Pretty dang bad...Sure, the economy isn't doing good either, but we can survive without economy, we can't survive without this planet, we can't survive without land to live on, we can't survive without weather conditions that allow agriculture. THAT is the choice you should be making, in stead of HOPING that people are wrong.
Prepare for the worst. The worst is NOT that you cannot take the car to the shop three times a day. The worst is not that you don't have gasoline to drive the car, you don't have the car, you don't have the shop to go to, nor money to buy anything with. The worst is that you don't have a ground to drive the car, and the shop is empty because there just is not enough food for all 6 billion + people living on this planet.
In Soviet Russia the worst problem was not lack of money, but lack of things to buy with money.
Economy has crashed before, and will crash in the future - if there is any future. What the people did in the 30's to survive the Crash, is what they should be doing now.
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Here's some Earth Day crafts. There is a lot of wonderful recycling ideas around the internet, and ideas on how to renew old things. I remember reading horrified about how a woman proudly told a group I used to belong to how she and her siblings emptied their mother's house while she was in hospital, having broken her hip. The mother had been an avid garage sale shopper and owned tons of things she had bought second hand. Her children packed everything into large garbage sacks and sent them to the city dump. She was really proud of herself, and all I could think of was the psychological abuse of throwing away another human being's things without asking or even telling her, and the waste of throwing away usable stuff with the unusable. Sure, it would have taken them a LOT more time, effort and care to go through the stuff WITH the mother, and taking care of things properly, sending the usable stuff to goodwill and sorting the non-usable stuff properly.
Now, one needs to think about that too. Here's an important article to read about the dangers of recycling fanatism... "Recycling... Is Garbage". Living sustainably means that you think BEFORE you stand there with the garbage.
Make yourself a reusable shopping bag. Plastic bags do take more space in the landfill.
Here's a very nice article about how to reduce waste when you do the shopping.
Don't forget to make yourself a dozen or so bags of thin, light netting, so that you can buy your fruits and stuff that needs to be weighed.
Start using cloth diapers and sanitary pads. Frankly, I would go so far as to ask everyone to scrap the damned electric toothbrush. Your teeth will be cleaned well enough with the usual non-electronic thing - which you can use to several other things after it has done its to clean your teeth...
You really should keep an electric diary and note everything electric you use - tv, computer, dishwasher, clockradio, lamps, microwave... what not - and see how you could reduce it, just like you keep book on your economy and try to reduce the waste there. (You don't? You should. You should also keep a food diary where you write how much you eat, and how much does the family eat, and daily food plans, and how to reduce the waste there...)
I would love if everyone had an Earth Hour every day. Take an hour off your surfing today. Read a real book, no electronic version or audio book. Learn a new craft or use the hour to work on your UFOs. Use the hour to unravel the sweater you never use. Play board games with your family and friends. Take a walk in the nature and enjoy it - as long as you can.
If the Moon Appeared Only Once Every Ten Years
There would be moon parades held everyday
for twelve days before that night,
white horses with glass moons clinking
on their bridles, riders in moon-cloud
gowns led by mimes marching and spinning
with gold auras around silver-sequined
moon faces. Moon parties would be in progress
all over town, milky moon drinks, white
chocolate bon bon moons, everyone throwing
foil streamers designed to catch
and reflect the most moonlight possible
in their flying spirals.
Platforms with marble steps and ivory
pedestals would be built on country
hillsides to provide the powerful and wealthy
with the best positions for the longest
viewing, their white porcelain spyglasses
ready to point heavenward.By law: no artificial light (neon, bulb
or flame) allowed to burn anywhere
during The Hours of the Moon.
Like an ecstatic sailor shouts "Land, land,"
from his gyrating crow’s nest, who might be
the first among the crowds gathered
on the mountaintops to shout, "Moon, moon,"
as the buttery orange rim of that beautiful globe
first appears over the edge of the plains ?
One five-layer creamy moon cake for a prize.
Then squealing children, playing
"Catch the Moon" across open lawns,
would make circles with their arms,
holding them toward the sky to try
to capture that hard sugar button.
I believe, I believe in the medicinal
powers of the moon. Place all the impaired
naked on white blankets to moonbathe
in its healing balm.
No one anywhere would sleep
all night long on that night. And think
how happy you and I would be, lying
on the silver-gray grass, me kissing
your moon-kissed lips, you kissing
my moon-colored ear, and all of us
surrounded, every one of us—all bird
and lizard wings, spiny fish wings,
glass moth and bee wings, every cheetah
fang, siren and salmander eye, sickle
bill and sword bill, all coils
of fiddlehead ferns and wind-tattered
fronds, all grains of gorges, river
spumes and spittles, each slightest
snow flicker of the earth—all of us
together baptized and redeemed as one
in the wash and surf of that rare, now
so properly esteemed, marvelling light.
-- Pattiann Rogers
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