


As intelligent and technologically advanced as humanity appears, we remain animals living from and within a dynamic ecological system. The fundamental error that has led humanity to the brink of ecological collapse is the spurious notion that we exist independently, that we belong to some exclusive club that does not have to follow the laws of ecology, and that nature is here simply to supply us with "resources" for our galloping economies.
The ideas below incorporate ideas previously articulated by Arne Naess, Chellis Glendinning, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, David Abram, and other nature-centred ecologists including Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter. A summary of the values that we might associate with a non-human-centred, genuine ecological awareness include:
1. The inherent value of wildness, nature, diversity, symbiosis, and complexity, independent of humanity’s desires or existence.
2. Systems: Everything in nature exists in interlocking systems. No species operates independently. The survival unit of evolution is a “species-in-an-environment,” co-evolving with all other living systems.
3. An ecological-self: The human sense of “self” expanded to include these living systems. The popular economic notion that people act as “private” pursuers of “happiness” remains a tragic conceit, destined to fail.
4. Biocracy: extending the idea of “rights” to all things, but more importantly to the ecological system itself, and therefore, limiting human interference in nature.
5. Nature, not a “resource”: The elements of nature that we call “resources” also (1) provide resources for everything else that lives, and (2) possess value in themselves, in situ. A river is a living part of a system, not simply a “resource” for human purposes.
6. Ecological design: Our tools must mimic and work with the habits, laws, and designs of nature: 100% recycling, lowest possible energy use, integrated living systems, low impact, and so forth.
7. Addressing human trauma: The destruction of the supporting ecology has traumatized humanity and led not only to poverty and desolation among the poor, but to anxiety, addiction, and violence among the comfortable. Witness the “holiday” to a mountain, seaside, or forest, as self-medication for this trauma. As I write, I’m watching a pair of Wilson’s warblers, who have nested in the thicket behind my house. I cannot quantify how therapeutic this is. Every lost wild place reduces human well-being.
8. Social justice, gender equality, and international peace: War, sexism, racism, and injustice not only cause direct suffering, but also contribute to ecological catastrophes.
9. Decrease Human population: A human civilization that understands nature will limit its interference by reducing its numbers. A positive step would be a target (perhaps over two centuries) of reducing human population to, say, a billion people, roughly the 1800 population. Global women’s rights and contraception would contribute to achieving this. The population discussion invokes fear for human rights, cultural rights, racism, and immigration. Who has the right to tell other humans not to reproduce? The answer is that the living earth has the right and will impose that right if we don’t. Excessive human population reduces the quality of life for humanity and everything else.
10. Simplicity: learning to enhance the quality of life with the simplest means and least interference in nature. This requires a shift in expectations, to rediscover the joy of simplicity and a supportive environment – the joys of nature, peace, community, family, and creativity. Less stuff, more peace of mind.
11. Action: We won’t solve our dilemma with philosophy or slogans. The new environmental human society requires action at every level. Primarily, we need a massive protection of wilderness and relocalization of human survival.
12. Worship the miracle: Since the advent of empires, agriculture, and urban living, humanity has searched for paradise in all the wrong places, in wealth, power, money, and invisible realms beyond time and space. Humans appear to possess an innate sense of mystery and the more-than-human sacredness of life, but we have failed to worship – to “ascribe worth” to – the one thing that sustains us, the living earth.
If ecologists claim to work for the earth or if presume to negotiate with governments or corporations on nature’s behalf, they owe ultimate allegiance to their client, the earth. We dare not sell her cheaply. If ecologists represent the earth’s voice at the table of human society, we must point out that nature has its own values and purposes. Rivers, trees, and hawks are going about affairs as noble and important as my own affairs feel to me. No matter how powerful and clever we appear, we are not in charge of how nature will evolve on earth.
Ecologists must help prepare human society for the depth and breadth of the authentic shift at hand: Nature possesses values, laws, and limits beyond human purposes. Wise design is essential, but we won’t simply engineer ourselves out of our economic dilemma, without changing our habits of excessive consumption. We won’t consume ourselves to freedom by tacking “green” onto every enterprise like a postscript. Natures own laws will be our primary guidance.
