Thoughts from the Lappés
It’s not possible to know what’s possible. So we are free to go for the world we really want.
Hope is not something we seek in evidence, it is what we become in action.
Democracy is not what we have, it is what we do.
Every choice we make can be a celebration of the world we want.
Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of democracy.
Can we truly believe ‘the world’ can change if we don’t experience ourselves changing? And there’s only one way to change ourselves – that’s by taking risks.
Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.
Every time we act, even with our fear, we make room for others to do the same. Courage is contagious.
Surprising Facts
Ninety percent of Americans make less in real dollars than they did in 1973 – on average $4,000 less. The wealthiest 400 Americans now control more wealth than half the world’s people.
Concerning 400 wealthiest: The Forbes 400 Special Report, September 17, 2008, http://www.forbes.com estimates the 400 wealthiest people in America have a net worth of $1.57 trillion. Global household wealth (defined as the value of physical and financial assets minus debts) in 2000 was valued at $125 trillion, according to The World Distribution of Household Wealth Report (Davies, Sandstrom, Shorrocks & Wolff, Department of Economics, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 5 Dec 2006). According to the same study, and reported at www.freelibrary.com, 50% of the world’s adults owned barely 1% of global wealth, which would equal $1.25 trillion.
Worldwide, more people are members of cooperatives than own shares in publicly traded companies; cooperatives provide a fifth more jobs than do global corporations.
About coop employment: Co-operatives provide over 100 million jobs around the world, 20% more than multinational enterprises. Source: Geneva-based International Co-operative Alliance, Statistical Information on the Co-operative Movement.
More than a third of both the world’s grain and fish catch now go to feed livestock, which return to us only a fraction of the nutrients.
For fish catch: Zabarenko, Deborah. “One-third of world fish catch used for animal feed” Reuters Online, article published 10/29/2008. Accessed on 2/23/09.
If the whole world adopted sustainable farming practices, production could increase by over 50 percent.
In three decades agricultural output per person has climbed by one fifth worldwide, but in just the last two years over 100 million more people suffer from hunger—reaching a total of nearly a billion.
An MRI study of people competing vs. cooperating found that cooperating stimulates the same parts of our brain as does eating chocolate!
America emits twice the carbon per person that Europe does. But think what’s possible: California emits 20 percent less carbon per dollar GDP than Germany; and it gets a quarter of its electricity from renewables!
In Washington DC, more than two dozen lobbyists push mainly corporate interests for every one representative American citizens have elected to protect our interests.