Global

Imagine walking out your front door in the morning and not having to drive to work. Imagine knowing you neighbors and having a relationship with the members of your community. Imagine sitting in an office surrounded by plants with the sun providing natural light. These dreams of a simpler life lie at the heart of environmentally sustainable development. With vision and a conscious effort to change the way we live, Columbus could reform itself into a green community.

In order for Columbus to start on the path toward sustainability, the citizens of Columbus must abandon materialistic desires and live respectfully with the natural environment. In Peter Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, Hawken states, “Society must recognize that ecological principles apply absolutely to human survival, and that if we are to long endure as a world culture, or as a group of local cultures, we will have to incorporate ecological thinking into every aspect of our mores, pattern of living, and most particularly our economic institutions.”

Sometimes when I watch television or browse the shelves at the supermarket, I start to feel like the old man played by Edward G. Robinson in the movie “Soylent Green.” Although the movie takes place in some near distant future when the global environment has been pillaged and abused to the point where even the ocean is barren and the masses of people are left eating green wafers made out of recycled people, the old man, I figured, was born around 1950, which is also my birth year. I shutter to think that this could be the future-my future-our future?

The Central Ohio Greens are running two candidates for Columbus City Council this year — John McGovern and Greg Richey. The two candidates are calling for a review of the city charter to enhance participatory democracy in Columbus city government. The Green Party believes that Mayor Coleman directs the full review of the City departments with a goal of creating efficiencies and a focus on serving neighborhoods, the Council should be reviewing ways that they can better serve and represent the public interest as well.

• Call For a More Representative Council - Add District Based Positions.

• Increase the Size of Council.
• Initiate Special Elections to Fill Vacancies.
• Make Council Positions Full-Time.
• Review Use of Emergency Ordinance Enactment.
• Improved Citizen Participation.

To get involved with the Central Ohio Green Party or to volunteer to help with the City Council campaign, contact:

Hiding behind the rhetoric of free enterprise, major campaign donors to George W. Bush have reaped billions of dollars from the president’s refusal to cap wholesale electricity prices during California’s deregulation crisis. They stand to make billions more at the expense of consumers and the environment if the crisis is used as a pretext to pass upcoming federal legislation promoting fossil and nuclear fuels.

Indeed, based on fears generated by the power crisis in California, energy bills now barreling toward Congress would drill the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, lift environmental regulations on burning fossil fuels, promote new nuclear power plants and hand still more consumer and taxpayer billions to the producers of electricity.

But there’s something dreadfully wrong with this picture.

Namely: the electricity crisis in California has been a contrived, corporate-driven epic that has socked ratepayers and taxpayers with a staggering double-whammy, destabilizing a huge energy delivery system that had functioned reliably for nearly a century.

My dog Champ, a best friend for about 12½ years, died unexpectedly on Sunday (probably just into the ‘wee hours’ of Mon, 3/5), The ‘Little Booger,’ Champ, had kinda dug his stubborn little doggy toes into the Martha Walker Garden Club, the DooDah Parade, The Community Festival, AntiFest, HOT TIMES, and loads of other Community escapades. They will forever be linked to my memories of him.

I was lucky that he was around during the onset of my major depressive swings, mainly in the early Summer of ’97, when I was clueless as to what had hit me. Champ was that little pal, so totally faithful, with that unquestioning love & affection that most dogs, cats & horses have toward their humans (well, assuming that the animal was raised by a humane person). He was always there, sleeping right at my feet, depending on MY love & affection, and always needing to be fed. He was a sentient being. He was there to hang onto when so much else was unclear.

I often wonder how well I’d have hung on without him.

Trade ministers from 34 Western Hemisphere countries will meet in Quebec City April 18-22 for essential negotiations on a new international trade agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. This particular meeting marks the first formal gathering of the ministers, who have been meeting since 1998 with executive branch trade representatives and corporation representatives in nine working groups. Originally the target date for ratification was 2005, but according to a story aired on Marketplace, a public radio program, on 3/30/01, the intent of negotiators now is to have the basic outline of the agreement in place by the Quebec summit and to implement the agreement by 2003. Congress will have authority to ratify or deny ratification, and that will be citizens’ “formal” chance to impact the outcome.

WHAT ARE THE KEY ISSUES REGARDING THIS NEGOTIATION?

Another shooting in blue-collar Santee, California, and another in a parochial school in the Williamsport, Pennsylvania, bring school violence back into the news. Though media coverage exaggerates school violence, both safety and education demand “preventive” measures that will not increase violence. There is no educational problem that policy cannot worsen.

Every preventive or punitive action is an instructional method that teaches someone something. Because we do not think of safety measures as lesson plans, we seldom evaluate whether the intended consequence is achieved, and we are unaware of unintended results. After Columbine, the most common actions were patently ill-conceived and the unintended learning was more than schools can take in the present political climate.

A while back some angry kids went on a killing spree at their school, and the nation went on an hysterical binge. How could children - “good,” wealthy, white children for-God’s-sake - go on a violent rampage? It was un-American, unthinkable!! Everyone wanted an explanation of the inexplicable. About the best they could do was to lean on the “Goths” and other “misfits” who “obviously” suffered prominence-envy in comparison with their social betters. Here and there around the country diligent up-scale school officials imposed “zero tolerance” and took advantage of the immediately available psychological profiling programs so as to identify and label the potential “killers” and, thereby, provide a sense of security, responsibility, and hope.

Well, forget that. Let’s face facts. Americans kill because Americans love to kill. “Columbine” was devastating not because it involved killing, but because it broke the rules. In America proper killing, is more than acceptable; it is honorable. Some of our greatest role models are killers, directly or indirectly.