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One World
One Humanity
One Environment
September, 2009, Rev. December 2010
The Common denominator among all living things
IS NATURE
Finding A Way For The Greater Good
An Urgent Task
OUR HOME: We Live on a Wondrously Diverse Planet and We are a vital, integral species within the Magnificent Web of Life not separate from it. Nature needs us. Let us Honor and Respect That
THE GREAT AWAKENING
In just over 250 years we have consumed or destroyed what took millions and millions of years to evolve…
We now understand that the majority of life on Earth has never been – and will never be – known to us. In a staggering forecast Edward O Wilson, eminent Harvard biologist, predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100…. – “Animal Extinction – The greatest threat to mankind”
Over the last 60 odd years we have become preoccupied with, and fixated on ourselves, our man-made lives of production, indiscriminate consumption and lust for profit. self-gratification and status. In this process we have increasingly excluded from our daily decisions and equations the well-being of others and Nature’s life supporting eco-systems. We can now see how this myopia has wreaked havoc upon both our environment and all species with in it –our societies, our communities and ourselves.
While we were flying high our natural world (and us) began to get sick, really sick . Greed took over from compassion, and wealth negotiated itself more wealth at the expense of the average man, woman and child setting the stage for a global uprising and reawakening.
We forgot our deep and profound responsibility to care for and nurture the greater whole. We forgot that we abide in Mother Nature’s womb, dependent on Her every second of every day. Just as we depended on our mother for nurturing and sustenance while in her womb, we depend on Mother Nature’s health, abundance and generosity for our daily nurturing and sustenance and FOR SURVIVAL as a species. This amnesia has resulted in us almost consuming ourselves out of existence and, in the process, we have lost our connection to community, to each other and to the essential natural processes of life.
EXTINCTION CRISIS – ECOLOGICAL ARMAGEDDON
In 40 Years HALF world’s wild animals have been wiped out:
http://sco.lt/7M1PCD
Without Nature We Do Not Exist. Period
It is an illusion to expect healthy, balanced lives without a healthy, balanced natural world. Her health is our health
While we were flying high our natural world (and us) began to get sick, really sick . Greed took over from compassion, and wealth negotiated itself more wealth at the expense of the average man, woman and child setting the stage for a global uprising and reawakening.
A Perfect Storm is approaching – a combined environmental, economic and social collapse UNLESS we change our attitudes and priorities in life NOW, and even then, we may well have passed the tipping point of what our biosphere can handle.
The major difference this time, than the Great Depression or any other time in human history, is the environment – its massive degradation and depletion by man – the degree of which has never before been seen on this planet – and the cumulative effect is the cause of Climate Change.
We depend upon a healthy, balanced natural world for our very existence – as does all life. Our eco-systems have been plundered, pillaged and polluted to a point, in some cases, of no return; species are disappearing at an alarming rate totally destroying the biological and crucial biodiversity balance of the planet. Our common life’s values and the dignity of cultures have been dismantled as we gave ourselves over to the Age of Consumerism. When Drilling for Oil has become a greater priority than clean water and healthy food, we have no choice but to revisit our values in life. What we do and choose now will set the destiny of humankind for centuries to come.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Via Earth Policy Institute: Adapted from World on the Edge by Lester R. Brown. Full book available online at www.earth-policy.org/books/wote.
“The archeological record indicates that civilizational collapse does not come suddenly out of the blue. Archeologists analyzing earlier civilizations talk about a decline-and-collapse scenario. Economic and social collapse was almost always preceded by a period of environmental decline….
“No previous civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports. Nor will ours. Yet economists look at the future through a different lens. Relying heavily on economic data to measure progress, they see the near 10-fold growth in the world economy since 1950 and the associated gains in living standards as the crowning achievement of our modern civilization….More….Two Views of Our Future: Science Versus Mainstream Economics : TreeHugger.
THE SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION IS UPON US – CAN HUMANS SURVIVE?
