“Mother Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts”

The subject of this post is a quote from a thought provoking op-ed by Thomas Friedman in Sunday's NY times, The Inflection is Near? A chilling yet inspiring piece that takes an surprisingly optimistic outlook on what might come out of this hellacious nightmare we are in. For the last few weeks I have been jamming into my little brain everything worth reading about the economic crisis (so I can begin to fathom the mess we are in) AND at the same, I am reading Hot, Flat and  Crowded, Thomas Friedman's call-to-arms about climate change and our crack-addiction to foreign oil and its impact. Note: This long, poorly structured sentence sums up why my head is about to explode. Trying to wrap my head around both issues is like dieting and quitting smoking simultaneously. There is nothing in anything I have read about either issue - the economy or the environment - that doesn't make me want to find a cave and start cooking up squirrel stew. In fact, I think there be a fast-food franchise idea here. I can picture "Squirrel-Stew-U-Likes" popping up in caves across our great land. But I digress. The parallels between the economic meltdown and global warming are a little scary. Take this from Joe Romm, physicist and climate change blogger, talking about the intersection of the two: Despite its alarming message I actually felt a little more hopeful after reading Friedman's article. The Pollyanna in me has been mulling that maybe, just maybe, out of this stinky, crappy, twisted mess, we can hit the reset button.  Maybe, we can start living as a society within our means. Maybe, we can get through the economic meltdown AND stop the planet boiling over at the same time. We have been living in a state of denial for a while, especially the last eight years. It's time for the reckoning. Friedman's point - and I hope to all that's holy that he is right - is that this could be inflection point. This is the point where we take some responsibility and do the the hard things that will fix the way we live and fix the planet. He calls it The Great Disruption. Friedman quotes Paul Gilding and Australian environmental expert: Who's feeling disruptive?