From the Common Sense Canadian:

"Pieces: A Newspaper's Portrait of a Planet" by Ray Grigg

Thursday, 19 July 2012 12:13 Comment posted by Lloyd Vivola

"An instructive exercise in connecting the dots when it comes to gathering information from the large, mainstream news organizations. Of course, it is just as easy and far more productive and inspiring to connect the dots of good alternative journalism and local activism as reported via the internet from all around the world, an evolving grassroots perspective that is just not ever adequately acknowledged for its breadth and potential from the too lofty heights of summits like Rio+20. In order words, thanks for the articles Ray and do carry on."

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Ray Grigg is the environmental reporter for the weekly Campbell River Courier-Islander in British Columbia. He regularly contributes columns to the province's premier environmental newspaper The Common Sense Canadian.

In the article mentioned above, Ray combed through one edition of Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, in order to piece together a portrait of the planet's true ecological status.

To read the article in full as reprinted by the Common Sense Canadian, go to: commonsensecanadian.ca/pieces-a-newspapers-portrait-of-a-planet/.

As Ray's effort demonstrates, gaining a comprehensive picture of the ecosphere's health or lack thereof is not an easy task for the common citizen who gleans most information from a daily perusal of reports and opinion as offered by major news organizations. And sadly, as the world grows smaller for many reasons, so does our worldview by way of consolidation and conformity when "news-worthiness" is dictated or limited by these big and typically corporate outlets.

For example:

Convoluted accounts of war, fiscal crisis and environmental controversy perpetuate misunderstanding and myth; they seem to drag on with no end in sight and in ways that reinforce a "new normal" in the minds of all save sturdy free-thinkers.

Cataclysmic weather events and natural disasters begin to induce a state of viewer voyeurism through successive film and video reports from all around the world, ones typically short on scientific context if big on pangs of helplessness.

Likewise reports of the multiple struggles faced by the planet's poor and dispossessed.

As for the horribly unpredictable - hate crimes, mass shootings, drone attacks, terrorist bombings, abducted children - they collectively suggest that life beyond the "new normal" as conventionally framed by mainstream media is even more dangerous and potentially deadly.

In sum, a typical 24/7 news cycle conveys an implicit caveat: Venture not beyond the familiar.

Of course, in reality, there is much good going on in the world beyond the pervasive "new normal". True, much of it is performed in the way of neighborliness, charity and social service, all of which should be commended and encouraged.

And they are, if not always enough so, by mainstream news sources.

But there is also much going on in the way of "relocalized" activist movements, the sort that are not always welcomed by big government and multinational corporations if only because they challenge the "new normal" and do so through peaceful initiatives whose community or regional applications are very difficult to demonize and all the harder to hinder without such efforts to discredit them seeming grossly unjust and unwarranted.

In fact, alternative movements such as these are empowered by the very same media tools that agents of mainstream globalization have developed and exploited toward their own ends. For one, they can by way of the internet effectively communicate with like-minded groups, exchange knowledge and grow influence, all while intending to by-pass corporate boardrooms, professional politicians, and obstructionist filters or censors. Ideally, they can go global without losing their local-orientation.

When I say they, I am thinking of slow-food movements, natural medicine and healing networks, alternative currencies, time-exchange banking, relocalized energy initiatives, new age and interfaith communities, industrial cooperatives, and the sort of environmental-action partnerships that bring together citizens in the spirit of healthy solutions, not ideological advocacy and adversarial politics. I am thinking of indigenous peoples rights projects and bioregional strategies that accommodate modern advancements with traditional ways of life toward a goal of sustainable stewardship of local economy and culture.

That governments and big corporations could write off these small initiatives as inconsequential or doomed to fail may very well have been the case just a few short years ago. But today, of course, as anyone who has been paying attention can tell you, the call for alternative projects and solutions seems imperative in order to regain some balance and sanity in a world that even experts find too complex to manage effectively.

Accordingly, there is no way to measure how these local or regional initiatives will change for the long-term the manner by which citizens think about their real lives, their real happiness, and the way they participate in real communities.

To be sure, politics-as-usual can and will find its way into grassroots projects: witness the stir caused by the proposed boycott of Israeli goods at successful, popular food co-ops in Olympia, Washington and Brooklyn, New York.

But in general, and by this very same example, these community initiatives cannot be construed as "separatist" or "reactionary" since they typically recognize their rightful place in a changing world at large while also striving to be inclusive, accessible and pro-active at the local level.

Or consider this: the recent announcement that Scotland will hold a referendum in 2014 on the question of gaining independence from the United Kingdom. Whatever the outcome, this initiative, as nurtured and rationally developed over years, has already instilled in the citizenry a forward-looking perspective - not of extreme nationalism - but of sustainable economics, multicultural welcome, enhanced health and educational services, respect for the environment, and constructive participation in the global community.

Also being considered by some is a new international organization, tentatively called the Gaian World Order. It has been conceived as an eventual alternative to the United Nations, a body which is increasingly seen as an institution where mega-states like the European Union, United States, Russia and China too often dictate policy in collusion with other mega-institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The Gaian World Order in nascent form would bring together a dozen small nations from distant parts of the earth in a trial effort aimed at promoting a "small is better" plan for future cooperation and development.

Dreamy stuff? Perhaps. But then again, it may all represent a new, organic force at play in the story of our planet as we face the daunting challenges of the 21st century. It may all be born of an urgent, intuitive realization that we need to reject or radically reform old models for living in the world.

Lloyd Vivola

August 13, 2012

Note: Articles from Ray Grigg's "Shades of Green" newspaper column originally published in Campbell River and Courtenay, British Columbia have been compiled and published in three volumes collectively titled Eco-Trilogy; 2017.