Richard St. Barbe Baker

Today’s Green Thought comes from the late Richard St. Barbe Baker, forester and author, reputedly responsible for the planting/preserving of 26 trillion trees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_St._Barbe_Baker

This generation may either be the last to exit in any semblance of a civilised world or that it will be the first to have the vision, the bearing and the greatness to say “I will have nothing to do with this destruction of life, I will play no part in this destruction of the land, I am determined to live and work for peaceful construction for I am morally responsible for the world of today and the generation of tomorrow.

'How the non-killing religions spread’ Marvin Harris

Today’s Green Thought is from the 1989 book ‘Our Kind– who we are, where we came from & where we are going’ by the American anthropologist Marvin Harris (from the chapter ‘’How the non-killing religions spread’).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Harris

 

 Interestingly enough, once it was discovered that killing humans on behalf of the state could be reconciled with doctrines of the sacredness of all life, even butterflies and cows, the followers of the new faiths turned out to be a cut above the average soldiers, for they went into battles convinced that their souls would be rewarded if they died in combat.

Martin Luther King Jr

Today’s Green Thought is taken from a speech given by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rev._Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

 

Unlike plagues of the Dark Ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.

Herodotus

Just to emphasise that the ‘modern fad’ of thinking green isn’t really that modern, today’s Green Thought comes from the 5th century BC greek historian Herodotus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus_Histories

 

 

“man stalks across the landscape and deserts follow in his footsteps”.

‘Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion’ - William Blake

On William Blakes 254^th birthday, it seemed appropriate to send out a bit of his poetry. So today’s Green Thought are lines 4 – 21 from  ‘Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion’  by the 18^th century poet and visionary William Blake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake#Bibliography

 

In every Nation of the Earth till the twelve sons of Albion                     

Enrooted into every Nation: a mighty polypus growing                               

From Albion over the whole Earth: such is my awful Vision                               

I see the Four-fold man, The Humanity in Deadly sleep                                 

And its fallen Emanation, The Spectre and its cruel Shadow.                            

I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once                              

Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings,                                   

That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;                               

For Bacon and Newton, sheath’d in dismal steel, their terrors hang             

Like iron scourges over Albion: Reasonings like vast Serpents                   

Infold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.                                  

I turn my eyes to the Schools and Universities of Europe                             

And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,                

Wash’d by the Water-wheels of Newton; black the cloth                                  

In heavy wreaths folds over every nation: cruel Works                                     

Of many wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic              

Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden, which                

Wheel within Wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony and peace.

 

Jerusalem, subtitled The Emanation of the Giant Albion, was the last, longest, and greatest in scope of the prophetic books written and illustrated by the poet, artist, and engraver William Blake.

Confusingly, the lyric to Blake's famous hymn, Jerusalem, is not connected to this poem. It is in fact the preface from another of his "prophetic books", Milton: a Poem.

John Stuart Mill - The Principles of Political Economy

Today’s Green Thought comes from Chapter 6, Book 4 of The Principles of Political Economy (1848) by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Political_Economy:_with_some_of_their_applications_to_social_philosophy

Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind?

The first paragraph and the latter half of this chapter (Of the Stationary State [less than 1500 words]) is well worth reading - http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/mill/book4/bk4ch06

Reg Morrison ‘The Spirit in the Gene’

Today’s Green Thought comes from Reg Morrisons 1999 book ‘The Spirit in the Gene’ (p. 204).

Western society’s long alienation from the natural world has bred an ignorance so comprehensive that it now presents a serious handicap in dealing with our environmental problems. Few have even the haziest grasp of the natural world that underpins their lives, or the evolutionary processes that made them what they are; fewer still recognise their ecological place within the biosphere, or their ultimate dependence on it.

‘Easter's End’ by Jared Diamond

Today’s Green Thought comes from the essay ‘Easter's End’ by Jared Diamond and can be found at http://jayhanson.us/page145.htm

Why didn’t they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?

Further details about the demise of the culture on Easter Island can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Easter_Island

Occupy Wall Street

Today’s Green Thought is the wording of a poster held by an anti-capitalist protester in the October 2011 City of London demonstration inspired by Occupy Wall Street.

THE BEGINNING IS NIGH

Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne

Today’s Green Thought are prophetic (or is it pathetic) words from our Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne at this years Conservative Party Conference in October 2011.

We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.

Mohandas Gandhi

Today’s Green Thought comes from Mohandas Gandhi. On one of his visits to England, a reporter asked him what he thought of western civilisation.

He replied –

I think it would be a very good idea.

http://www.mkgandhi.org/

Victor Hugo

Today’s Green Thought comes from Victor Hugo (author of Les Misérables)

“How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen.”

http://www.victorhugo.gg/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo

Wangari Maathai

Today’s Green Thought comes from the first person to win the Nobel Peace Prize (2004) for environmental work, Wangari Maathai, who has just died (25 September 2011) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangari_Maathai

She was the inspiration behind the Green Belt movement, which has planted millions of tree in Kenya and other parts of Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Movement

'The tree is just a symbol for what happens to the environment. The act of planting one is a symbol of revitalising the community. Tree-planting is only the entry point into the wider debate about the environment. Everyone should plant a tree.'

