What do Earth Day and Groundhog Day have in common?
April 22, 2010 by admin
Filed under Blog, The Lowdown on Green Marketing, Uncategorized
Today is Earth Day and it’s a chance to reflect on the state of our planet. I believe we are trapped in repetitive cycles of behavior that threaten our future and in my book, The Magic of Groundhog Day, I suggested that “It’s Groundhog Day on Planet Earth”
I wrote these words
Our civilization is unsustainable. We are going round faster and faster in circles while approaching the edge of a cliff. If we do not halt global warming very soon, we risk making our planet uninhabitable. You might be thinking, “What on earth has all this got to do with a Hollywood comedy released in the 1990s?” The simple answer is that our civilization is stuck in its own Groundhog Day, and it is taking us on a one-way trip to disaster……..
………. We are repeating destructive patterns of unbridled growth based on fossil fuels, and we are suffering from the delusional idea that economic growth and rising consumption are the answers to everything. Entranced in a collective Groundhog Day Effect, we are all living on automatic pilot as we drift toward ecological oblivion. The majority of people are focused on their personal and family interests without realizing that their well-being ultimately depends on the well-being of our ecosystems. We might be aware of the problem, yet we feel stuck and powerless to do anything about it. …..
…..We behave as though we are the only significant species on this planet. The rest of nature is simply there to be exploited for our needs. Another assumption is that our primary goal in life is to consume more. We measure our success by how many possessions we have and by their value. Similarly, we assume that we are only responsible for ourselves and our families, and are too busy to think of the bigger global issues. Mired in this narrow worldview, we are disconnected from each other and from nature.
On Earth Day let’s remember that we are part of our earth, not separate from it. Let’s remember that we are all in this together and that we should love and revere our wonderful planet, as it is the only one we have got!
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