Get Ready for the Ride of Your Life
Given that it takes hundreds of thousands to millions of years for evolution to build diversity back up to pre-crash levels after major extinction episodes, increased rates of extinction are of particular concern, especially because global and regional diversity today is generally lower than it was 20,000 years ago as a result of the last planetary state shift. … Possible too are substantial losses of ecosystem services required to sustain the human population. … Although the ultimate effects of changing biodiversity and species compositions are still unknown, if critical thresholds of diminishing returns in ecosystem services were reached over large areas and at the same time global demands increased … widespread social unrest, economic instability and loss of human life could result
Whee!
How close are we to such a global state shift? One way to conceptualize it is to visualize the percentage of the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems that have seen local state shifts:
…READ COMPLETE ARTICLE…
via We’re about to push the Earth over the brink, new study finds | Grist.
THE SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION IS UPON US – CAN HUMANS SURVIVE?
Films For Action Presents: The Top 100 Documentaries Inspiring the Shift to a Sustainable Paradigm.
“Our society needs a new story to belong to. The old story of empire and dominion over the earth has to be looked at in the full light of day – all of our ambient cultural stories and values that we take for granted and which remain invisible must become visible.”
Film offers us a powerful tool to shift awareness and inspire action. It offers a method to break our dependence on the mainstream media and become the media ourselves. We don’t need to wait for anyone or anything.
Just imagine what could become possible if an entire city had seen just one of the documentaries below. Just imagine what would be possible if everyone in the country was aware of how unhealthy the mainstream media was for our future and started turning to independent sources in droves.
Creating a better world really does start with an informed citizenry, and there’s lots of subject matter to cover. Our country has to come to terms with the true history of the United States. It has to learn about basic ecology. It needs to understand some basic truths about peak oil and the monetary system, the truth about capitalism and governments.
Films For Action Presents: The Top 100 Documentaries Inspiring the Shift to a Sustainable Paradigm.
Free markets were supposed to lead to free societies. Instead, today’s supercharged global economy is eroding the power of the people in democracies around the globe. Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.
It was supposed to be a match made in heaven. Capitalism and democracy, we’ve long been told, are the twin ideological pillars capable of bringing unprecedented prosperity and freedom to the world. In recent decades, the duo has shared a common ascent. By almost any measure, global capitalism is triumphant. Most nations around the world are today part of a single, integrated, and turbocharged global market. Democracy has enjoyed a similar renaissance. Three decades ago, a third of the world’s nations held free elections; today, nearly two thirds do.
Conventional wisdom holds that where either capitalism or democracy flourishes, the other must soon follow. Yet today, their fortunes are beginning to diverge. Capitalism, long sold as the yin to democracy’s yang, is thriving, while democracy is struggling to keep up. China, poised to become the world’s third largest capitalist nation this year after the United States and Japan, has embraced market freedom, but not political freedom. Many economically successful nations — from Russia to Mexico — are democracies in name only. They are encumbered by the same problems that have hobbled American democracy in recent years, allowing corporations and elites buoyed by runaway economic success to undermine the government’s capacity to respond to citizens’ concerns… more.. Read Rest of Article: How Capitalism Is Killing Democracy – Robert B. Reich
CAN LIFE BE OWNED?
Rachael Carson was Right in her classic novel “Silent Spring”. This Canadian documentary is one of THE Best explanations of what is happening to the state of our planet with the biotech juggernaut racing across our environment, leaving an irreversible destruction in its wake. Our ecosystems, environment and human health and the future of our planet is at stake and I strongly urge you to take the time to listen and watch the entire Canadian expose. It is both educational and global in its reach.
Video: Silent Forest canada tv EN – Cineversity.TV.
Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process—democracy.
The citizens of Mt. Shasta have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.
Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal movement making its way across the United States in which communities are directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local government.
Read Rest of Article: Corporate Control? Not in These Communities by Allen D. Kanner http://www.yesmagazine.org/
The green revolution is a women’s revolution
Women’s agricultural empowerment is the next frontier for the global women’s movement…an unrecognized fact that 70% of the world’s farmers are women… but own less than 2% of the land. (READ MORE…)
via Earth Day: Green Revolution Can Be a Womens Revolution, Too | Womens Rights | Change.org.
