The Corn Ethanol Hoax

After decades of intensive scientific research, public financing and commercial promotion, corn as a fuel source has become the most tested of the potential energy alternatives, and it has failed by every measure—economic, environmental, social and moral.  Yet, through presidential mandates, billion-dollar subsidies, tax breaks, tariffs, and Department of Energy funding, the United States government has committed itself to greatly expanding its production in the coming years.  That is, during this most crucial time—when we’ve finally comprehended the finitude of oil, the absorption capacities of our atmosphere and the demands of an ever growing population, when wisdom is called for in exploring energy alternatives—our tax dollars are enriching the usual big business suspects, not ensuring the security of our nation’s future.

The Great Famine

Famine—with all its attendant suffering—has plagued humanity since the beginnings of agriculture some ten thousand years ago.  Ancient Hebrew, Chinese and Greek texts speak of it, and starvation and cannibalism were the dying experiences for peoples in numerous collapsed societies, including the Mayan, Anasazi and Greenland Vikings. The last massive modern famine occurred in 1961 when 30 million Chinese perished.  Then came the Green Revolution—mankind’s savior—with its vast verdant fields and bumper crops.  Still, even as we profit from this miracle of man over nature, three billion people suffer each day from malnutrition.   And with our world food stocks falling to all-time lows, the forces of population growth, land degradation, water decline, rising energy prices and global warming are converging into a “perfect storm” calamity, threatening to soon usher in history’s greatest famine.

Technology Can’t Save Us

Despite growing media attention and a flurry of technological and policy activity, the global Ecological Collapse continues to worsen by every measure—green house gas emissions, arable land, potable water, biodiversity, rate of deforestation, pH level of the oceans, etc.  Meanwhile, the chasm widens between the world’s wealthy and the impoverished billions.  So far, most proposed solutions—especially in First World countries—have, conveniently enough, targeted improving technologies and instituting business-regulating policies.  Although necessary, these are proving insufficient, theoretically and practically. Until we face the two sacred cows of civilization— procreation and economic growth—optimism will remain but another form of denial.  Anunblinkingly honest inquiry into our behaviors and attitudes is imperative. 

Spiritual Leaders Needed

Humanity is in the process of committing Ecological Suicide.  The accelerating destruction to our life support system—principally our soil, water, air, forests, biodiversity, ocean life, etc.—tell us unequivocally that our behaviors are out of balance with the rest of nature.  And however much, or little, these have been featured by our media, we have not as of yet changed the course of even one of these threats to our survival. Our information tells us that we’re destroying our life support system, yet we can’t help ourselves.  Surprisingly enough, we already know most of the solutions—beget fewer children, consume less and more efficiently, promote societies and cultures that embrace these values.  What we have is a problem not of knowledge, but of wisdom.  We need—and perhaps because of crisis we are ready—for the help of those who have devoted their lives to wisdom—the spiritual teachers of the various perennial traditions.  The scientists have done their job—they have said time and again that we are poised in a time of great crisis.  The political, military and business leaders are as caught in the sticky web of inertia as much as is the general population.  It is now up to the spiritual leaders to fill in the great vacuum. 

Spiritual Leaders Must Now Lead

Humanity finds itself in an Ecological nightmare of its own making.  Much as a person who, having passed out with a lit cigarette, now awakes from the fog of sleep to find the whole house burning down around him.  We are just rousing, and we haven’t figured out how to put out the fire.  For by every measure, the destruction to our planet—our very life support system—is gathering speed.    And still, we continue our destructive behaviors.  We beget more children than warranted and consume far more than necessary.  So far, we have put our collective faith in human innovation and a growing economy, which, in great part, is what got us into this predicament. Clearly, we—individually and collectively—need to radically change our ways.  But our ways are too entrenched, the culture of materialism still too strong.  We have accumulated much knowledge about the outer world but little wisdom of the inner one.  

We need help. We need the characteristics of courage, wisdom, generosity (non-selfishness), inner honesty, humility, mindfulness, gratitude—characteristics that have been taught for millennia by the wisdom traditions, and are being espoused today in every church, temple, mosque, ashram and sangham.   But the voices of our spiritual leaders have as yet been quiet, maybe not silent, but far too quiet, on this most important ecological crisis.  Scientists and analysts of every type agree that we are at a point of crisis, that our window of opportunity may be small.  It is time that the leaders of wisdom speak out forcefully about the plight of our planet and the power of the spiritual solution.  They need to stand up and to truly lead, and show us how the inner transformation brings about external harmony.