Stan Rowe - ‘Home Place : Essays on Ecology’

Once values are straight, everything else can fall into place. An ecocentric worldview, valuing the spinning planetary home above the organisms hitching a ride on it, elevates in importance the ecosystems that humans call land. Love of the land, love of place, love of our endangered Living Spaces, is the grassroots cure for the sin of species narcissism.

This weeks Green Thought Green Thought comes from the 1990 book ‘Home Place : Essays on Ecology’ by Stan Rowe.

 

 

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/john-stanley-rowe/

http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/aboutauthors.html

http://www.ecospherics.net/index.html

 

Naomi Klein - ‘This Changes Everything : Capitalism vs The Climate’.

….the policies that so successfully freed multinational corporations from virtually all constraints also contributed significantly to the underlying cause of global warming – rising greenhouse gas emissions….Put differently, the liberation of world markets, a process powered by the liberation of unprecedented amounts of fossil fuels from the earth, has dramatically sped up the same process that is liberating Arctic ice from existence.

 

 

This weeks Green Thought comes from Canadian author, journalist and social activist Naomi Kleins 2014 book ‘This Changes Everything : Capitalism vs The Climate’.  

I  have already stated that I feel that it would be unrealistic to send out the whole book [This Changes Everything] as a Green Thought, but I am trying.   JG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-review.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Changes_Everything  http://monthlyreview.org/2015/02/01/crossing-the-river-of-fire/

David Choquehuanca

Traditional indigenous respect for the Pachamama is vital to prevent climate change. Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family.

This weeks Green Thought comes from Bolivia's Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca

In the indigenous philosophy, the Pachamama is a living being.

The draft of the new law states:

 "She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb.                                                                                       She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation”.

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

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

Jane Goodall

 “Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.”

This weeks Green Thought comes from Jane Goodall, the English anthropologist primarily famous for her work with chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania.

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

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

 

Naomi Klein - ‘This Changes Everything : Capitalism vs The Climate’

(When) posing climate change as the battle between capitalism and the planet…..the battle is already underway, but right now capitalism is winning hands down. It wins every time the need for economic growth is used as the excuse for putting off climate action yet again, or for breaking emission reduction commitments already made.

It wins when Greeks are told that their only path out of economic crisis is to open up their beautiful seas high-risk oil and gas drilling.

It wins when Canadians are told our only hope fo not ending up like Greece is to allow our boreal forests to be flayed so we can access the semisolid bitumen from Alberta tar sands.

It wins when a park in Istanbul is slotted for demolition to make way for yet another shopping mall.

It wins when parents in Beijing are told that sending their wheezing kids to school in pollution masks decorated to look like cute cartoon characters is an acceptable price to pay for economic progress.

It wins every time we accept that we have only bad choices available to us: austerity or extraction, poisoning or poverty.

 

 

This weeks Green Thought comes from Canadian author, journalist and social activist Naomi Kleins 2014 book ‘This Changes Everything : Capitalism vs The Climate’.  I felt that it would be unrealistic to send out the whole book [This Changes Everything] as a Green Thought, but it would be a very good idea to do so. I thoroughly recommend that everyone reads this excellent book.  JG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Changes_Everything

Robert Heilbroner - Business Civilization in Decline

‘(Advertising is) perhaps the single most value-destroying activity of a business civilisation’ due to the ‘subversive influence of the relentless effort to persuade people to change their life ways, not out of any knowledge of, or deeply held convictions of the ‘good life’, but merely to sell whatever article or service is being pandered’

 

 

This  weeks Green Thought comes from the 1976 book ‘Business Civilization in Decline by the late american economist Robert Heilbroner (1919-2005).

 

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

Frank Herbert - ‘The Ecology of Dune'

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system.

A system!  

A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses.

The untrained miss the collapse until too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

 

Taken from ‘The Ecology of Dune’, an appendix in Frank Herberts 1965 brilliant sci-fi novel Dune. [If you haven’t read it – Why? (JG)]

 

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29

The full text of the ecology of Dune can be found here:
http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/Dune-AppendixI.htm