Ecology remains the subversive subject as Paul Sears said four decades ago. Humanity may flourish in a long run with nature, but only by revisioning human society as a guest of the earth’s living systems.
(Excerpted from my Deep Green column at Greenpeace International)
Tags: , Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, Chellis Glendinning, Deep ecology, Ecology, Greenpeace, Rachel Carson
This was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under Ecology . Feel free to respond, or trackback.
Of all the environmental arguments going back and forth the basic one is that trees and animals have life. In the ancient wisdom tales this was considered sacred. The Earth was the Mother. And it was sacrilege to break these rules. The modern theory of Rationalism has put paid to this wisdom. It is time to bring it back before it is too late. All ancient civilisations in the world had these wisdom tales. In rural communities some of this wisdom exists – time to take these truths seriously and get the children to absorb them – they after all will be the guiding stars in the coming years.
I read your deep green column on the greenpeace.org site. I thank you for this.
I have some thoughts & questions:
1. How do we change the man and the woman in the street, who shrug their shoulders and get into their cars to go buy another computer or TV set?
2. How can we get into the minds of the hundreds of thousands of people shopping in Paris, Budapest, Rotterdam, etc, each day, looking at the newest things?
3. How can we stop the men and women that grow greenhouse vegetables and plants during winter time and put hundreds of thousands of energy consuming (heating) lights that burn all day and night, to make the plants grow faster and better and leave an unnatural orange glow in the night sky?
In Holland there was a nation wide campaign motivating people to buy energy saving light bulbs, and when this campaign appeared succesfull, a businessman constructed a 5 mile ice skating track in the open air that consumes more energy to keep the ice frozen than all the saved energy by the light bulbs.
4. How can we change someone who thinks : I live in a small area like The Netherlands where only 17 million people live, how can i be of influence, when in France, Germany and Spain, or Italy there must be about 200 million people?.’
5. How can we reach those who want to do something about it, but don’t know how or where to begin or who think, ‘later’ or ‘The government is already doing it’. and who end up doing nothing?
- Should schools have lessons on environment, our earth, consuming responsibly ?
- Should governments make rules for businesses?
- Should there be daily wordlwide media attention, instead of just one famous movie by Al Gore that was in to the majority of people a hype and is now almost forgotten?
Mark van Santbrink
The Netherlands
A tremendous cultural momentum pushes humanity in an untenable, unsustainable direction. Nevertheless, I avoid talking about what people “should” do. I encourage others, but avoid blaming masses of humanity.
Certain powerful people in our world do exhibit mean-spirited, thuggish, sociopathic, and even psychopathic behavior in amassing wealth and power. However, most people remain innocent, reacting by natural instinct to survive and protect their families. Compassion is also natural, although private industrialism does not necessarily cultivate it.
In spite of all the meetings at Kyoto, Rio, and elsewhere, and the claims of “green” products and “green” politicians, humanity’s challenge grows: CO2 emissions, draining rivers and aquifers, spreading deserts, toxins, population, massive poverty, displaced refugees, and so forth, all on the rise.
Provide a better vision. Ignorance is not bliss. It is cold comfort at best. Knowledge inspires action. Better yet, action inspires action. Deeper than knowledge and data is emotion.
Humanity needs a new story about itself, about who and what it is. This will not be simple, but it is possible. We have learned from social movements, civil rights, women’s rights, and even in the environmental movement, that humanity’s dysfunctional habits can change. Authentic sustainability will require massive human change. Our civilization is not even remotely sustainable, and changing our lightbulbs or buying a hybrid cars are not going to get us there.
The changes will almost certainly require generations. Start now. Grow food. Learn local living. Teach your children to grow food and look after their environment. We might reach other people through their love for their own children. Remind people that excessive consumption and ecological destruction today forcloses options for our progeny.
Give rather than hoard. Action inspires action. Speak out. Do not tolerate decisions in one’s community that destory the quality of simple life or degrade the environment for some private dream of wealth or power. Stand up to greed and ignorance. Take on a critical issue in the community, and solve it. Offer another vision. Offer simple self-awareness, ecological awareness, and living rich lives with modest means.
