The Green Zone

When the captain of a ship shouts these words, there’s no mistake what this means: everyone’s help is needed now! The truth of the matter is that our planet and the people who inhabit it are facing a perfect storm of exponential population growth, dwindling resources and arable land, climate change, and increased natural disasters.

We may wish these crises could be solved by governments or divine intervention, but what we need is all of us to our part, starting now.

Ben Lund, EDA Media Advisory Board member and editor for Dentaltown, Hygienetown and Orthotown Magazines, recently shared with us this brilliant video from the Post Carbon Institute. In this video we are offered a compelling (and brief) history of our predicament.  In just the last 200 years, the span of only 3 human lifetimes, we have gone from agrarian to industrialized societies that in a word are unsustainable.

The bottom line is that we need to do four things, fast:

1. Learn to live without fossil fuels.
2. Adapt to the end of economic growth as we’ve come to know it
3. Support 7 billion humans, and stabilize the population at a sustainable level
4. Deal with our legacy of environmental destruction

Let’s not leave this mess for our children, grand-children and their children.  Make this the season you commit to making changes, whether it’s bringing a reusable coffee mug from home every day, riding your bike to work once a week, greening your dental office or bringing a cloth shopping bag to your local farmer’s market. It really is all hands on deck and we applaud you for doing your part.