PLANET PANIC PACKAGE

N.B. We are taught that the divine relationship with our Creators’ creations is (or at least was once) paramount. Sadly today, our Paramount Chiefs no longer recognize this paramount importance of respecting and revering our surroundings, Gods’ creations. Our islands are being degraded internally as well as from external foreign sources and impacts and imports.

Should we panic? Before we all panic too much, just try our simple proven ‘4 Point Survival Packages’ below. Our Ancestors followed these rules and they worked, at least in Samoa, for over the past 3000 years. Our Ancestors left no ‘carbon footprints’.

We Kids just need to find out if Samoa can really become a ‘carbon-free’ society like some other villages elsewhere in the world today.




Please excuse us Kids, but we’re just trying to think with our brains (and not our pockets). But having just seen the DVD “NOBELITY” last night (where 10 Nobel Prize Winners raised some grave concerns for Kids trying to live on this Planet for the next few years), we Kids now fear for the rest of the children in the world. We saw on this DVD so many beautiful Kids in Africa and India living in absolute squalor. If only our parents had taken us to these countries on our last school holidays? This would have meant more to us than going to Disneyland amidst all the glamour and disrespect for these same children who are losing their own traditional ‘Disneylands’.

Excuse us Kids if we do sound a little ungrateful and even panicky, because we are. Whilst our grandparents all kindly handed-down their traditional and sustainable livelihood skills, they did not once forewarn us of what may lay ahead. Although, they did have a saying “Look-out, the foreigner or palagi will get you” as if he was a demon or someone for us Kids to be scared of. Reality today is that our grandparents in Samoa are now equally scared of the palagi as we were as little Kids, and rightfully so.

So, whilst you may be led to think that we Kids are in a little bit of a panic, we Kids in Samoa at least (see the rest of our blog) have decided to take a 'class action suit' against all adults in the world, charging them all with 'adult-ery' for what they have already done to the Planet, and, surprisingly, are continuing to do to the Planet, despite all our little ‘panic attacks’.

Makes good sense, don’t you think?

And with another additional 1 million species thought to become extinct by the Year 2050, mainly because of the negative impacts of global warming, then we Kids would like to register here our grave concern, hoping that the whole Planet panics with us. 1 million beautiful creations globally all going to the grave. And our parents are the cause of this? Can’t be true?

So what can we Kids really do to get this message across to our parents, in fact every parent in the whole world?

We Kids have tried to articulate our concerns in this blog whilst living on this small island developing state in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean (called SAMOA, 10 islands we still own as indigenous Samoan landowners, the other 5 Samoan islands were ‘taken off us’ by the Americans - this recent change in geography was never part of our traditional Master Plan, but American Samoa may have more political pull than we indigenous Samoans here in Independent Samoa have, especially when it comes to US politics on climate change). We Kids need to get our messages to the Whitehouse, letting the President of the USA know that we are unhappy with these outcomes and impacts on us Kids.

But, regardless of our different geography on this beautiful archipelago, we Samoan Kids are so far away from the rest of the world, so far away from the Whitehouse, and we are so far away from the real causes of global warming. Or are we? Or is there something we can do here right at home? You bet there is.

Let’s admit it: we Samoan Kids alone are increasing our annual consumption of fossil fuel-generated electricity by a whopping 10% every year - a rate that we may soon be unable to afford, even unable to generate on-island. We Samoans are now searching for more energy sources, and hydro-power is our environmentally-friendly solution (we already generate 40% of our energy needs in Samoa from hydro-power – we have so many rivers as you can imagine with a rainfall of about 3-5 metres or 10-16 feet). And a figure of 80% has been targeted, leaving 20% of our energy from fossil fuels and/or, wait for it, bio-fuels – YES, we grow our own energy crops, and the markets are here on-island – no need to export these crops long distances overseas.

Yep, we small Kids are looking for some micro-hydro power stations, we want to generate our own electricity, pumping it back into the grid and earning money as Independent Power Producers or IPPs. Wow, we may even then be able to afford to leave all our remaining forests intact. We may even be able to afford to plant a few extra trees in our greenbelts, even planting-out a few more bio-fuel species like breadfruit, palm oil, candlenut, etc.

WOW, things are starting to happen, and we Kids in Samoa need to make it happen even faster. We have to contact our newspapers, our TV stations, even hop onto the Internet and get the world rolling nicely again. Even our own Samoan ‘SAVALI’ newspaper needs to change its name, because SAVALI means to ‘walk’, and we Kids need to hasten the speed a little. Anyway, that’s the least of our problems.

As part of our Planet Panic Package, we're deciding to send our proven traditional technologies from the 'South’ to the ‘North' as they say, surprised that with all our epistemological studies now completed here in the South Seas over the past 45,000 years, we have never been consulted by the real carbon-polluters in this rapidly modernizing world up there in the Northern Hemisphere.

Are you all ready for our very simple advice, handed-down from our Ancestors, and from their Ancestors’ Ancestors going right back to their origins in Asia?

