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My mom and stepdad live in a small village between Lindau and Wangen in the Allgäu region of South Germany, not far from the Swiss and Austrian borders. It's a long story of how they settled in the foothills of the Alps and I in the hills of San Francisco, but for the last decade or so I have been making the trip to this rural area of Germany almost every year. During this decade, and in fact for much longer than that, very little has changed in this rather traditional, agricultural patch of Earth.
Cows munching on grass and flowers in endless meadows...
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Farmers going about their business...
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Locals buying fresh food directly from their farmers...
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and people hanging out in the pedestrian zones and marketplaces of their medieval home towns...
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And yet, there is one thing that has changed in this sleepy place. In fact, the entire landscape has been completely transformed in the few years I've been coming here. One of the Allgäu's most visible and distinct landmarks, its steeply pitched, gabled roofs, have morphed from the quiet, shingled beauties of yore...
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into shining symbols of 21st century technology and the country's Herculean efforts to transform its energy grid...
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Please join me on a bike tour of these solar roofs below the orange cloud. I believe they are a fitting tribute to Hummingbird's spirit -- to do what we can, against all odds and conventional wisdom. In this case, it is the grassroots activists and "environmental idiots" fighting for a clean energy revolution for over 30 years, shifting hearts and minds, little by little, all the way up to top levels of government, that have made what was thought to be deluded and impossible not too long ago into a common cause among all citizens, liberal or conservative.
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"Hummingbirds" Blogathon: September 9-September 13, 2013
![photo CostasRedBarrel_2139_zps15a32cf3.jpg]( "Photo copyright 2013 desertguy and Luma Photography all rights reserved")
In May 2006, the late environmental activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai addressed 7,000 international educators who had gathered in Montreal for the 58th annual conference of the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers (NAFSA). Here is the story she shared with them.
| One day a terrible fire broke out in a forest - a huge woodlands was suddenly engulfed by a raging wild fire. Frightened, all the animals fled their homes and ran out of the forest. As they came to the edge of a stream they stopped to watch the fire and they were feeling very discouraged and powerless. They were all bemoaning the destruction of their homes. Every one of them thought there was nothing they could do about the fire, except for one little hummingbird. This particular hummingbird decided it would do something. It swooped into the stream and picked up a few drops of water and went into the forest and put them on the fire. Then it went back to the stream and did it again, and it kept going back, again and again and again. All the other animals watched in disbelief; some tried to discourage the hummingbird with comments like, "Don't bother, it is too much, you are too little, your wings will burn, your beak is too tiny, it’s only a drop, you can't put out this fire." And as the animals stood around disparaging the little bird’s efforts, the bird noticed how hopeless and forlorn they looked. Then one of the animals shouted out and challenged the hummingbird in a mocking voice, "What do you think you are doing?" And the hummingbird, without wasting time or losing a beat, looked back and said: "I am doing what I can." |
In this time of escalating climate change, this is our challenge.
To refuse to surrender to the apathy of denialism and fatalism.
To be fierce in our defense of the Earth.
To continue to fight in the face of overwhelming odds.
And always, always, to do what we can. Because it is only by each of us doing what we can, every day, that we will save the Earth – for ourselves, and for the generations to come. Like the hummingbird.
Our Daily Kos community organizers are Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, boatsie, rb137, JekyllnHyde, citisven, peregrine kate, John Crapper, Aji, and Kitsap River, with Meteor Blades serving as the group's adviser. Photo credit and copyright: Kossack desertguy and Luma Photography. All rights reserved. Used with permission. |
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