Telling others what they should do probably won’t work. Acting ourselves and demonstrating public and ecological compassion is probably the most hopeful path.
Rex Weyler.
Today we live in an increasingly polluted environment. Governments and Scientists from all over the world spend Billions of dollars to find ways and means to reduce the ill effects of pollution. Each one of us contributes to the carbon footprint on a minute basis. Collectively we have brought Earth to the edge of a break down. The effects of which are seen and felt across the world.
Ancient Seers had anticipated the total chaos that future generations would be facing and they had a very simple solution for that. Agnihotra, a Vedic message for the purification of the atmosphere through the agency of Fire, is performed daily at exactly Sunrise and Sunset.
Visit our Vedic Sciences website, http://www.agnihotraindia.com, for more information about Agnihotra
Pollution, Global warming etc. are the ill effects of our collective mistakes and the answer to that will also come only from collective positive action.
It is time the world acted as one to save our Mother earth.
Awaiting your positive response.
Warm Regards
Shilpa Polekar
Hi Rex,
Much of what you have to say is hard to disagree with, and I ought to make clear that in practical terms of environmental protection I think we’d be on the same side in choosing between industrialists and the Amazon, but in terms of human-kinds relatonship with nature, whilst sharing both your awe and pleasure in it I lack your seemingly absolute deference, or view of the earth as somehow almost sentient, but please don’t see this a lack of respect for either you or the planet.
The late novelist Kurt Vonnegut was a little more pithy on the subject. He once described humans as being driven into an evolutionary niche… we have big brains, in evolutionary terms it’s what we as a species do, but it’s no more likely to succeed than any other survival strategy.
I guess my point is that as a kid I read Vonnegut, Bradbury et al and watched Star Trek on TV. I now have a “communicator” way better than Gene Rodenberry could even imagine back then and it’s hard not to dream and work for a future which is beyond a fatalistic acceptance of our place in the food chain, and a belief that mother knows best.
The question is not one of absolutes, and the return to nature is about as likely for my generation to achieve as the starship Enterprise. Right here and right now neither is a tenable choice, but either is preferable to striving for heli-snowboarding holidays and SUV’s. If I want to enjoy the mountains then I walk… And when I’m working, I try to make it for something worthwhile. With a little effort and imagination, growth, economic or otherwise, can as just as easily be based on knowledge and culture as it can on consumption physical resources.
Technology doesn’t have all the answers, and neither can nature. To sustain what we might for want of a better word call “humanity” we need a balance. In fact, the very search for that balance might itself be the finest expression of that humanity we seek.
For certain, if as you suggest there is ever to be a “target” of reducing the population to less than one tenth of its peak in a few generations, then preserving anything I’d choose to regard as human will already be lost.
I share your view that 200 years from now there will be fewer of us on this planet, hopefully living better lives, but I’m not trading numbers or setting time-lines with anyone…. even to speak of targets, invokes at best Chinese policy of the 1970s and at worst German policy of the 1940’s. Making any kind of reproductive choices beyond the most preciously personal, is not an option for me I’m afraid… From the closing paragraph of your last reply I guess you can see that too.
How we achieve that transition in population will be the greatest test of our humanity that our species has ever seen… and I’m afraid I’d use any technology available, and make any sacrifice necessary to preserve human life and prevent human suffering. It’s in my nature… and I hope in yours too.
From the first we wrapped another animal’s skin around us or lit a fire or built a shelter, we started manipulating our environment… We now must do it on a massive scale because we already are of a massive scale, and I’m not sure that a wholesale adoption of ancient wisdom would be enough now, even if it were likely, without some major apocalypse to predicate it.
I hasten to add that I’m not advocating GMO or nuclear energy or toxic agro-chemicals… or dumping iron-filings in the ocean…not yet at least…
I’m arguing for better choices right now, so the unthinkable/irreversable won’t become necessary… because if those kind of options ever do become truly necessary… we’d better be damn sure we are ready for blasting out of here to boldly go.
