Brave Solutions

Brave solutions is a concept about going to the source of problems and solving them right there. It's harder, its often grimy and exhausting work but it's the only way to solve anything. There are many metaphors which express this idea. In the culture that is America today, we would rather have a lung transplant rather than stop smoking. We keep watering badly planted trees. We know what that does, it gives us something to do, but the roots will never take. We have to replant the tree. We have to do what it takes to make things right. Give up old ideas, embrace new ones with hope for a better long term result planted in between. The Earth cannot keep coming in last, behind emergencies which are caused by the way we keep forgetting how everything depends on a healthy biosphere.
We don't have any more Earth's  to mine and our numbers are rapidly exhausting our resources. No solutions will stick, no other problems will matter when our numbers keep rising by 1,000,000 every 4.5 days. "Stop at One" is the controversial slogan for limiting family size, which offers hope for a world with us. I believe if people realized our truly desperate situation, that slogan would be on buses and billboards everywhere.


Brave Solutions
by Karen I. Shragg

We are watering badly planted trees
Solving problems with blinders on
Wondering why they never go away
and keep getting worse
We want quick fixes
Electric cars that cool the climate
Cheap food that makes us healthy
Diets that allow for greasy buffets
Money to pour in from winning tickets
Intelligence to emerge from our devices
We want room for polar bears
and our wall street ways
We want to keep ignoring the cliff approaching
with every moment we ignore
how billions of us drive scarcity
keeping prices high
to drive the kind of mining we abhor

We pray for miracles 

Assuming the answers do not lie within us
and our ability to replant the trees
In places where there is room for healthy roots to grow
in the fertile ground of hope
and brave solutions.