GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY
Volume I/Number 1 October 3, 2014
We recently visited the U.S. and
gave talks about our work in our rural area of Costa Rica to protect the
environment… but as always, it is in giving that we receive… We received ideas,
information, energy and inspiration… We thank all of you who are involved on the quest to live healthy,
sustainable lives in a world worth living in.
Some times it is easier to see ourselves from
the outside
Perhaps if I had stayed in the States,
I would never have found out the effects that my everyday choices have on other
countries. For instance, I did not know
that the subsidies that the U.S. government gives large corporations which
produce genetically modified food (some people call it plastic food) laden with
chemicals to produce a high yield are breaking the farming economies other
countries. I never thought about the
real cost of cheap food… I did not know that I was already paying through my
taxes for these subsidies, paying again at the supermarket and paying again at
the doctor’s office for this kind of plastic food makes us, our soil and our
water sick. And this is just the tip of
the iceberg as far as the kind of information that is not in the daily news or
in our school systems.
We can take charge, we can engage in
lobbying to subsidize organic, healthy farming, we can form neighborhood groups
to bring in healthy food in bulk to keep costs low, we can choose carefully
what we buy, we can watch videos to educate ourselves… we need to KNOW the
truth and ACT according to this knowledge… and we need each other to help in
our personal transitions to a healthier lifestyle.
TRUE GLOBAL
INFORMATION and coordinated actions
Q: ¿If global sustainability starts at home,
what were we doing far from ours?
A: Cues about solutions to problems often
emerge when we take a look from a different perspective. We encourage others to travel and see themselves form the outside looking in.
Q: ¿What is behind a beautiful, perfectly
yellow banana?
A: A
reputable Costa Rican newspaper, La Nacion (sept 27th ), just
exposed a law-suit brought about by banana plantation workers who are now
sterile due to the chemicals they use on the bananas that are shipped to the
U.S. and other places… Can you imagine
what these chemicals do to those eating the bananas and to everything else
that lives in the aquatic and land ecosystems where these chemicals end up? Most of the people we spoke to on our recent
U.S. trip did not know of the detrimental effects of (non-organic) pineapple,
sugar cane and banana plantations in Costa Rica on our health, our water and our land.
“Never doubt that a
small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.
– Margaret Mead, Anthropologist
What we do at home, every day ,matters
Yes, corporations, the government, the
economy, all have an effect, but NOTHING compared to the effect that over 7
billion people doing things differently would have… we have power, we just need
to exercise it… even if a tiny percent of us changed… the effect is beyond what
we can conceive.
Our eating habits, the way we spend our
free time, the places we stay at when we travel, what we choose to know or not
know about… Our current state of global affairs is the sum of the cumulative
effects of our individual life-styles.
THIS NEWSLETTER IS intended as a tool for change
Let’s share with one another. There are MANY individuals and organizations
already doing their part to do things in a healthy and sustainable way.
This is an invitation to contribute
your specific ideas or knowledge. We can
certainly turn the ship around, but we must do it together.
In Costa Rica, we are starting a
Sustainability Demonstration Center on the outskirts of the Monteverde
Mountains. If you are interested in
learning more and contributing as a physically-present or virtually-present
volunteer, please contact us. Help us
help the world. Do what you love and
help… all talents and skills are needed and welcome. We are also very involved
in rural tourism as a mechanism for environmental protection and socially just
economic gain.
…doing nothing about the issues that face us
is equivalent to saying yes to our own destruction and the destruction of the
only home we have
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- Lynchburg College professor Dr. Shahady doing volunteer work to save our river.
We are looking for a remote or onsite volunteer to help with our blog, webpage and face book
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…So that our children get to
live a healthy life in a healthy world
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