“At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, ‘thus far and no further.’ If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, ‘If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.‘ “

Those are the words of Edward Abbey – a satirical, bitingly-honest environmental writer. So, thus far and no further.
Actually, ‘thus far’ is already too far.
We desperately need to rebuild, to construct a new framework, and we need to do so for economic, environmental, and political reasons.  (Actually, this whole current construct of the economy, environment, and politics being separate compartments is, in and of itself, a false construct.)

What is wrong with our economy, our environment, and our politics? Stay tuned.

When I write – ‘our’ – I am specifically referring to both the local (Lebanese) and international.  How so? Stay tuned.

And ‘resistance’? What do I mean by ‘Green Resistance’? Quite simply: we resist by identifying the connections, connecting the dots; we resist by raising the right questions and not being content with rote answers; we resist by saying ’no further.’

How do we resist if (when?) we feel overwhelmed by pessimism, by a sense of defeatism? How to avoid despair? How to expect people to change, to involve themselves in some personal or collective way to lessening our impacts on this Earth, or to empowering their economic situation, or to building a democratic, just society? What is needed?Information, of course. And especially information linking what the corporate media have been working to compartmentalize and separate: our environment, our economy, and our politics. Hope. The belief that that hope is grounded and will be fruitful.  Such a hope needs to be fueled by current struggles, by victories – be they small or large, and by a historical understanding in the power of people to change their circumstances.

This blog will try to shed a light on all the above, and will do so, naturally, from my own perspective as an environmental scientist, a social-justice activist, and a Lebanese/Arab-American currently living in Lebanon and previously living in the US for some 19 years.

Stay tuned.

And share your own thoughts, rants, hopes.