. To live comfortably. To make a profit. To keep the engines of the vehicles and thus the economic engines of their countries moving.

How could anyone believe for a moment that invading Iraq was anything but a way to secure a significant portion of the world’s oil reserves? And there are plenty of other examples. Some of them trickle back to ordinary people in the materials that go into products we use daily like cellphones and laptops. Or in the fuel that goes into our vehicles.

But mostly we don’t think or worry about it. It’s easy to change a channel or turn a page when the evidence is presented in the media. Leave it to the people on the fringes to care about it. John Perkins issues a call to action for people to get involved. Like a lot of people, I have my own struggles and plenty to take care of close to home. So I’m not sure yet if or how I’ll try to change the world.

And I’ve seen obvious situations where people in a business should be recycling but are too lazy or cheap to take steps. For example, I worked in a print shop that threw away more high quality recyclable paper trimmings into the dumpster during a busy week than I recycle in a year. Despite warnings on the container about fines and penalties for putting recyleable paper into the bin, we did it routinely without any consequences. I’d be shocked if they aren’t still doing it today. They just didn’t care.

So I take my meager steps at home, because I think it’s the right thing to do, even if it’s inconvenient.  If I take a can of food to work, I bring the can home, tear off the label into my paper bin, and rinse it out.

I hope that the cumulative effect of a lot of individuals making an effort is making a difference.

I remember hearing about an economist doing microlending in South America and then the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and thinking, “Excellent!” I worked for a large Canadian bank and saw how hard getting loans larger than paycheck surplus savings was for small business people. If you didn’t have years in business and a ton of assets and guarantees to back up the loan, you were declined. The bank would be interested down the road when you were a less risky proposition.

Shift to the third world where people have no chance to obtain funds through conventional lending channels. So I liked the idea in principle, but haven’t done much about it. I’ve found an organization,Kiva, that uses the Power Of The Internet (POTI? I’ll work on a better acronym) to intermediate between individuals with funds and people seeking funds. There may be other options but I’ll focus on Kiva for now.

I can browse through lists of fund-seekers and select people I want to support for amounts from the $25 minimum up to the amount still needed to complete the loan request. I’m still looking and will post again when I have selected my first entrepreneur.

Why bother? The process seems lean enough that the intermediate organizations, Kiva, and the local partner on the ground, don’t soak up too much money before getting it into the hands of the entrepreneur. And the warm fuzzy aspect is that these people are trying to make a better life for their families in a tough world through business. I value their effort and method.

- a lyric from the Bruce Cockburn album Humans.

Even as we work hard to screw up the gift we’ve been given, the world is still a wondrous place.

I see this blog covering the physical and social environment that we share. There is a lot left to amaze on this planet. Its important that we save it from destruction by short-term plunderers. That’s the basic story of the physical aspect.

The social realm deals with a population that isn’t getting smaller. There will be more of us spread around the globe. We need to find ways to connect that transcend regional differences in history, culture, and religion so we can deal with the issues that are evident now and will be more pressing in the future as more people try to live within the closed system that is our planet, our blue green ball.

How I make this work here remains to be seen as I continue my blogging experiments.