I Am Project - Responsible

Today the world is focused on the economy. I remember way back when we were shifting our attention to the environmental crisis we found ourselves in. Then the dot com boom hit and everyone put the environment on the back burner while the media kept us fascinated with stories of overnight billionaires. The dot com boom eventually busted but the economy’s growth continued to swell to unsustainable proportions. Recently, ecological and natural disasters became the top stories in the news and so the environment returned as a priority for many of us. Now with the economical collapse facing the globe, I fear the environment will be sacrificed in an attempt to once again get our rate of unsustainable consumption back up to the pre-collapse levels so that we can continue to define prosperity by the size of our television screens and the number of options on our SUV. If we all take responsibility for what goes on in our own communities, we can make a difference no matter what the economic outlook is.

Back in 2007 I was involved in meetings with GE Medical in Annapolis, Maryland. I met with most of their management and engineering staff and was really impressed with their passion for the patients their products support. As with most large corporations in strong communities, GE Medical sees the value of promoting the scope of their social consciousness. They were rightly proud of the volunteer work their management staff performed in New Orleans after Katrina destroyed the city.

When I returned to Canada, I felt a sense of responsibility for something that bothered me the whole time I stayed in Annapolis. There I was in an amazingly beautiful city but everywhere I looked there were trash bins overflowing with plastic water bottles and pop cans. The largest consuming country on the planet and the State of Maryland did not have a recycling program - everything went into the trash.

In subsequent follow ups with GE Medical, I commended them for their community activism but pleaded with them to exert as much political and corporate pressure on the city of Annapolis and the state of Maryland to institute programs that encourage and enforce recycling of goods. While volunteering after Katrina definitely gets corporations the most press, something as basic as a recycling program would have a much deeper impact on the state of the world.

When you consider the number of participants worldwide, if everyone involved in the UBBT, or martial arts in general, were to take the responsibility of writing a letter to the corporations in their own communities that encourages these corporations to become active with local environmental issues, great political pressure can be brought to bear. These corporations represent a major power in the local economy and at the end of the day, when money talks governments will listen.

"Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, lies the danger that we shall do nothing."
- Adolph Monod (1802 - 1856)