erin and hig to Return to Anchorage

erin and hig will be returning to the University of Alaska Anchorage for two presentations on their non-motorized trek from June 2007 to June 2008, from Seattle to Unimak Island.

Back in late January, UAA Art professor Mariano Gonzalez and Progressive Alaska sponsored them, in their multi-media talk and showing, about the progress of their journey. In February, they continued the trek.

Here's a listing of some of their upcoming appearances in Anchorage and Seattle.

I can't stress enough what a rich, exhilarating experience erin's and hig's presentation is. More details when we get closer to the October 25 and October 27 presentations. Meanwhile, here's a recent essay by erin:

Greed


With pieces of our financial system exploding, while the government considers a massive bailout, it seems like a good time to take a moment to think about greed.

In Christianity, greed is one of the “seven deadly sins”. And Christian or not, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone saying that greed is a good thing. Yet we live in an economy and culture driven by greed.

People are easily consumed by short term rewards. Greed drives them to reach for those rewards and ignore any long term consequences. They want more… more… more… and they want to believe that there will always be more to get.

Financial Reality

In the financial crisis, people wanted more money.

Home buyers wanted more house than they could afford, and they wanted the influx of cash they were sure to get when they turned around and sold the house for a hefty profit. How could they lose? A few years back, folks were telling us we were stupid not to buy a house - whether or not we could afford it.

The banks, the investors, the financial industry… They wanted more money too. They wanted to throw their money at something and have it come back bigger and bigger and bigger. So they gave out more and more and sketchier and sketchier loans, and bought and sold them over and over again until their value was stratospherically inflated over the reality they were actually based on. The actual houses and the payments owners would make in the future.

Lots of smart people were blinded by greed. They wanted to believe that they could always have more - that there were no consequences or risks to ignoring reality. I’m no economist, and I have no clue what the government should do to fix the banking system. But in this greed and this crisis of financial resources, I see an analogy to how we’re approaching our natural resources.

Where the forests go

Physical Reality (natural resources)

We’re not just greedy about money. We’re greedy about everything. We want stuff. We want more stuff than we had yesterday. We want to have more stuff next year. And we want our kids to have even more stuff than we did. We want high tech gadgets, we want big TVs, we want seven bathrooms, we want cars, we want globe trotting vacations…

Whether it’s finance or consumption, we want to believe we can always have more. We want to believe in perpetual growth, and in growth without consequences. No consequences for the earth, for us, or for our children.

And we’re being blinded by the same kind of greed that creates financial bubbles. We’re leaving ever larger footprints on the earth, and not even looking at the consequences. Not just for natural ecosystems. Polluting our world and depleting our natural resources has consequences for our own health, for our future standard of living, for the rest of the world, for future generations… I think too many people assume that cute wild animals are all we are risking.

Most importantly, we’re not looking at the fundamental discrepancy between the overconsumption “bubble” and the underlying value that backs it up. In financial markets, we got in trouble because speculation got far ahead of the actual values of houses and businesses. In this, we’re getting far ahead of something far less flexible than house prices: The earth.

The earth’s forests, soil, fish, and minerals aren’t going to produce forever more just because we think we need it. Oil really is running out. Fish are vanishing. Soil is going away, as are the fossil resources that make fertilizer and pesticides. We are cutting down forests at a rate far beyond the rate at which they recover. We can’t wish ourselves into an infinite flood of resources, just because we always want more.

So we have to push towards sustainability. Anything else is just greedy.

images by erin