68 / Limits To Growth

Human beings are "different" from all other creatures, since our activities are not limited by any "natural" constraint. Though we are part of the natural world, and dependent on it, we can create our own world. And do.

Given this, and our radical freedom to choose what we will do, and how we will do it, it would be nice to establish some principles upon which our actions should be based.

This concept, simple enough logically, but completely contrary to what has been called "human desire" (the desire to get and take whatever we want, whenever we want it, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead), is a focus of the work of the Club of Rome.

Their most famous book is probably "The Limits To Growth," published in 1972. The idea that there are limits to growth, and that we should bind ourselves to them (since nature does not bind us), remains a "good idea."

67 / Desalination

If there is such a thing as a "right" relationship between the world that humans create, and the natural world, the idea that human beings should "live within natural limits" might be cited as a fundamental premise of such a "right" relationship. Ian McHarg, author of Design With Nature, advanced this thesis (and proposed it as a basis for future construction of the human world) in the late 1960's.

Water, so essential to all life, is available within the natural world, and human beings have traditionally captured water for use within the world they create by locating water sources that are part of a natural hydrologic water cycle.

Desalination, to which the City of Santa Cruz City Council is about to make a contractual commitment at its meeting tomorrow, is a water source not limited by the usable water that may be produced through the natural hydrologic water cycle. Instead, desalination treats the oceans as a "water mine," and all of this water then becomes potentially available for diversion into the world that humans create, avoiding "natural limits." Usable water becomes one more "industrial product," in effect created by the application of massive amounts of energy to the raw materials of the seas.

In this arena, the "limits to growth" might not be the amount of raw materials potentially available, for the oceans are vast, but the ability of our planet to support the greenhouse gases produced by our industrial efforts.

One of the facts about desalination is its dependence on the intensive use of energy. Initiating new energy intensive projects as the foundation for future growth seems contraindicated, in the face of the global warming crisis that threatens the continued existence of human civilization on Earth.

66 / The One World Alliance

For those who might want to go "around the world" in the way I have just done, there are at least two airline-based options.

We used the "One World Alliance." American Airlines is the main United States partner.

A competitive airline group is called the "Star Alliance." Both United Airlines and Continental Airlines are involved in the Star Alliance.

Click on the logos to explore their websites.

And as for exploring "the world," I have concluded that time is the most important ingredient!

65 / The Land Use Report

Since 2002, I have spent most Saturday mornings writing, and then recording, my Land Use Report, which is aired twice each weekday morning on KUSP Radio.

Naturally, I couldn't do that during my extensive travels, and since I am back home a bit earlier than anticipated, I am "off the hook" for today and the upcoming week. No need to work on the Land Use Report this morning! I will be back on the air on Tuesday, March 16th, so next Saturday I will be back at it!

Land use policy really does provide a good example of how we create, through our choices about what we do, a whole "world," built within the World of Nature. The "law" governing land use (and that is my legal specialty) permits local communities to build whatever sort of world they want.

64 / What Is To Be Done?

I went to theological seminary, right after law school, but I have never really placed my final bet on that world "beyond the blue." I've always felt that there is something about this world that demands our responsible attention as a rather high priority.

With that in mind, Lenin's question remains an important one for me: "What Is To Be Done?"

It's a good question. I don't represent that Lenin had the answer!

63 / Can't Feel At Home

When I was in high school, I taught myself to play the banjo (to a degree), by paging religiously through the Pete Seeger guide and seeing what I could do. And I listened to a lot of folk and country music, including specifically music sung by The Carter Family. Their tunes, it seems, just stuck in my head.

One tune that stuck was a gospel folk song entitled, "Can't Feel At Home." And that was the song that popped to mind when I arrived back in Santa Cruz after my long, globe-trotting travels.

My "Two World Hypothesis," that we live in two worlds simultaneously (one that we create, and one that we don't: the world of Nature, or the world that God created) may or may not relate directly to the theology of the folk song. But as I think about it, one reason that we might not "feel at home" in this world, is that we have radically misunderstood its nature, thinking that the world we create, and most directly inhabit, is the only world there is.

Thinking that is a big mistake. I know that much.

I am going to keep working on the "two world" problem. Figuring it all out is just as painfully hard as it was to learn the banjo.

And for those who don't know the song, there are lots of different treatments, available on the Internet, though I wasn't able to track down one featuring The Carter Family itself.

62 / Keep On The Sunny Side

It rained in Spain (I was mainly on the plain), but nothing in Spain or anywhere else rivaled the wet weather here in Santa Cruz when I got home from all my traveling.

If you click on the title to posting #62, you can listen to the incomparable Carter Family sing about the "Sunny Side of Life." It's a good reminder when the rains come down, real or metaphorical. Maybe I'll talk about another Carter Family song some time in the near future; one of my favorites: I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore!

Anyway, considering our water problems (more about that, probably, in some other place), this wet weather is a real blessing.