Since my September entry looking at unleashing our passion in a big way for wild and natural lands, people came out of the woodwork to support a change in the United States. President Barack Obama and family have moved into the White House. The global economy has continued to crash and burn. Policymakers worldwide are trying to figure out what to do about it. Now it is time not only to rage for the wild, but also to rage for economic justice for the masses. I call your attention to a well-researched article by James Lieber describing What Cooked the World Economy. We need to assure that taxpayer dollars are not thrown at the institutions and powerbrokers who are responsible (like AIG) nor used to pay off derivatives and other wildly inventive and destructive and unsustainable investment schemes. In fact, we need to prosecute those dangerous men whose greed took our collective wealth for their own. As Lieber found, even collecting 5 percent of the amount of money that these men stole will fill national coffers and go a long way towards offsetting the amounts of money governments will need to spend to help restore economic systems. Actually, let’s change that language from restore to reinvent our economic systems. Please join me in pushing our policymakers to invest in people (through education) and in a sustainable and regenerating future for us all. See as an example the Repower America campaign by the Alliance for Climate Protection folks–I really like their tv commercials. Speaking of which, have you seen the tv commercials from the no such thing as clean coal people? These air to counteract the highly deceptive “clean coal” commercials put out by the fossil fuel industry that mislead the audience into thinking that Obama is talking about coal as our sustainable future. See this informative Washington Post article for more information.

And in all of the panic about economic collapse, let us keep a clear head about wild and natural lands. Once developed (including mined for oil or gas), these lands are no longer available as our legacy of biodiverse and healthy ecosystems that support all life, including ours. Once polluted (”we can’t afford clean technology right now”) our health is compromised and it will cost a lot more money to tend our illnesses. So continue to rage for the wild and natural as well as for economic justice.

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