Hope, Human, and Wild

I've never read anything by Bill McKibben before, so I was naturally curious to see what he was about.  I feared another depressing-from-the-start environmental book, something I'd have to struggle through, and I'd feel bad about how I'm ruining the earth after I'd finished.  I'm happy to say I was wrong.  


Bill acknowledges that we're heading in the wrong direction in terms of our environmental policy...fast too.  How the public in the US still turns a blind eye (for the most part) to global warming and the effects we are having on the planet, but he has seen examples all over the world that inspire hope in him, inspire the feeling that maybe, just maybe we as a species are starting to get the idea.  He really sounds like he's optimistic, albeit cautiously so.


I then chose to read the chapter about a town in Brazil named Curitiba.  I've never heard of the place, but what I read made me sit up and take notice.  I didn't know for example, that Curitiba leads the world in bus-efficiency,  how they have virtually eliminated cars in the city center making it pedestrian friendly.  They had even managed to stamp out urban sprawl, something cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles have failed miserably at.  Officials in Curitiba have managed to keep people near the city center.  They even have programs to reduce street-children by implementing programs to make them help the city, either by picking up a bag full of trash to exchange for a bag of rice, or planting a garden to help reduce the erosion of a hill near one of the few slums existing in the city.  All that just makes me wonder, if Curitiba can do that, why can't we do something like that in the cities here?  I'm sure Michigan cities like Flint, Detroit or Saginaw could use programs like that, increasing green space to make up for and replace the dilapidated houses.  It made me wish we had city leaders like that, that could implement new ideas and push progress forward, without having to wait for approval that has been fought and bickered over by politicians.  


I have to admit though, what goes on in Curitiba could happen here, but to actually get it to take effect would be a long, drawn out fight.  It's true, images of "public" and "private" are very different.  Heck, when I think of "public" some (not all) of the images that pop into my head are housing projects in Detroit, terribly noneffective schools, and the like.  Private sometimes incurs thoughts of sleek, shiny jets, giant mansions attended by a legion of staff.  It's that opinion that permeates the majority of people's thoughts here...It would be VERY difficult (and expensive) to implement the types of things like in Curitiba.  To change our buses in cities would cost millions of dollars, that  you have to try and convince taxpayers its a good idea, and having people that resist change in political office (that shall remain unnamed) is quite a hurdle.  I think that we CAN do those things, but it's going to have to take time, and buckets of patience.  


tight lines to all.