Monday, September 3, 2001

A Sense of Crisis

Today, an individual on one of the energy lists wrote:

"It seems that people act only when they are hit with a crisis. The US public hasn't been hit with that sense of crisis yet. Educating folks about the fossil fuel energy crisis before that crisis is felt by them seems only to have marginal success.  I've had several conversations that suggest so. They are concerned with the poor business climate and day to day concerns, which obviously require energy: getting kids to soccer practice, shopping at malls and food stores, driving to work, etc., etc."

Most of us can't sense the danger of crisis until it directly affects us. We are bombarded hourly on TV, Radio, Print, and the Internet with messages of danger. And so the very constantcy of these messages has made us immune to them. The consequence of our immunity is that we personally have to feel the pain of losing before we can recognize that we are in danger.

As a physician, I counseled a patient this past week concerning his impending job loss. He is one of the 270,000 telcom workers whose jobs have disappeared this year. He will find himself unemployed effective October 1st. This individual can sense the crisis. He can feel the danger as he wonders how he will pay his bills and support his family. He is worried about paying for the new car they bought this year and for the private school his sons are attending. And, he is afraid his wife might leave him. He can sense the danger of the crisis because it is affecting him personally.

The fossil fuel energy crisis will soon begin to affect all of us on personal levels. How long do we have before we have to act?

 A few months? A few years? A decade or two?

No one knows for sure, but waiting is itself dangerous. We lose much of our opportunity for action by waiting too long. We need to learn to see and hear the messages of danger so we can act while we still have some energy leverage to act with.

Timothy