A Green Thought For The Week every week of the year! A 'Green' quote, to start your week, from various sources across the spectrum of the green movement, science and philosophy. Though the selection is broad the perspective of this blog is that of Deep Ecology. The quotes have been selected, complied and edited by John Gale a long term Deep Ecologist. Also hosted is John Gale's "Green Reading List" which lists a selection of must reads for those wishing to Green their perspective!
Monday, 26 December 2011
Monday, 19 December 2011
'How the non-killing religions spread’ Marvin Harris
Monday, 12 December 2011
Martin Luther King Jr
Monday, 5 December 2011
Herodotus
Monday, 28 November 2011
‘Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion’ - William Blake
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.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
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
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
Monday, 14 November 2011
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.
Monday, 7 November 2011
‘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
Monday, 31 October 2011
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
Monday, 24 October 2011
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.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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/
Monday, 10 October 2011
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.”
Monday, 3 October 2011
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.'
Monday, 26 September 2011
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.’
Monday, 19 September 2011
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.
Monday, 12 September 2011
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.’
Monday, 5 September 2011
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.
Monday, 29 August 2011
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.
Monday, 22 August 2011
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
Monday, 15 August 2011
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 17th 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.
Monday, 8 August 2011
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’
Monday, 1 August 2011
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’.
Monday, 25 July 2011
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.
Monday, 18 July 2011
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.
Monday, 11 July 2011
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’.
Monday, 4 July 2011
George Orwell’s ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’
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.
Monday, 27 June 2011
David Orr - ‘Earth in Mind’
Monday, 20 June 2011
Alan M. Eddison
Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Aldo Leopold - 'A Sand County Almanac'
Monday, 6 June 2011
Gandhi
Monday, 30 May 2011
John Muir
Which he later (page 110 in My First Summer in the Sierra) developed into