The Old Year and its Baggage
- Digoy Fernandez, Economy, Environment -
By Digoy Fernandez
If only the process of sweeping out the baggage and detritus of the old year could be so simple. Just get a broom and sweep away! Unfortunately, life in real time suggests that the only way to get rid of old baggage is to sweep clean one’s own psyche, more like an emotional cleansing. At the very least, even if the problems of the old year manage to carry on into the New Year, one would be better conditioned, mentally that is, to tilt with the windmills that 2009 promises to bring to bear on one’s already tired shoulders.
A comment was made to the blog on global warming, insinuating that it is a problem of the elite or those who would raise the specter of rising ocean levels just to obtain paltry grants. Well, speaking for myself, I don’t get paid a single cent to blog, nor do I rely on anyone’s largesse to support this private initiative in favor of the environment (among other concerns, of course!).
It is true that the planet has had to deal with catastrophic events in millennia past. But if we just think of the rough time span that homo sapiens has been on this earth, this would be the equivalent of a hiccup in the face of millions – perhaps billions – of evolutionary years. The great difference is that the recent crisis has been largely man-made, mainly through the rapid use of non-renewable resources, the constant emission of effluents into the air and the world’s water systems, and the creation of incredibly large carbon footprints per capita that the world’s dwindling forests can barely cope up with. (FYI, trees generally are able to process carbon dioxide from the air and convert them into oxygen, etc.)