Vonneguts’ conclusion was that humans thinking we can solve things by just getting smarter, in evolutionary terms is no more or less likely to succeed than Mammoths thinking they could beat extinction if they just got a little bigger.
I’m pretty sure your solution is the smart one Rex… We will return to the forests and grasslands left to us, and in the numbers they will sustain…and with the respect they deserve. My question to you … is that really all we want?
My references are science-fiction and yours are mostly historical fact; I just hope that maybe my half-cocked muddle-through (lack of) philosophy is just not quite so smart as to get billions of us killed. I guess we’ll find out, because I’m afraid I’m pretty much as close to average as it gets, there’s an awful lot of people thinking like me, some might say too many.
Steve .. Thanks. Your comments are interesting. Yes, balancing human systems with nature is the heart of the matter.
I urge us toward seeing nature and following natural systems because I believe we are so thoroughly out of balance in this regard. We need to drastically reverse our huge error of arrogance.
Yes, I believe the living system of life on the Earth — as a system — is sentient and intelligent. Another example of human arrogance is our presumption that only humans are intelligent. Nature taught us everything we know, gave us eyes to witness, gave us a mind to process information, gave us feelings and reactions. These are all nature’s gifts to us. We didn’t invent intelligence.
As far as I can tell, the entire structure of the universe — from leptons and vibrating superstrings to colonies of ants and schools of dolphins — is intelligent.
I don’t think accepting ourselves as creatures within this system is remotely fatalistic. I find it exhilarating to be a free and wild animal — albeit clever, social, and teched up — in the free and wild world.
Regarding our population, again, we are arrogent to think that we get to decide how this goes. We have to wake up to natural limits. I believe it is a mistake to think that addressing this issue with reduction targets must invoke totalitarianism. The solutions I propose are (1) women’s rights worldwide, and (2) contraception available worldwide. Simple. No totalitarian nightmares, just common sense, social justice, and perhaps some encouragement and education.
I appreciate your comments. It is indeed complex, not simple, and discussing these things helps us approach the right choices. I too am a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut* who reminds me that a good sense of humour may be one of humanity’s most endearing traits.
rw.
Out of the Box Insight, At a glance: converging shifts in economics & sovereignty
A world order based on the politics of geography has for three and a half centuries provided dominion and sovereignty to be held exclusively by nation-states and the rulers of those states. But nation-state sovereignty is now being challenged by the convergence of various factors which impact a viral and tangible socio-economic destabilization on a global scale:
· The end of the Cold War diminished the rationale and sustainability of military-industrial based economies, and re-exposed what J.M. Keynes had first observed post World War I: the long-term weakness of capitalism was that consumer-driven economies were vulnerable to unstable consumer demands. In parallel, Keynes observed that post war economic reconstruction was not a matter of poverty reduction, but rather of job creation. Consequently, Keynes argued the role of government was to maintain long-term aggregate demand and jump-start the creation of new jobs. Since the 1960s, even though Friedman introduced ‘free market’ and monetarism applications, and Mundell-Laffer introduced supply-side economics, a substantial majority of the U.S. and OECD economies, throughout the Cold War, remained stabilized by military-industrial economic growth and its related employment stability—the key ingredients of maintaining aggregate demand. The maxim of the West during the Cold War: “War is good for the economy”. The reductions of military budgets resulting from the end of the Cold War, however, diminished the ability of the military-industrial based economies to effectively maintain aggregate demand. Without aggregate demand being intentionally maintained, a number of destabilizing social, economic, and political influences were exposed—some intentionally, some unintentionally, and some even unconsciously.
· What have conventionally been viewed as geopolitical ‘power states’ (generally, OECD states), these power states previously influenced and maintained the larger elements of international relations and world order through a subtle mix of hard and soft power tools—soft power tools primarily being the economic influences of multilateral IFIs and specific nation-building exercises. However, as a consequence of the post Cold War cessation of the maintenance of aggregate demand and the further decentralizing aspects of the modern rise of the SME role in economic markets, multilateral IFIs and nation-building have proven largely ineffective as soft power tools. In short, without effective soft power tools to work in concert with hard power tools, OECD states will experience increasing difficulty in maintaining world order.
