This is the show, and it's not going to get any better, any time soon, without you. SO STOP WATCHING THE TV AND GET ON BOARD!

Nick Kettles and Pat Thomas

Have you become a natural disaster junkie?  It makes compelling viewing doesn't it?

Check the body count for a few days after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Monitor news daily to see if the fourth nuclear reactor has blown up in Japan, after the recent tsunami.

Did you keep track of how many flights were grounded last year, when the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland erupted?  Shake your head as the Haiti earthquake death toll rose to 250,000 plus. Hold your breath over last year’s Sumatran earthquake and the resulting tsunami; would it be as devastating as the 2004 Indian Ocean quake/tsunami the force of which was helpfully measured by the scientists as being the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, claiming at least 225,000 lives? And what about those Chilean miners and their two months underground?

Be honest, are you secretly pleased by every new distraction that our earth is offering up with increasing frequency?

These are devastating acts of nature – for which we believe there are no explanations and over which we have no control. In many ways it is easier to live with the cold quantification of these disasters, the body counts, millisieverts leaked, the tonnes of wreckage, the cubic litres of ash, hours of oxygen left than it is to feel anything real.

Yet, perhaps, this is to be expected. The natural human tendency to stand like a deer in the headlights, in front of a truck rushing towards us does seem to beggar belief, but should we really wonder?

Afterall, Hollywood has done such a fine job of anaesthetising us to the reality of significant weather and earth based phenomena, with an endless stream of disaster movies, dating back beyond Towering Inferno from the 70s, that we are left unable to distinguish the difference between a tsunami in the film 2012, and the tsunami that destroyed so much of Sendai last week.

Emotionally numb we may at best be moved by one event – but dare we connect the dots and not just consider whether they are related, but whether we are culpable; whether human-created climate change is driving these disasters?

But how could they be?  A volcano in Iceland, surely can't be connected to an earthquake in Japan, or a flood in Australia?  We can relate, perhaps to a hurricane being linked to climate change, but a causal chain including earthquakes, and or volcanoes is harder to grasp and more often the domain of people who knock at your door and invite you into a discussion about the Old Testament.

And yet the possibility that the greenhouse effect causes the earth's tectonic plates to shift is something that serious scientists are now willing to speculate on, see here and, here.

It’s possible – but hey, why wait for the data before deciding what to do?

You know the moment it comes in someone's going to dispute it, and even if they don't, it won't lead to anything more than incremental change on a governmental level, so why not do something completely different as the basis for making your own mind up.

Granted, this something isn't that easy when your head's full of the latest news reportage, so you may want to switch off your TV set before you try it.

What we're proposing is that you listen to your intuition.  That's right.

Undervalued and at best recognised as a so called soft skill in the business world, intuition, or our gut instinct or sixth sense, is probably the most powerful barometer of what to do that we have today.

It takes courage to say, y'know, I don't care whether the idea that Climate Change is man-made is disputed, or whether there are in fact cyclical patterns of extreme weather historically, I'm still going to change my behaviour in relationship to the earth, because that's what my intuition tells me to do.

Today, our hearts tell us that humanity has a reciprocal and interdependent relationship with the earth, and that if we all acted in harmony with Her we would experience a fundamentally different world.

We'd cling less to dramatic headlines and the comfort of our TV experts, we wouldn’t blur the lines between natural disaster and man-made catastrophe, we'd sync into natural cycles and JUST KNOW what our place in all this was.

Humans are the only living things that compulsively live and work against their own natural cycles, and as such against their own well being. Homosapien is an entire race of Homer Simpsons sticking its fingers into a light socket over and over again to see if maybe THIS TIME we get a different result. Intuition cuts through this crazy behaviour.

Our hearts tell us that living simply and closer to the land is not just common sense but ultimately the key to lasting happiness and a fulfilled life.

That individual rights and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive, and that in fact loving service of others is the key to Self discovery.

Our intuition tells us to reject the idea that we are all helpless victims of life. And most importantly that we don't need another extreme weather event to verify our intuition to live in harmony with the earth.

As the earthquake rocked Japan and split open her nuclear reactors, Nick arranged a barter with his neighbour, to acquire his first Bee hive that will soon help to pollinate his family's vegetable plot and increase its yield.

Pat planted seeds. Just three windowsills and some pots – but in the middle of the city this is her Eden, her way of staying grounded and putting something back.

What does your intuition tell you to do?

 

 

 

Comments

[Corrina Gordon-Barnes]

Thanks for this. My intuition leads me repeatedly back to two places:

1) My plate. The food I eat, the love with which I prepare it and also share it with others, and how well it nourishes me and brings health.

2) My 'contribution footprint'. Just as we look to reduce our carbon footprint, we can also focus on increasing our contribution footprint - our unique way of sharing our passions with the world and making a difference in the lives of others. We're all so needed and it's our duty to make our gifts available and of service to others.

Corrina

[dave hampton]

Wonderful stuff, thanks so much Nick and Pat - i completely agree - intuitively.

My lovely friend Corrina (above) shared your piece and asked what i thought (or intuited...)

First, it is great that (for a growing number of us) our intuition is to live in harmony with the earth. Yesss!! :o)

This intuition points us in exactly the right direction - great - but sometimes i think it needs a bit of help with 'quantity'/ the maths/ the relative 'scale' of things? Especially when we have been living out of sync for a long while. We strayed a long way from 'Home' metaphorically ... and literally.

Sadly long distance travel is often by far the biggest bit of a person's pollution and consumption footprint. Inconvenient fact.

Air travel, despite 'everyone does it' despite the clean-looking kerosene fuel hidden safely away, despite all the huge technological aeronautical advances, despite the govt media and corporate PR, despite the educational and social and peace benefits - still spews out ONE TONNE of CO2e green house gas - for every 3 to 5 hours each one of us spends up in the air - if we fly.

To counter this - we would need quite a big 'contribution footprint' to use Corrina's word. Not impossible - just big!

The inconvenient/unwelcome truth is that no number of small plates of natural organic local friendly fair trade veggie food can provide us with sufficient 'goodness' or credit - to make a few flights better - or ok.

I don't fly. I know I am lucky not to need to. My invitiation is to supplement a healthy helping of intution with a teeny bit of maths - for seasoning maybe?

If a person's total footprint is say 25 Tonnes CO2e, and say, 15 T of that is from that person's annual flying - it makes sense - whether it's intuitive or not - (and I suppose my big point is that often this balance isn't very intuitive) - to focus on reducing the air miles habit before looking at the smaller bits of carbon on the plate.

Hope that makes sense - it's said with a smile :)

thank you