This blog strives to illustrate either:
1) how we are operating from the old paradigm or set of beliefs, where we can get stuck, resist change or act from a vibration of fear, lack, limitation, competition and separation.
OR
2) Conversely to illustrate how some individuals and entities are operating from the qualities of where we are going, moving toward. These qualities include community, unity and value complexity, relationship, wholeness and interdependence.
We are in the middle of a shift, in our galaxy, globe, country and culture. It feels chaotic because the old is breaking down in every area (economy, health, education and environment for example) while the new is yet to be mainstream. Where we choose to focus makes all the difference possible. Those hanging on the old and stuck in fear will not be creating the new as you cannot create solutions and “allow” movement forward AND resist at the same time. Change will only come from those willing to vibrate something other than any expression of fear.
And when you do focus on where we are going, the “window” or perspective you have changes how you experience events, relationships, our world and this shift. The quality of questions you ask increases and you find solutions, allow new ways, create collaborations to develop solutions. You don’t fight the old but create the new in such a way it is a no brainer to follow as the old crumbles. When enough of us awaken to this higher vibration, the shift will be complete and what we see and experience in the world will be better than we could ever imagine.
April 15, 2012 Article is:
Associate director of communications, NRDC Action Fund
The Attack on the Environment Must Stop
Posted: 04/24/2012 2:32 pm
Since Republicans gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 2010 elections, the body has waged the single worst legislative assault in history against the foundational safeguards we all depend on to protect our environment and health.
In little more than a year, the GOP-led House has voted more than 200 times to undermine existing protections or to weaken, delay or block new measures we need to defend clean air, waters, wildlife and lands.
In lopsided votes before committees and on the full floor of the House, Republicans have been joined by a handful of Democrats, mostly from fossil fuel producing states, to sustain this relentless and reckless campaign.
The votes have targeted foundational protections like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, created over the past four decades by Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress.
They’ve gone after needed public investment in energy efficiency and the renewable power technologies of tomorrow, including support for programs set up by President George W. Bush to promote American innovation.
They’ve undermined the Environmental Protection Agency, created by Richard Nixon, and its authority to hold polluters to account.
And they’ve threatened iconic places from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Appalachian Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, turning away from the national wildlife and preservation legacy first enshrined more than a century ago by President Theodore Roosevelt.
All that stands between the nation and the dark vision behind these destructive votes is a Senate that has voted down or so far ignored the worst impulses of the House.
Theeffort to eviscerate our environmental safety net is not about jobs, as its proponents claim. It’s about putting polluter profits first — and putting the rest of us at risk.
Government regulations of all kinds account for less than 1 percent of all large layoffs, according to exhaustive data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Decades of experience make clear that our economy has been strengthened by efforts to keep our workers healthy and our environment clean. And investing in renewable power and the next generation of energy-efficient cars, homes and workplaces is helping to put Americans back to work while reducing our reliance on foreign oil.
These goals don’t divide us by party; they unite us as a nation.
That explains why the American people didn’t ask for this unconscionable assault, but someone else did: the fossil fuel industry and other top-line polluters that spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year lobbying our officials in Washington and bankrolling the campaign war chests of any candidate willing to carry a smokestack agenda up on Capitol Hill.
These corporate polluters have the right to be heard. The rest of us have an obligation to speak up for ourselves about what’s best for the country. Eight in ten Americans want our environmental safeguards strengthened or left alone, according to a February Pew Research Center poll. We need to stand up and say so.
We’ve come a long way since the first Earth Day in 1970, but our job’s not done. Not when a copper mine in Alaska can still threaten one of the world’s great salmon grounds. Not when a renegade oil well can still put the Gulf of Mexico at risk. Not when communities across the country are terrified by hydraulic fracturing. Not when thousands of our children suffer from asthma aggravated by air pollution. And not when the ravages of climate change reach deeper into our lives every day.
Neither political party can empower this country to address these challenges alone.
Safeguarding our future is bipartisan work, as leaders from both parties have long understood.
We can debate how best to do that, just as we have in the past. But this is no time to turn our backs on four decades of environmental progress made by Republicans and Democrats alike, working together, when leaders of vision and courage from both parties stood up for nature and put into place the responsible public oversights we all depend on to protect our environment and health. It’s time, instead, to honor that shared legacy, make good on the debt we owe to our children and rebuild the bipartisan majority for our environment.
Bob Deans, of the NRDC Action Fund, is the author of Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment.
AllEmbracingChange.com paradigm shift:
This article is illustrates draws upon old paradigms and their lack of usefulness for our future. One example is scientific reductionism, which believes that no matter how complex something is, we can fully understand it by taking it apart and seeing its components. And put it back together in new ways to serve us better without consequences to an unknown whole or other system. Because we “know” all the parts of the environment and economy, we can make statements like pick one over the other. Here the paradigm behind this story says “environment” or “economy” and we cannot have both. If you are for a vibrant economy you must be against the environment and vice versa. All this vibration does is separate. The “either, or” paradigm forces you to take a side, make a choice and create separation, every time. Solutions don’t come from separation. Separation brings on the energy of defending your position, your side of the “either”. It creates winners and losers. And thus, if you plug into this paradigm, you will get more of the same.
This tactic “choose the environment or economy” is brilliant – as it rationalizes decisions some would want to see enacted, such as environmental regulations causes’ job loss, hampers economic growth and keep our economy from recovery. Brilliant, if you want short term gain, someone else to pay for it and you are on the receiving end. This article points out the falsity in this paradigm, provides data otherwise that is not presented, shedding light on how this paradigm reduces complex issues in to simple black and white solutions. Advocates of the old paradigm count on the fact we generally do not remember our past nor do we question what is put right in front of us. It was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican who first realized the environment and the economy are connected by creating our National Parks. Richard Nixon authored the Clean Water Act.
Environment or economy is a paradigm of the old, what we are shifting away from. Staying in that belief will only generate more environmental destruction, economic stagnation and needless suffering for many. Neither the environment nor the economy will benefit to the same degree they would if they viewed as mutually exclusive. The new paradigm embraces the environment and economy and focuses on how environmental precautionary principal actually feeds an economy at all scales in for a long period of time. The precautionary principle is where for example is where a new product has to prove its safety before approval to product rather than damage occurs and we have to prove a connection the product and then it is removed from our shelves. When you look you can find examples of how environmental regulation has enhanced the economy and is tied to its growth as well as places where the economy is growing because of regulations. This is where true solutions are, solutions that honor the whole not a select subset. But, you have to be willing to look forward.