· As a consequence of the growing ineffectiveness of soft power tools originally designed to assist in the maintaining of world order, an ever growing list of nation-states are vulnerable to fundamental economic failure, rampant corruption, and adverse influences from external states. Of particular concern, in socio-economically weak states, gray market economies have virtually replaced legitimate markets. These economically weak states are not only threats to their own internal security, they are direct threats to regional and even global security. In modern, post Cold War terms, it could be argued that international relations and world order are no longer objectives which can be facilitated or coerced by power states. Rather, it can be ultimately observed that civilizations arise and decay as a direct consequence of their essential economic—not political—relevance to the larger world.
· If government or military-industry sectors no longer maintain aggregate demand—then, who or what is to undertake the responsibility of maintaining aggregate demand so as to provide some form of stable footing for socio-economic sustainability?
· In recent years, major transnational corporations grow increasingly dependent upon average consumers to define what specifically to innovate and produce—yet these consumers’ demands are often unpredictable and erratic, whereas military-industrial budgets were generally long-term and stabilizing. A recent example of this re-exposed weakness to consumer-driven capitalism is visibly witnessed in the now-occurring shift from large and SUV vehicle sales to smaller energy-efficient vehicle sales throughout North America—and this abrupt shifting reverberates throughout the entire automotive manufacturing industry, causing plant closures and employee reductions.
· As sudden shifts in general consumer demands consistently occur, these shifts also impact and are impacted by natural resource demands and environmental security pressures. With the parallel expansion of environmental awareness, corporate social responsibility obligations, and corporate stock ownership by average citizens, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define how ethical decisions are debated and implemented. Friedman famously remarked that corporations were ‘artificial citizens’. In a modern consumer-driven economy, where the laborer-consumer is also often a shareholder, it could be argued that corporations are increasingly becoming ‘tangible and ethical extensions of citizens’.
· As corporations increasingly are forced to ‘re-negotiate’ their relationships with consumers, financial markets, and society in general, rising individualism and ad hoc collaborative communities are also influencing corporate business models. At present, the voices emanating from these emerging relationships and models have yet to coalesce into political movements capable of consistently impacting large-scale and cross-border change—but these self-organizing and non-hierarchical voices are perhaps the world’s most potent tools for radical and rapid transformation toward eventual socio-economic sustainability.
I’ve just read your article in Greenpeace Newsletter, –and found out your blog– which includes the 12 fundamentals of ecology. Here’s my response I sent to Greenpeace.
Le samedi 21 juin 2008
J’avais simplement envie de vous dire que j’ai beaucoup aimé l’article de Rex Weyler. Je le trouve déjà courageux. Il fait figure de cavalier ou de mousquetaire, qui défend la noblesse de la Nature. Son article-discours est comme un coup d’épée. Je l’ai lu à voix haute et je l’ai trouvé galvanisant, j’en ai eu à un certain moment la chair de poule sur les cuisses.
France Dombrowski
Québec
PeTA
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
http://www.peta.org
=================
Translated to English. rw:
I simply wanted to say that I liked the article by Rex Weyler (the 12 fundamentals of ecology) very much. I think he is quite audacious. He appears as a horseman or musketeer, who defends the nobility of Nature. His voice is like the blow of a sword. I read it aloud and found it electrifying; I had goose bumps on my thighs.
===================
Merci, France. Vous êtes très gentils. rw.
Why refer to “the” Earth? It’s just “Earth,” in fact.
We don’t refer to “the Mars,” “the Venus,” and “the Saturn,” for example.
“Earth” is our planet’s name. Let’s not reify it by refering to “the” Earth.
HI Steve,
I liked your comment.
It is true that the environmental movement can be in danger of restricting human freedom. I think that working on the same issues from a variety of perspective is important for this reason. Yet there is also a very poetic sense in which our wildness – our connection with nature is a huge element and inspiration for our own dignity and freedom.
