2001-10-09 - 10:28 a.m.

If I am already dead, and yet still alive, then today is a bonus day. A day that was not expected, that I can do with whatever I wish. Every day from here on out is a gratuitous gift. What is to be done with this gift? Perhaps something irrational, unachievable. Another beautiful failure. Another attempt to save the world.

The Green Party has ideas for saving the world. I show up at their next meeting, as do ten others, then twenty. It�s the biggest group they�ve ever had; seems like the camp-out has done the trick.

�Holy shit!� Steve says as he walks in, amazed at the crowd. �What are all these people doing here? Geez, you sit behind a fence for three days!�

There are fresh young faces and lifelong environmentalists among us, some who are searching for a way to help, others who have agendas to push. They�re idealists fighting uphill battles against the entrenched powers of corporate America. They pick up on the million problems and injustices that elude the attention of mainstream America and shout about them as loud as they can.

One member�s issue is solar power. Another says we urgently need to fight the opening of a dairy farm. One member, Mike, is planning to stand outside Starbucks and pass out leaflets informing customers that they use irradiated dairy products.

�Why are we picking on Starbucks?� one member asks, echoing my thoughts.

�Because they�re evil,� someone half-jokes.

There�s no specific reason to target Starbucks, Mike admits. Nearly every restaurant and coffee shop uses irradiated foods, even though there are more natural ways available for cleaning food. Starbucks is just a place to start.

My brain resists. I understand that Starbucks has been targeted before for not offering �fair trade� coffee, which offers a fair price to poor Central American coffee growers. Now fair trade coffee is for sale in most of their stores, though not in brewed form. Not so in many other coffee shops. Is Starbucks the obvious choice because it is large and successful, and by implication evil? Because, having long ago been chosen as a symbol of cultural homogenization, it will be fair game until it acts Green in every respect?

I can�t help questioning. I wonder how this group can ever get anything done with so many agendas. I wonder how any group that wants to get everything done, solve all the world�s problems in one fell swoop, could ever get anything done.

The real question, though, is this: how will I ever get anything done as long as I let the questions and skepticism crowd out everything else? Maybe I can�t support the Starbucks protest. That�s okay, Mike�s not asking me to. But maybe there�s something here I can support.

I realize I keep looking for easy answers. I�m waiting for somebody to give me an airtight case for something to believe in, with no questions left unanswered. Only there are no airtight cases, and there are no easy answers. You have to go with your gut, swallow some things you�re not sure about, and allow some questions to go unanswered. The world is just too complicated to ever get all the information you need.

But I don�t want all these dozens of piecemeal mini-movements, to promote solar energy, to end the sanctions in Iraq, to end food irradiation. I want one big movement, with one big message, that solve the world�s problems once and for all.

Fortunately, two visitors from the University of Chicago are proposing just that: the Earth Charter. It�s a document that�s been worked on over the past ten years that pushes for holistically changing the world, based on four principles:

 Respect and care for the community of life

 Ecological integrity

 Social and economic justice

 Democracy, nonviolence and peace

In two weeks, people from cities all over the country will gather to discuss the charter and sign an international �Declaration of Interdependence.� They hope to get the United Nations to endorse it in 2002.

This is the kind of thing I can get behind. What this world needs is not a change of regulations here and there to slow the rising tide of a corporate culture focused on maximizing profits and power. We need to convince people that it�s time to understand that we�re all one world, we can�t go around exploiting countries for their oil or rejecting treaties that could damage the economies. Now that we have a global economy, maybe we can finally create a global society that acts responsibly. I don�t know if this Earth Charter can do any of that, but it seems worth a try.

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