We are all star dust. From the searing hot liquid magma inside the earth to the dying polar bears in the arctic, from the rainbow in the sky to the enigmatic Mona Lisa, from the first microbe to the most powerful man on earth are made up of star dust. We are all connected. Human beings in their unbridled hubris forget this basic fact. Human beings in their insatiable greed, devastate and destroy our only living home, our mother earth. This volume is an effort to connect the dots.
We seek the connections between energy, environment, politics and geopolitics. We seek the peaceful coexistence of human beings on earth, in harmony with nature. We seek ways to protect our mother earth which is being devastated by ecological degradation and climate change. We ask the question, why should we use fossil fuels, which write a death certificate for earth. We ask what do we do if fossil fuels, which built modern civilization, run out. Do we have a plan B? What is preventing the use of renewable energy as an alternative?
If we continue to fight resource wars endlessly will it not lead to a nuclear winter? If we fight among each other for religious, ethnic, linguistic… differences can we have peace on earth? Is peace possible at all? What is the future of our children, our grandchildren? Will they have a future? Are we destroying their future with our rapacious greed? This volume will raise all these questions. This volume will also present some meaningful solutions to the crises we collectively face.
Countercurrents.org puts forward a world view that energy intensive globalization should end and it must be replaced by a low energy, ecologically sustainable local economies. If humanity is to survive, the destructive system of capitalism and consumerism must be replaced by an economic system which is based on just equitable distribution and need based use of resources. We strive to reach this goal with our motto, “Educate! Organize! Agitate!”
This first volume of Countercurrents.org in print contains some of the best articles published in the website for the last few months. You can order it HERE
Binu Mathew is the Editor of www.countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org
Thank you so much, Binu, for putting in your best effort. I’ll be frank that I grieve every day for our collective continual losses on this planet and worry that the future will be something like “Soylent Green” followed by “The Road” scenario. So tragic and scary! … I have a ten month old granddaughter. She is wondrous to me, but even if she didn’t exist and I didn’t worry for her individual future, I’d still be equally concerned for all life in the future of this planet. … It doesn’t even matter that I’ve given it my best shot to preserve and foster life, such as when I sent expensive, heavy, military grade, woolen socks to the Lakotas facing 30 degrees F. below zero during their Dakota pipeline protest. It doesn’t matter that I donate food and other supplies to homeless shelters. It doesn’t matter that I try to live low on the consumption scale and so on. … That’s all ego-stuff if I start patting myself on the back for doing whatever I do know is absolutely right to do. So nope, we just carry onward in a pathway that we assume is best and hope that a sufficient number of people join in our ways to swing the world back into a better direction. Frankly, in my opinion, there is no other way forward other than to maintain a focus, whether involving some personal hardship or not, on the grand totality that we must all serve to promote a good life on and for our Earth.
We will and we should keep fighting until the very end
I understand your feeling, and I agree, Sally. Two of the initial tasks in the painful situation are 1. spread the word, and 2. get organized.
The effort will definitely bear fruits because as countercurrent is of the people, for the people and by the people ( paraphrasing Lincoln) and people are powerful. The effort of the staff and editor has the capacity to mobilise the latent people’s power into formidable resistance force to protect humanity
Thanks Countercurrents for the excellent initiative. It was needed. I have the hope that someone will come forward to translate the articles in other languages, and someone will publish the translated version with a low price tag, someone will take those to the common readers having no access to English. Thanks again to the editor of Countercurrents, to all connected to Countercurrents for the creation.