Ansel Adams

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."

 

Attributed by I. Satpathy in his 2005 book Environment Management to 

Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) the American fine art photographer most famous for his wilderness landscapes.

 

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

Colin Tudge - ‘Why Genes are not Selfish and People are Nice’.

This weeks Green Thought comes from Colin Tudges  2013 book ‘Why Genes are not Selfish and People are Nice’.

 

(We) have allowed ourselves to be dominated by people whose vision of the future, if vision it can be called, is crass. Thus progress is conceived in materialist terms. The number one goal of all present governments is to generate wealth, irrespective it seems of how that wealth is created, or who hags on it, or what it is used for. The rising tide of wealth is called ‘economic growth’. Progress, too, is perceived as an exercise in control. Nature as a whole must be treated as a resource which in turn can be turned into commodities to be sold for money. All human affairs, the minutiae of our lives, must be documented and cross-referenced – so progress emerges as a giant exercise in bureaucracy, reinforced by high-tech surveillance. People who won’t subscribe to this view of progress are written off as hippies or backsliders or hopeless romantics, and countries that fail to follow the path that has been chosen for them are deemed to have ‘failed’.

 

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

Herman Daly - Toward some Operational Principles of Sustainable Development’

Three important operating rules that a long-term steady-state economy must incorporate –

1.      Exploit renewable resources no faster than they can be regenerated.

2.      Deplete non-renewable resources no faster than the rate at which renewable substitutes can be developed.

3.      Emit wastes no faster than they can be safely assimilated by ecosystems.

Taken from ‘Toward some Operational Principles of Sustainable Development’ by Herman Daly in Ecological Economics 2 no.1 (1990).

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

http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/mill/book4/bk4ch06

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

http://dalynews.org/learn/blog/

Marshall Sahlins - ‘The Original Affluent Society’

"Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little."

 

This weeks Green Thought comes from the first page of Marshall Sahlins essay ‘The Original Affluent Society’ in his 1974 insufficiently influential classic book ‘Stone Age Economics’.

Consider in this light the current ‘Energy Crisis’ and the co-crisis of ‘Climate Change’.

 http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

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