“It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.”
This weeks Green Thoughts are taken from the 1994 book ‘I, candidate for Govenor’ by the late american author Upton Sinclair (1878 –1968).
Monday 12 October 2015
Monday 5 October 2015
Lord Byron - Childe Harold
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
from Childe Harold, Canto iv, Verse 178
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron [aka Lord Byron]
Monday 28 September 2015
Alfred Russel Wallace - The Malay Archipelago
We should now clearly recognise the fact, that the wealth and knowledge and culture of the few do not constitute civilisation, and do not of themselves advance us towards the ‘perfect social state’. Our vast manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, support and continually renew a mass of human misery and crime absolutely greater than has ever existed before. They create and maintain in life-long labour an ever-increasing army, whose lot is the more hard to bear, by contrast with the pleasures, the comforts, and the luxury which they see everywhere around them, but which they can never hope to enjoy; and who, in this respect, are worse off than the savage in the midst of his tribe.
This is not a result to boast of, or to be satisfied with; and, until there is more general recognition of this failure of our civilisation – resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organisation – we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important superiority over the better class of savage.
This weeks green thought comes from the naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist Alfred Russell Wallace (1823 – 1913) best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection. These are the final two concluding paragraphs in the book The Malay Archipelago’ [1869] – describing his 8 year scientific exploration of those islands.
Monday 21 September 2015
Professor Albert Bartlett
Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavour on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally.
This weeks Green Thought comes from the late Professor Albert Bartlett (1923 – 2013), emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.
Monday 14 September 2015
Stan Rowe - What on Earth is Life
An
alternative to the view that organisms possess “life” is that
“life” possesses organisms. By this hypothesis, the secret of
“life” is to be sought outwardly and ecologically rather than [or
as well as] inwardly and physiologically.
This weeks Green Thought comes from the
essay ‘What on Earth is Life’ in the 2006 book ‘Earth Alive’ by the late
[1918 – 2004] brilliant Canadian ecologist Stan Rowe.
Monday 7 September 2015
Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje
Many
people have grown up in urban environments and never had opportunity to
experience the profound beauty of nature. This is a great loss for all
concerned because surely this experience is an essential part of being human.
The natural world is the essence, it is everything, and we humans are part of
it.
The September entry in the Tibetan Buddhist 17th
Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje in ‘ Cherish the Earth’ the 2015
Environment Calendar.
Monday 24 August 2015
Wilhelm Ostwald - Der energetische Imperitiv
The
unexpected legacy of fossil fuels leads us to lose sight of the principle of a
durable economy, which needs to be based exclusively on the regular influx of
energy from the sun’s radiation.
This weeks Green Thought comes from the 1912 book ‘Der
energetische Imperitiv’ by Wilhelm Ostwald, Nobel Prize for
Chemistry, 1909.
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