Yet then there is another issue of freedom. Psychologically I believe that most of us want more freedom than what is possible. We hardly reflect on our own mortality, let alone that of our natural world. This excessive sense of our own scope is also reflected at times of tyranny in the leaders and their image of their own power. The quality of our lives and also the effect we have on the world is adversely affected by this distorted sense of our own limits. We all have a certain space that we are free to inhabit fully, happily, with liberty. It is about finding this space in the context of one another and nature that will solve a lot of issues, I think.
Finally, you asked if we want to return to nature more than we currently have. I would suggest that we don’t really know. We must first examine a relationship that we have been unaware of and see how it affects us. Our senses are made to help us connect with nature but our senses have been dulled.
A small example…this morning for the first time, I awoke and ran my fingers through the fresh thyme on my windowsill. The scent stuck to my fingers and I woke myself up to it. It had never occurred to me how refreshing something so simple would be. We are not aware of the refuge that the natural world can be for us unless we begin to experiment in small and large ways.
I read this article on greenpeace.org and just become more and more upset about it. Just look at the amount of posts here. It should really be over hundreds not just a few . . .
People take everything for granted and don’t pay attention to things. They just do whatever is nescessary for them without thinking about the impact it would produce on the environment and all because of what? MONEY. Money is the answer to all the questions. In order to earn more billions every day get up ready to work making the world one step closer to an end. Its sad , its upsetting , its frustrating.
I have no words to express my feelings but i know that untill all the human population realizes how close we are to the armageddon and start actually doing something about it , we would be trapped in that system in that dirty money-earning game that is just made to bring power to someone so that he can live the luxury life style when a family next door don’t even have a proper meal on the table. Dirty dirty dirty . Have no words to express that . . .
Thanks for the kind and inspiring (wake up and smell the window-box) words from Andrea.
Living in London a few years back, I was fortunate enough to have a small garden backing on to an even smaller suburban river. My habit is to sleep with an open window, pretty much all weathers and this particular morning I woke to a smell I’d lost awareness of since early childhood. No hint of pine or thawing peat this time around, but still the spring air held the same sweetness, the unmistakable scent of awakening life, rising in the sap, oozing from the sediments and soil. So intense it literally shocked my senses from sleep, listening to the raucous proclamations of the birds, watching the amusingly acrobatic rivalry of the squirrels in the trees. It awoke in me an irresistible need to test the cool dark soil between my fingers and feel the early sun on my face… so for no practical reason that’s what I did. Right there in one of the most over-populated, over-concreted corners of the planet. Forces that make you laugh out aloud with the simple joy of knowing they can never be anything but a part of your own amazing self. Not one of us is ever more than a moment away from such an awakening if we just let it happen.
It was probably (and unexpectedly) connected to my stopping smoking some 18 months earlier. Apparently, it’s not uncommon that the brain quite suddenly re-calibrates its sensitivity to smell.
“Ecology is the Economy”…
We invented/discovered both concepts. Let’s just not be arrogant enough to think we are in control of either. I could offer quite humbly both my garden and my bank balance as evidence of my own limitations on that score.
Thank you for raising the Alberta tar sands issue; the massive scale of that single, ongoing disaster is horrendous. It should be far more widely recognized as the single greatest obstacle preventing a wealthy and well-respected nation, uncommonly blessed with renewable resources, a sustainable population and a liberal democratic tradition, from meeting or even supporting meaningful emissions targets.
With hydrocarbons there is no answer past using them sparingly, extracting them carefully, and not burning them at all if there is any other option. Relying on price to moderate demand until supply runs out would alter climate and change the planet almost beyond recognition. On that model, in a couple of hundred years Earth might conceivably weigh about the same and hold the same orbit, but beyond that, we might as well have set the big blue marble rattling around a diesel driven roulette wheel for all we might predict how it looked or how many residents of what variety were left there.
