Earth Equity News

The Proverbial Cup of Sugar and Where It Comes From. By Bill McKibben, Orion Magazine, March/April, 2008. "Cheap fossil fuel has made us the first people on Earth with no need of our neighbors. Think, in the course of an ordinary day, how often you rely on the people who live near you for anything of practical value... Your food, your fuel, your shelter, your clothes, and your entertainment most likely come from a distance and arrive anonymously at that. A meteorite could fall on your cul-de-sac tomorrow, disappearing your neighbors, and the routines of your daily life wouldn't change. [That's pretty different from how] things have been for almost all of human history... Once we've started down this road, it's hard to turn back; being a neighbor is a skill like any other, and it's a skill we've increasingly lost as we've turned into hyperindividuals. Say you need the proverbial cup of sugar: do you turn to the neighbor or turn the car on and drive to the store?... The big question for this century may turn out to be how fast we can relearn the skill of neighborliness."