Koyanisquatsi

That's the Hopi word for "life out of balance"...and as an environmentalist I felt it was time for me to comment on the crazy things happening in our world. Today an earthquake may have killed upwards of 3,000 people in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And it's finally time for me to speak up and say: life is definitely out of balance.

As a teenager, I first became aware of the environmental ills in our world when I stopped by the Body Shop and bought a sweatshirt depicting the hole in the Ozone layer, and asking for the ban of CFCs. Somehow, things seemed so black and white back then (curiously, the color of my sweatshirt, as well): hole in the ozone layer? My response was, let's send a sattelite into space, and make tons of little sparks that will emit enough ozone to plug the hole. And stop using CFCs.

Well it's more than 15 years later, and things no longer seem so black and white; nor do they seem like a few shades of grey... Perhaps the reason why I haven't commented on hurricanes Rita and the others is because, if I started I'd never stop... Some call this teetering on the edge of eco-depression: a sense that there is so much ill in the world, and there are no easy solutions. We're into October, and the weather is strange and the air is choked grey with smog, although the leaves have already started to change. I no longer know what the solutions are, since I myself cannot even wean myself from my car and still occasionally use my dishwasher when I get lazy. If I can't change my behavior, who's to say the rest of the world will, either?

Perhaps these earthquakes and hurricanes and the like are Gaia's way of saying: time to wake up...time to shift the scale back in balance...I have no idea anymore...