John Seed - ‘Turtle Talk : voices for a sustainable future’

This weeks Green Thought is taken from Turtle Talk : voices for a sustainable future’ - a 1990 collection of interviews with ecological activists, organisers and visionaries. This piece is from ‘Deep Ecology Down Under’ an interview with the Australian environmental activist John Seed http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/johnseed.htm

‘….we can’t really afford five billion materialists : there just isn’t enough material to support them.’

Aldo Leopold - 'A Sand County Almanac'

This weeks Green Thought is taken from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac ( written in the 30’s and 40’s). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac

(from ‘Thinking like a mountain’ in ‘A Sand County Almanac’.)

‘We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realised then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger-itch; I felt that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Dave Foreman- ‘Turtle Talk : voices for a sustainable future’

This weeks Green Thought is taken from Turtle Talk : voices for a sustainable future’ - a 1990 collection of interviews with ecological activists, organisers and visionaries from North America. This piece is from ‘Becoming the Forest in defence of itself’ - an interview with Dave Foreman the US environmentalist and co-founder of the radical environmental movement Earth First!

‘…..we need people who, as a last resort, are willing to take things into their own hands and essential become the forest in defence of itself: to go out and help big yellow machines find their true Dharma nature by returning to the Earth.’

Arundhati Roy - ‘The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky’

Todays Green Thought is taken from ‘The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky’ by Arundhati Roy (2003); the forward to the 2003 reprint of Noam Chomsky’s 1973 book For Reasons of State. Arundahti Roy is an Indian novelist, essayist and activist.

‘Neoliberal Capitalism isn’t just about the accumulation of power (for some). Its also about the accumulation of power (for some), the accumulation of freedom (for some). Conversely, for the rest or the world, the people who are excluded from neoliberalism’s ruling body, its about the erosion of capital, the erosion of power, the erosion of freedom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhati_Roy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

Paul Watson

This weeks Green Thought come from Paul Watson a Canadian animal rights and environmental activist, who was an early, influential, and outspoken member of Greenpeace and later founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Born of the Earth we return to the Earth. The soil beneath our feet contains the material reality of the ancestors of all species. Without the collective expired lives of the past, there would be less soil. For this reason the soil itself is our collective ancestry, and thus the soil should be as sacred to us.

Edward Payson Evans - ‘ Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology’.

Today’s Green Thought comes from Edward Payson Evans 1897 book ‘ Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology’.

Man is as truly a part and product of nature as any other animal, and [the] attempt to set him up on an isolated point outside of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious

On this basis Evans then branded as being wrong

maliciously breaking a crystal, defacing a gem, girdling a tree, crushing a flower, painting flaming advertisements on rocks and worrying and torturing animals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Payson_Evans

UK's first fatal car accident

This weeks Green Thought also concerns motorised vehicles.

The UK's first fatal car accident was in 1896, 115 years ago from Monday 17^th August. A woman was killed by a vehicle travelling at 4mph.

The coroner told her inquest that he hoped hers would be the last death in this sort of accident.

Since then more than 550,000 people have been killed on Britain's roads and almost 4,000 people are killed on the world's roads every day.

Peter Berg - ‘Turtle Talk : voices for a sustainable future’

This weeks Green Thought is taken from ‘Turtle Talk : voices for a sustainable future’ - a 1990 collection of interviews with ecological activists, organisers and visionaries from North America.

Todays Green Thought is taken from ‘Bioregional and Wild’ -an interview with Peter Berg of the San Francisco Planet Drum Foundation www.planetdrum.org

‘As cars begin to diminish, I would see a really cheery cultural prospect of tearing up streets, or at least half the street. And recreationally restoring creeks and springs in urban areas’

Aldo Leopold - 'Round River' + 'A Sand County Almanac'

This weeks Green Thought is taken from Aldo Leopold’s Round River and A Sand County Almanac ( written in the 30’s and 40’s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold

(from ‘Conservation’ in Round River)

‘The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant : ‘What good is it ?’ If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good’, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts ?

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering’.

Henry David Thoreau

Today’s Green Thought comes from the American philosopher/naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) and is taken from Page 51 Vol. 10 of The Writings of Thoreau.

If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for abusing the face of nature committed to their care.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

Sir Fred Hoyle - 'Of Men and Galaxies'

Today’s Green Thought comes from the cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle in a lecture series titled, Of Men and Galaxies, given at the University of Washington, 1964 ; emphasis added.

It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Fred_Hoyle

Aldo Leopold - 'A Sand County Almanac'

This weeks Green Thought is taken from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac ( written in the 30’s and 40’s).

(From ‘The Land Ethic’ in ‘A Sand County Almanac’.)

‘quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac

George Orwell’s ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’

Today’s Green Thought comes from George Orwell’s ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937).