Non-consumable/non-renewable commodities, copper included, are present in the same quantities as they always have been and always will be. Whether they are recycled or mined is a cost issue. Make the cost of leeching with cyanide or mining in protected areas, billion dollar fines and watch how recovery techniques improve. Ceramic superconductors could free up enough copper to provide Africans with running water, make computers faster, and save energy all at once. Minute amounts of gold in glass can raise its thermal efficiency to an astounding level. Answers are everywhere.
Proof of how resilient and resourceful humans can be at recycling to survive can be seen almost anywhere if you choose to look, not least unfortunately outside my own local supermarket. I just hope we can learn to share the task more wisely. Don’t even get me started on 4 year old Asian kids having their lungs ruined, stripping copper from telephone cables by burning off the plastic. There is no excuse.
Hyper-inflation, put simply, happens when the currency bears no relation to the value of the commodity. It’s a bad and a stupid thing, not even close to current experience outside the most desperate of nations, and profoundly different to scarcity making us value things more wisely, which is a good thing. Hoarding isn’t new either and it’s not too hard to think of corporate banks as the modern-day trolls in this particular tale, whilst those in poorer nations starve for the sake of our bio-fuels.
We need to accept a basic respect for one another as sacred, unique; each one precious beyond all ideologies. Respect for our own humanity will quite naturally demand we allow each other the wild spaces, the clean air, the unpolluted water, and the myriad cultures, people, species and environments we need in order to become what it is in our natures to become.
You see humanity as subject to ecology… our future depends on the environment.
I see ecology as subject to humanity… the future of the environment depends on us.
These views aren’t at all exclusive of each other, but accepting that “I” am a human and all humans are due certain basic rights and bear certain basic responsibilities, is profoundly different to believing that there is a sacred and sentient “other” of which we are all part and to which those rights are held secondary.
Jesus never envisaged the Spanish inquisition, Marx wasn’t seeking Pol Pot and I’m sure that John Muir never sought to inspire the more extreme fringes of the environmental and animal rights movement. With limited resources, desperate poverty, climate refugees, and a politically disillusioned and disengaged youth …you’d better believe that the danger is still there for some crazy interpretations of quite benign concepts to become damagingly popular.
I sincerely hope that for this century we can just be done with the big ideas. I hope we can learn instead to live with the millions of small ones, not one of which, can ever for one moment be held more important than the vital, wonderful, miraculous, ability each one of us possesses to maybe have an even better idea in a few moments time.
Speaking of small ideas…
I really think that the most practical way to dig in to the interrelated issue of oil use, causing wars and other destructions to democracy is to stop using as many things as are related to oil as is possible. Then getting our friends and communities to follow suit.
We also need to keep reading, pressuring goverments… but this is something positive we can do right away. No small task, but just dig our heels in and tackle one issue at a time.
This is no simple task since even plastics, our computers, our medical equipment, is all connected to oil. But there are more obvious things where other inventions or traditional wisdom can stand in.
But the more that we are able to distance ourselves, the more empowering our experience and vision for the future.
But every moment that we are dependent on oil related products, or non-renewable resources, we are living in an old paradigm.
Estamos haciendo el paro por las concesiones mineras y proyectos de leyes por el ejecutivo sin consulta; a pesar de que a los pueblos indigenas estamos por el convenio 169 oIT.
Yo aqui con mi pueblo en plena huelga en defenza del medio ambiente. Estamos en la huelga ya vamos por por cinco dias
Las medidas de lucha seguiran, estaremos en pie de lucha hasta lograr nuestros objetivo
Nosotros estamos teniendo series de problemas con los militares y policias por esta lucha en defenza del terrritorio
Hemos tomado las estaciones de oleoducto 5 y 6 ademas la hidro de Muyo Bagua
Apoyanos tambien mediante un pronunciamiento
———————————
Translation (rw):
We are protesting unemployment in the mining concessions and legislation by the government without consultation, despite the fact that we are indigenous peoples by the OIT Convention 169.
I am here with my people on strike in defence of the environment, on strike for five days.
The measures will continue and we will be standing in the struggle until we achieve our goal.
We are having a series of problems with the military and police in this fight in defence of the terrritory.
We have taken pipeline stations 5 and 6, and the hydro of Muyo Bagua support us with an endorsement.