Write on, brother

When historians in the future look back at 2009, it will appear as the Golden Age of Consumption. This moment will probably be remembered as the time of the biggest cars, biggest homes on large pieces of land designed with excessive use of raw materials, water thirsty landscapes of ornamentals and not edibles, closets filled with extraordinary amounts of possessions. Lucky we live this age, eh?

Historians will also know what happened next. How we got from the Golden Age of Consumption to the Age of Sustainability, where by definition it means managing resource use so the next generations can thrive as we have. I think most people would agree that different behaviors will be needed. The opposite of keeping up with the Joneses, unless the Joneses happen to be the greenest family on the block.

Will people be willing to change their mindset and actions to create a workable new reality? I don’t know. Short of a wakeup call in the form of a catastrophe (like ships not coming here for awhile with everything we consume) I think not. Because the world continues to look and operate just as we are used to. Gas and food are plentiful. There is more stuff than ever available to fill our closets with and it seems an expanding economy is the only way to measure success.

Much of design of the world – or is it just Maui? – seems to revolve around the privileged few and not the average ‘rest of us’. And they use a hugely disproportionate amount of resources and stuff. That doesn’t seem like a recipe for a sustainable future. This is where I intended to put a brilliant closing thought. Sorry, I don’t have one.

So, let’s hope there is a future for those historians to look back from, and let’s make them proud of us.

Maury King