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The answer when someone asks,

“What’s the alternative?”

 Earth Day, 2022

Yes, I admit it. I just wrote on Easter Sunday, but today is Earth Day, so I would like to pay my respects.

The Earth has been a wonderful home for a long time for so many wondrous species of plants and animals. And maybe, when we’re gone, it will recover and become a good home for some other self-conscious but possibly less destructive species. I hope so. The Earth deserves another chance to graduate from selfishness to love. If only we could have done that.

It seems this year we are again seeing some sizable demonstrations, with some brave souls getting themselves arrested. Millions of people around the planet are expressing their intense desire for survival through sustainability. We are being asked by earnest and deserving young people to invest in our planet. They are asking us to clean it up, and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them are out doing just that – to the extent they are able in one day. (Can’t make a habit of it; how would they pay the rent?)

They are asking us to think from Earth’s point of view about what we wear, what we eat, and what we do. As a result, millions of people will turn to Sustainable Fashion, stop eating meat, and start planting trees. Meanwhile, we will all tell each other the facts – like, for example, the fact that, despite all the COPs and protocols, international conferences and rebellions in the street, CO2 emissions continue to climb. Fact – half of all the excess CO2 emitted into the air over the last 300 years was put there since 1980. Fact – that means that half the problem we confront today was created AFTER the first Earth Day in 1970. Fact – the whole problem was created AFTER John Tyndall first told us about the greenhouse effect in 1859.

What are we? Stupid? Greedy? Well, way back in 2010, Stephen Hawking, famous smart person, said, “Mankind is in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.” And since then, every single indicator of stupidity and greed has grown worse. Unlike the resources of our planet, our stupidity and greed appear infinite.

But it’s not really stupidity and greed that will get us. It’s competitiveness. It’s our inability to resolve conflict peacefully. When we disagree about something like the role of CO2 in global warming, we have no way to think together in pursuit of the truth. We just establish our positions and pursue sufficient power to inflict our beliefs on opponents. We have no way of bringing together all the pieces of truth seen by all the billions of us into a more accurate approximation of THE TRUTH. And we have no way of analyzing and dovetailing conflicting interests. Instead, we compete. We fight to win. We take what we can get without caring about anyone else.

I guess Hawking would defend his analysis by asserting that we’re too stupid and greedy to think and resolve conflict cooperatively, but which comes first, competitiveness or stupidity and greed? Terry, Rebecca and I believe that our political system MAKES us stupid and greedy. Our system is predicated on the pursuit of power, not the pursuit of solutions. To see what we should have been doing since 1859, please read Terry and Rebecca Save the World. https://www.peacinstitute.org/grp

To read the book, use the + - slide to get the font the right size, then use your cursor to drag the page so you can see the part you're reading. 

To read previous emails, see Stevez E-mails at: https://www.peacinstitute.org/stevezemails

If you’re interested in the Global Resolutionary Party, send me an email. ([email protected]) The GRP does exist. It has a Federal ID Number. If several of you show interest, we can create an online forum. If any of you wants to run for office on the GRP ticket, we can figure out how to help you. I am increasingly convinced that nothing anyone says will have any meaning at all until we have a party committed to mediation, the loving way to manage power.

Violence starts with taking or winning without caring about the loser. The use of power without love is destroying us, and taking down the powerful won’t save us. Mediation is the antidote to the endless power struggle currently failing to solve our problems. Mediation is the loving way to manage power, but to do what we need done, mediators must have the power to bring everyone to the table.

Steve Leeper
http://www.peacinstitute.org/