It is real simple, only 4 steps to follow, and, if you live on our islands, it may be even easier to adopt such measures than if you were living in Sydney or New York or London or some African desert: firstly,
1. Grow all your own foods, hunt and gather all this beautiful marinelife (no more wasted diesel for our cargo ships, and no more of those expensive imported foods that are now costing us in excess of 40% of our health bills due to all our cousins getting these new lifestyle diseases – diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, cardiovascular disease, gout, etc.). Within 100 years, we may all be afflicted with such non-communicable diseases, let alone being affected by the direct impacts of global warming! So what are we waiting for? Secondly,
2. Eat only healthy foods, all organically-grown, no pesticides and no imported fertilizers polluting our foods and soils and waterways and coral reefs, preferably eating only native meats/proteins, and even eating vegetarian-like diets (very different from our carnivorous cousins abroad who rely today on more and more cattle invading their last forested areas and being fed cattle fodder which was just grown where beautiful forests once grew). Starting to all make sense? And thirdly,
3. Walk or paddle your canoe to ‘work’, saves a lot on fossil fuel consumption. Yes, we all need to do our small bit. It is now time to pour our coconut oil or our candlenut oil straight into our ‘diesel’ engines. And YES, it works. Samoa may soon no longer need all those polluting carbon-rich fossil fuels. And we just need to stop Australia exporting all their carbon-rich coals to China to help power-up these new coal-fired power stations. God help us! Are we now having to turn to God because we are panicking or because we really know and understand his teachings, especially when it comes to living in balance with His and Her creations? Finally,
4. Love our forests and reefs, and cherish our traditions which have been proven over millennia. We Samoans have many traditional conservation techniques, taboos on fishing and hunting grounds, even legends and stories and proverbs all guiding our daily behaviours and traditional protocols. We Samoans have a certain spiritual relationship with our siosiomaga, our surroundings: we are taught that this divine relationship with our Creators’ creations is (or was once) truly paramount to all in Samoa. Sadly today, our Paramount Chiefs, as they still like to be called, can no longer recognize this paramount importance to protect the future of us Kids. Whatever happened to va tapuia, that spiritual relationship with ones siblings? Yes, it seems that our Fa’aSamoa, or Samoan culture, is eroding fast. Don’t they love us Kids anymore? May be we should all re-read Divine Nature by Michael Cremo who points-out very clearly the 4 most logical steps that need to be taken by all villages.

Well, how soon can we Kids all put these 4 trade secrets back into practice as part of the whole package to save the whole world, Samoan-led? In fact, led by Samoan Kids.

We Kids may need to export these traditional technologies to all other countries, as soon as possible. But, before we do, we need to do a few little experiments here at home first before we get all 4 truly sustainable livelihood skills functioning simultaneously again.

Another 4 Point Planet Panic Package needs to be designed, this time targeting our Paramount Chiefs:
1. We need to be able to convince our Paramount Chiefs of this crisis that we Kids are panicking about.
2. We need to be able to convince our Paramount Chiefs of the urgency of which we are expecting some response from them.
3. We need to be able to convince our Paramount Chiefs that they actually have the answers, all proven traditionally and all traditionally proven. And
4. We need to be able to convince our Paramount Chiefs that they have the skills to transfer this proven traditional technology to the developed countries (like USA, Australia, Europe), or to those countries that are also the heaviest global polluters (like Australia, China, USA and India), or to those countries that are the main exporters of carbon products such as coal and oil (like Australia and the Middle Eastern countries).

Now, how do we put all this into action?

Last week, Monday 14th April, 2008, 20,000 Samoans marched on Parliament protesting at the switching of the side of the road we drive on, switching it from the right side to the left side. The People Against Switching Sides (PASS) never once argued from a Kids’ perspective: and that is, excuse us, we Kids are more interested in Saving Our Siosiomaga than we are interested in saving a few dollars in our pockets (which was the bulk of the senseless arguments being presented against this recently proposed piece of legislation).

We Kids just sat back and laughed all day at the silliness of these protesters. What does it matter to us what side of the car we hop into or what side of the road we drive on? What really matters to us most is “Will we still be driving our diesel cars on this polluted Planet in 50 years time?” Next we’ll have our teachers all telling us we need to write with the other hand!

And if this is really the level of conscienciousness of our Elders, then no wonder the Planet is in trouble, and no wonder we Kids are having to panic, and justifiably so by the looks of it.

To conclude, we Kids will give all our Paramount Chiefs one last opportunity to avoid any further legal action (remember the class action suit we are preparing for you)?

We need to organize another PASS March to help foster some Pacific Alofa for Samoa’s Siosiomaga (PASS) – yes, some Pacific love (Alofa) for Samoa’s environment (Siosiomaga). We Kids need you all marching on Parliament House, and it’s better we all do this on a day that Parliament is not sitting because we want all the Parliamentarians marching with us and all of them on our side this time. And we are expecting a turn-out of about 180,000 people, in person and/or in spirit. Yes, we Kids need the entire nation focused this time on a real issue, a real serious issue, an issue that is important to who?

And you guessed it.

Us Kids.

So, please, don’t PASS-up this opportunity because we are planning another PASS Protest March, this time a Pacific Alliance of Sustainability for Samoa (PASS) all funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Yes, the GEF has recently formed the Pacific Alliance of Sustainability (GEF-PAS) by contributing $USD100Million to saving the Pacific delicate and vulnerable and threatened environments, but this time we are calling on all Pacific Islanders to help Samoa attain true sustainable livelihood skills like our Ancestors once practiced.

We want all Pacific Island Countries to aim for fossil fuel-free economies by 2020. And we Pacific Islanders have the technology to do it. And more importantly, we need to send the same message to those palagi as well, and that is “Look-out, the palagi will get you too”.

Samoa, and the whole South Pacific, needs to demonstrate by example that we are all truly capable of meeting our own energy needs here in the Pacific without relying on imported carbon-rich fuels, without relying on disease-causing imported foods, and, most importantly, without relying on imported doctrines that are not yet proven.

Our Ancestors had got it right, had practiced it like the Professors of South Seas Sustainability. The least we can do is give our Ancestral Paramount Chiefs the credit they so rightly deserve.

Faafetai tele lava
Malo galue