No fog to obscure the ragged cliffs diving into the water - dramatically shaped trees clinging to their edges. Rocky mountains alternating with redwood forests and rolling plains. My friend and I must have "oohed" and "aahed" for at least an hour at one point. Her daughter in this exhausted way said "Why are you guys so AMAZED?" Because, I replied, "it is amazing."
Queen Elizabeth was just visiting the U.S. and apparently is going to pay an estimated $20,000 to offset the CO2 put into the atmosphere by her jet in one of the most high profile gestures of a person paying an "offset cost."
In the upcoming documentary The 11th Hour, David Suzuki says that one researcher estimated the value of what nature provides (in terms of how much it would cost humankind to do the same thing) as $35 trillion per year. The combined economies of the world come to $18 trillion per year. We obviously cannot afford to lose nature's generous services.
The idea of paying for what we get from nature is so profound and yet, seemingly overnight, has become ubiquitous. I think we have reached the tipping point of global environmental awareness. We have finally woken up to the idea that the world is not ours to rape and pillage, resources are not something to kill for, and money is meaningless if we haven't air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat.
I vaguely knew that Prince Charles was an environmentalist but I had no idea that he has, for the last twenty years, demonstrated to the world how an alternate life can be lead. How we ARE capable of change and how we CAN make better choices. Yes he is privileged and has choices other people don't but how many are living of us are living by example?
In this year's Green Issue of Vanity Fair, the picture of our environmental situation is bleaker than in previous years but at the same time far more hopeful. It's as if, like in Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step is admitting we have a problem. That step is so huge, in taking it we're halfway towards solving the problem.
In the introduction to the magazine, the editor Graydon Carter writes:
It could fairly be argued that Bush has been such a dreadful steward of our environment that he more than anyone has energized the green movement to the point where it is in the early stages of becoming a revolution.
Like anything you don't appreciate until it's gone, I think a lot of people never noticed the steps that have been taken on our behalf to protect our planet. By assuming that people didn't care, our current administration has incidentally prodded them to finally take notice. Bravo!
Prince Charles, with steadfast patience, scrutiny and personal sacrifice has committed himself to showing us that we MUST account for the cost we inflict upon the environment. Certainly, we all can't pay $20,000 to fly to another continent, but neither can we pay for the actual cost of our gasoline, food and Nikes. In "The Rise of Big Water," Charles Mann reports that in China, some people are ALREADY paying a quarter of their income for water.
Clearly, our current economic model will have to change.
