Pentti Linkola - Can Life Prevail?

"At times, technology is justified on the basis of seemingly rational arguments…..The foundational argument for technology is that it makes life easier : easier and easier, invention after invention. In reality, man has been dominating the globe without rivals ever since the discovery of the stone axe, and our life has been unnaturally and hopelessly comfortable. Since then, our only real problems have been our physical ease, meaninglessness, rootlessness and frustration."

Todays is taken from Can Life Prevail? : A Radical Approach to the Environmental Crisis. The 2009 book of Pentti Linkola, a radical Finnish deep ecologist, polemicist, and fisherman.

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

John Muir - ‘The Yosemite’

These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy!  As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

 

This weeks Green Thoughts are 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

 

Today’s is taken from ‘The Yosemite’ (1912)  partly written in response to the proposed damming of the beautiful Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park , in order to provide water for San Francisco. The Hetch Hetchy reservoir is held back by the O’Shaunessy Dam, finished in 1923.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_National_Park http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy_Valley

Patrick Curry - 'Ecological Ethics'

….the attempt currently gathering pace in the global North to stave off ecological disaster and save our selfish and unsustainable lifestyles by reducing everything to issues of carbon and creating a corresponding financial market is only the latest abstract monism, and a particularly iniquitous one in that it sacrifices the natural world in the name of ecology.

  

Todays Green Thought comes from page163 in Patrick Curry’s 2011 book ‘Ecological Ethics’

 

http://www.theprisma.co.uk/2012/01/01/patrick-curry-and-the-ecological-ethics/

http://www.theprisma.co.uk/2011/08/28/patrick-curry-ii-then-all-the-money-has-been-eaten/

Rudolf Bahro - ‘Building the Green Movement’

‘We’re in the process of industrialising the world to death and destruction …

…..we must break with the entire logic of this social formation. Even the institutions of the left are among the things that have to be overcome.

 After all they all want to solve the old questions…….They want to repair a system that we must leave behind.’

 

 

This weeks Green Thoughts are taken from Rudolf Bahro’s book ‘Building the Green Movement’. 1986. ( from the essay ‘Human beings are not ants’.)

 

 

Philosopher Rudolf Bahro (1935 – 1997) was thrown out of East Germany because of his dissident views and soon became a central figure in the founding of the West German Green party (Die Grünen). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bahro

David Orr - ‘Earth in Mind’

‘We cannot know what sustainability means until we have decided what we intend to sustain and how we propose to do so. For some, sustainability means maintaining our present path of domination, only with greater efficiency’.

 This weeks Green Thoughts are taken from David Orr’s 1994 book ‘Earth in Mind’  (from part 4 - Destinations.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_W._Orr

Paul Ehrlich

The main hope for changing humanity's present course may lie ... in the development of a world view drawn partly from ecological principles - in the so-called deep ecology movement.

 

Todays Green Thought comes from the American biologist Paul Ehrlich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich

Donella Meadows

"Once again I stopped listening to the news this week. "

Today’s Green Thought comes from the blog of the late Donella Meadows (1941 – 2001) http://www.sustainer.org/?page_id=90 , a pioneering American environmental scientist who is best known as lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth, which made headlines around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth