think globally, act splendidly

It's hard not to have some fear, in a world with more people all the time sharing a decreasing amount of good stuff. The math isn't rocket science - smaller pizza divided by more people at the party equals, at the least, an embarrassed host and more likely some hungry guests. But the ways in which we feel it manifest around us are numerous and constantly evolving like endless flakes in an April nor'easter.

Education - To get into university or graduate school, you have to look better than the other candidates, of whom there are more now than ever. Your parents know/feel this when they sign you up for competitive entry kindergarten programs that have homework and achievement tests (yikes!). The teenagers feel it when they do 163 extra-curricular activities on top of their already large homework burden. The college graduate feels it when she knows she has to come from a big name school, have excelled there, worked for the U.N., spent time doing field work with hardworking indigenous people somewhere below the equator, have 8 years work experience packed into 3, and have an undergraduate thesis as long as a Tolstoy novel. This is competition for a scarce resource (grad programs and big time schools) to ensure our seat at the table in a class- and scarcity- conscious society. I'm not speaking for or against schooling as an institution (eye-rolling is allowed here), but I think the education system is clearly being affected as it becomes a scarce resource.

Food - Speaks for itself. We see the images on TV still, with children far away not getting enough calories to survive and thrive. It's happening here in North America too, especially in big cities and in the rural South. I know we're all aware of how restaurants and stores toss food away, but how do we feel about throwing away food in a world of hungry folks? We're privileged by accident of being born where we were, and others are hungry because of the same random placement in countries that begin with the letter Z.

I'm not sure what to make of the scarcity thing, besides to recognize that we all feel it at the edge of our fields of vision. It's the background in the wars that rage about access to water and food, oil and minerals. It affects us here in housing prices in desirable neighborhoods, the gangs of politicians in L.A. and Phoenix engaged in turf wars for water control, huge numbers of applicants for underpaid non-profit menial jobs, paving national parks so more RVs can come in each year, oxygen bars to compensate for terrible air quality outdoors, and much more...

If nothing else, I see the manifest scarcity in the world as a call for cooperation and being honest with ourselves about our collective predicament. We can plan towards a more positive future if we accept where we're at, namely that there are more of us on the earth than the fragile ecosystem can ever support in a long-term sense (more than one more generation, I think). By positive, I'm not promising that all will be sunshine and suburban soccer leagues. Instead I mean acting based on the best information we have in the present, combined with wanting a healthy and satisfying future for all us homo sapiens, not a small group of us at the expense of others. I mean recognizing that working ever more feverishly to advance our immediate physical comfort and security, we are generally decreasing everyone's ability to have a liveable, pleasant future. Overfishing to stock up against a future famine doesn't make sense if we know that the fish stocks will soon collapse completely.

Let's bring talk of a more positive future into our personal discussions, the cocktail parties, the newspapers, the magazines, the streetcorners, and everywhere else. Let's ask the big questions - where are we on the timeline of human history in terms of resources? Where do we want to be headed? If we can't tell where we are or what's going on in the world around us, do we want to keep on the same path that has brought us here or do we want to change course? Let's look all the kids in the eye and think about what we'll have to tell them when they grow up about what we choose to do now.

(This post is dedicated to my friend Jeff in California, who has encouraged me to write with "more bite" about some of the ecological analysis that we've been talking about over the past 5 years. Thanks for the nudge :-)