We've Been Waiting
If the comic strip Pogo is remembered for only one thing, it will be the phrase "We have met the enemy and he is us." But did you know that Pogo's creator Walt Kelly first used that phrase on a poster for the original Earth Day in 1970? Neither did I, but the Internet is good at unearthing obscurities like that. What made me think of that quote in the first place, though, was a diametrical sentiment I encountered in a column on global warming by this year's recipient of the Sierra Club's David R. Brower award, Thomas Friedman. After an ominous quote from the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Friedman offered up two slices of hope: the Google Foundation's renewable energy initiative and the Vehicle Design Summit, which was started by some students at M.I.T. Friedman describes it as
...a global, open-source, collaborative effort, managed by M.I.T. students, that has 25 college teams around the world, including in India and China, working together to build a plug-in electric hybrid within three years. Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. I thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, "will demonstrate a 95 percent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave" and provide "200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better." The Linux of cars!Oh, and the quote from the students that gives Friedman (and me) hope? "We are the people we have been waiting for." Wouldn't you rather see that on a poster next Earth Day?
2 Comments:
"We are the people we've been waiting for" is one of my favorite quotes, and for a long time I thought it came from the singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock. But if google it, it's attributed to lots of people.
The actual creator of that phrase, apparently, was the late poet June Jordan, though not those exact words. In "Poem for South African Women," which she wrote in 1980, she closes with the line: "We are the ones we have been waiting for."
Sweet Honey in the Rock put those words to a song, and Alice Walker titled a book with those words, and both attributed them to Jordan.
(I've also seen it attributed to a prayer from Hopi Elders. The earliest date I've seen attached to it is 1999. But the Hopi do have a long oral tradition, so perhaps it's been percolating for longer than that.)
Anyone know anything more definitive?
I am all for saving the animals, but don't you think that you should use the money you spend on printing costs, printing out your mailers, post cards, stickers, postage etc... on actaully saving the animals? Just a thought, oh and all those flyers and envelopes, um hello! you ever hear the expression "save a tree"?
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