Neil Evernden - ‘Natural Alien’

‘As a member of industrial society it is difficult for any environmentalist to step fully outside that society’s assumptions, or to make sense of it if he does’.

 

 

This weeks Green Thoughts are taken from page 37 of Neil Everndens’ ‘Natural Alien’ (2nd Edit. 1993).

 

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_natural_alien.html?id=pPBeaElorjsC&redir_esc=y

 

http://www.arthurmag.com/tags/neil-evernden/

Ivan Illich - Energy and Equity

"Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. The bicycle lifted man’s auto-mobility into a new order, beyond which progress is theoretically not possible."

"Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems."

From the 1978 book "Energy and Equity by the late Austrian philosopher and ‘maverick social critic’ Ivan Illich (1926 – 2002). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

Patrick Curry - Ecological Ethics

( An Ethics based on an enlightened human self-interest) denies any responsibility for the effects of our behaviour on the millions of other species and many millions of living individuals with whom we share the Earth : not exactly an ethically impressive position.

 

Taken from Patrick Currys excellent Ecological Ethics (2^nd edition 2011). He is arguing for the replacement of ‘human-centred ethics with an ethics centred on nature – Ecocentrism.

 

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

 

Wangari Maathai

I just have something inside me that tells me there is a problem and I must do something about it, so I am doing something about it.

This weeks green thought comes from the Right Livelihood Award winner Wangari Maathai

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

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

Edward Abbey

 “Growth for the sake of growth, is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

This weeks green thought comes from the American author Edward Abbey (1927 – 1989).

 

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

http://www.abbeyweb.net/

 

Jack Turner - The Abstract Wild

Perhaps what I fear most is that the destruction of the natural world to serve human needs and ideals will become an issue decided by opinion polls and surveys that track the gentle undulations of the true, the good and the beautiful among a people now ignorant of what was once their wild and beautiful home.

 

Taken from the 1996 book The Abstract Wild written by the American mountaineer and philosopher Jack Turner. 

Mahatma Gandhi

 "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

This weeks green thought comes from Mahatma Gandhi

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