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 27^th ), 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

 



- 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



 

 

…So that our children get to live a healthy life in a healthy world