An Open Letter To Cindy Sheehan

…We do not have the luxury anymore for shortsighted policies which benefit the few. Our reliance on cheap oil, our subsidization of corporate agribusiness, and our death-kiss to family farms have made us incredibly vulnerable to famine. Our unchecked consumption, our devotion to technology, and our car-dominated sprawling lifestyles have been ravaging the planet. Global warming is a huge threat to all of Earth’s inhabitants, while peak oil threatens our economic system and will completely end the standard of living we have grown accustomed to. Ecologically speaking, the 6 billion people of the planet can likely not be sustained without cheap oil, and most certainly not without dramatic social reorganization.

In some sense, the answers to our political problems are the same as the answers to these lifestyle problems. We need to reassert basic democratic control of everything in our life — from municipal decision-making to state and federal government, from local food and energy production to healthcare and education. We need to stop waiting for people to solve our problems for us, and begin to see ourselves as the problem-solvers.

Swans.com