After December 26th, 2004, the word tsunami took on a whole
new meaning. Certainly, that was the case for my family, vacationing on Oahu earlier
this month when we heard news that an 8.2 earthquake in the Kuril Islands had
put Hawaii on a tsunami watch. Not a warning mind you, just a watch (the
difference between “wait and see” and “run”). So there we were luxuriously
tucked in to our beachfront retreat on the North Shore
with visions of Banda Aceh dancing unpleasantly in our heads. After talking to
a few local friends and recalling the  panic of Hurricane Iniki, which hit when I lived there back
the early nineties, we decided to err on the side of caution, packed up some
basics and piled the gang into Big Ugly - the white van my brother-in-law
rented to accommodate my sister and him, me, three kids, two grandparents, four
surfboards, two boogie boards, untold bottles of sun block, car toys and
snacks. A typical kid-car gone Hawaiian style. The original Big Ugly, by the
way, is back in California, an old Suburban going biodiesel. Anyway, after
several hours of hanging out up in Pupukea Heights, the alert was cancelled and
we went back to our lovely Frettes. We laughed about it in the morning but it
led to some interesting conversation the next morning regarding global warning
and the increase of catastrophic weather systems.

It is an interesting time to be alive, with children,
wondering how best we can prepare them for an uncertain future. Will the same
skills and talents that have made us “successful” serve them? Or will it once
again be more important to know how to grow your own vegetables and hunt than
it is to design a new computer program? In his best selling book, The Great Turning,
David Korten writes that changing our future begins with changing our stories.
We are a big “ship” to turn around, surf vans, SUV’s, oil and all, so in the
interim, there are carbon offsets and Renewable Energy Certificates, a.k.a. green tags. Basically these
work similarly to eating only grilled chicken and vegetables the day after
overindulging on that whole pan of
meant-to-be-eaten-over-the-course-of-three-days brownies. Or, in more technical terms, a “carbon
offset” is an emission reduction credit from another organization’s project
that results in less carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
than would otherwise occur. More
confused? Ok, let’s put it like this: You, like me, own a 4WD SUV that you
bought when you still lived in the snow and weren’t quite ready to sacrifice
the big gun and you don’t quite have the finances to run out and buy a new hybrid. But you can calculate your car’s CO2 emissions and then buy some carbon offsets from a wind or solar energy company. They are then
able to use the monies generated from your purchase to produce non-polluting
energy that goes into the grid, thus reducing the need for an equivalent amount
of fossil fuel derived energy production. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step.

As for preparing our children for what may come, I look to
the indigenous elders whose wisdom has endured for centuries and perpetuated a
culture that works with the environment instead of against it. Though
controversial in attribution, the words of Chief Seattle are most fitting. “Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” On that note, check out Native Energy   and balance out those brownies, ugh, I mean carbon emissions.