The tendency of mechanical progress is to frustrate the human need for effort and creation….(and) the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle. The implied objective of ‘progress’ is – not exactly, perhaps, the brain in the bottle, but at any rate some frightful subhuman depth of softness and helplessness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

David Orr - ‘Earth in Mind’

This weeks Green Thought is taken from David Orr’s 1994 book ‘Earth in Mind’.

http://www.davidworr.com/

(introduction to part 1 ‘The problem of education’)

‘If one listens carefully, it may even be possible to hear the Creation groan every year when another batch of smart, degree-holding, but ecologically illiterate, Homo sapiens who are eager to succeed are launched into the biosphere’.

Alan M. Eddison

Today’s Green Thought comes from Alan M. Eddison (the director of Green Earth Affairs headquarters based in Zimbabwe).

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.

Aldo Leopold - 'A Sand County Almanac'

This weeks Green Thought is taken from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac ( written in the 30’s and 40’s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold

http://www.aldoleopold.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac

(from ‘Thinking like a mountain’ in ‘A Sand County Almanac’.)

‘We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness……but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum : ‘In wildness is the salvation of the world’’.

Gandhi

Today’s Green Thought comes from Gandhi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi

 “The rich must live more simply so that the poor may simply live.”

John Muir

This weeks Green Thought is taken from the writings of John Muir (1838 – 1914) a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir

http://www.jmt.org/

Todays is taken from A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf , page 164.

There is not a "fragment" in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.

Which he later (page 110 in My First Summer in the Sierra) developed into

 ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe’.

Left Bio Group

This weeks Green Thought is a line often used on the e-mails of David Orton’s ‘Left Bio Group’ – a group within the deep ecology movement, which is subversive of the existing industrial society. http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/index.htm

There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.

David Orton

Today’s Green Thought comes from the late ecologist, writer and environmental activist David Orton (died last week).

An industrial capitalist society, that does not recognize ecological limits but only perpetual economic expansion and has the profit motive as driver, will eventually consume and destroy itself.

Anyone wishing to see more of David’s writings should go to   http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/index.htm

Donella Meadows

Today’s Green Thought comes from Donella Meadows

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donella_Meadows

http://www.sustainer.org/

http://www.sustainer.org/?page_id=90

 Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.

Aldo Leopold - Round River

This weeks Green Thoughts are taken from Aldo Leopolds’ Round River (written in the 30’s and 40’s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold

http://www.aldoleopold.org/

‘One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise’.

John Maynard Keynes

Today’s Green Thought comes from John Maynard Keynes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/keynes_john_maynard.shtml

Instead of using their vastly increased resources to build a wonder city, the men of the nineteen century built slums….[which] on the test of private enterprise, ‘paid,’ whereas the wonder city would, they thought, have been an act of foolish extravagance, which would, in the imbecile idiom of the financial fashion, have ‘mortgaged the future’…….The same rule of self-destructive financial calculation governs every walk of life. We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the un-appropriated splendours of nature have no economic value. We are capable of cutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on Inequality’

Todays Green Thought is taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ‘Discourse on Inequality’ (What is the Origin of Inequality among men, and is it authorised by Natural Law ), 1754

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_the_Origin_of_Inequality

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. ”  

James Lovelock

Today’s Green Thought comes from James Lovelock (2009)

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

http://www.jameslovelock.org/

Do we really believe that we humans, untrained as we are, have the intelligence or capacity to manage the earth.

E.F. Schumacher - ‘Small is Beautiful’

Today’s Green Thought comes from E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 book ‘Small is Beautiful’. After quoting the following passage from Vernon Carter and Tom Dale’s Topsoil and Civilisation (1955),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

http://www.schumacher.org.uk/

‘Civilised man has despoiled most of the land he has lived on for long. This is the main reason his progressive civilisations have moved from place to place’

  Schumacher then adds –

The “Ecological problem”, it seems, is not as new as it is made out to be. Yet there are two decisive differences: the earth is now much more densely populated than it was in earlier times and there are, generally speaking, no new lands to move to.

John Seed - ‘Beyond Anthropocentrism’

Today’s Green Thought comes from the essay ‘Beyond Anthropocentrism’ by John Seed in the 1988 book ‘Thinking like a Mountaln’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seed

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/

We are the rocks dancing……..It is they that are the immortal part of us.

Paul Hawken -The Ecology of Commerce

Today’s Green Thought comes from  Paul Hawken in The Ecology of Commerce in 1994

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hawken

There is no polite way to say that business is destroying the world.

Albert Einstein

Today’s Green Thought comes from Albert Einstein (1946)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

"Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

Rene Dubos- ‘Environmental Determinants of Human Life’.

Today’s Green Thought comes from  Rene Dubos’ 1968 essay ‘Environmental Determinants of Human Life’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Dubos

Humans can adapt (via culture) to ‘starless skies, treeless avenues, shapeless buildings, tasteless bread, joyless celebrations, spiritless pleasures – and to a life without reference for the past, love for the present or poetical anticipations of the future’ but ‘ it is questionable that man can retain his physical and mental health if he loses contact with the natural forces that have shaped his biological and mental nature’.