The Earth has Entered a New Geological Period. Human Influence Now Dominates the State of the Planet Compounding Uncertainty for the Future
llustration: Mike Pick
In 2000, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and his colleague Eugene Stoermer appeared in the news bulletin of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. In it, Crutzen and Stoermer made the case that the Holocene, the geological epoch that had held sway on Earth for the past 12,000 years, was at an end. In its place, with a start date pegged to the late 18th century commercialization of James Watt’s steam engine, was the Anthropocene, an epoch defined by the influence of humanity’s collective actions. Crutzen was an apt messenger—his Nobel came from work clarifying how the activities of a small number of people had inadvertently initiated a chain reaction that grievously damaged the globe’s protective layer of atmospheric ozone. (Read the rest of this article… –Embracing the Anthropocene § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM.
How do we convince our inner caveman to be greener? By the time we wake up to the threat posed by climate change, it could well be too late. And if we’re not going to make rational decisions about the future, others may have to help us to do so. London Times, United Kingdom
Climate change may be real, but its still not easy being green – Times Online.
“Dreaming the future can create the future. We stand at the threshold of a singular opportunity in the human experiment: To re-imagine how to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations. It’s a revolution from the heart of nature — and the human heart.
“We also stand at the brink of worldwide ecological and civilizational collapse. We face a reckoning from the treacherous breach in our relationship with nature. We’ve been acting like a rock star trashing a hotel room, and it’s the morning after. But this hotel is planet Earth. The guest rules are non-negotiable. If we don’t change our ways fast, management may vote us off the island. (More.,..)
Water is Now seen as a Commodity rather than a Basic Right
While some may assume that technologies often make women’s lives easier, it is rare they there are panacea for poverty, especially since water is increasingly scarce and expensive..
6.7 billion people along with wildlife, ecosystems, agriculture and industries share the less than 1% of the world’s freshwater that is potable and accessible for use. And this small amount is rapidly depleting due to climate change; increased contamination; and escalating need by people, farms and industries for daily use.
The increasing scarcity and privatization of water means a number of things for women. First, as private companies gain ownership rights to freshwater sources, women who could previously walk to them to obtain water are now being restricted from or even charged money for doing so. [3] Second, companies who purchase sources bottle the water to be sold rather than allowing local access to it, as it’s more profitable to do so. Even when companies build and make available taps to local municipalities, they sell it at costs that are prohibitively expensive, especially for poor women. [4] And since there is no substitute for water and water is absolutely necessary, without regulations, corporations can charge what they want for it, and people have no choice but to pay, if they can. (more)
via Women Need Water Rights, Not Just Technologies / Library / Issues and Analysis / Home – AWID.
Rich Foreign Countries are Buying up Big Ahead of Anticipated Coming Food Crisis
In the last few years richer countries like China, India, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia have been buying up huge tracts of productive farmland and oil rich acres in poor countries like Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia. These deals are usually in the millions of acres and often come with 99 year lease terms.It’s modern colonialism.
Many economists are failing to assess the value of their countries’ natural resources, putting billion’s of people’s well-being at risk and contributing to catastrophic species loss, according to a new United Nations Environment Programme report. http://ow.ly/Cz38
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study is a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward.
via Home of TEEB.
It’s not only what vehicle we drive or how we heat our homes that determines our carbon footprint.
via Eat responsibly | David Suzuki Foundation.
People should use the climate change crisis as an opportunity to become human again, setting aside the addictive and self-destructive behaviour that has damaged their souls, the Archbishop of Canterbury said today.
Dr Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, told an audience at Southwark Cathedral that people had allowed themselves to become “addicted to fantasies about prosperity and growth, dreams of wealth without risk and profit without cost”.
The consequences of such a lifestyle meant the human soul was “one of the foremost casualties of environmental degradation”.
Dr Rowan Williams says climate crisis a chance to become human again | UK news | The Guardian.
The climate crisis is not a negotiable issue and politicians must start paying attention to science.
CAN we expect decent climate policy when most of the decision-making elite are ignorant of the real scientific imperatives, or believe they can negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry? The answer is bleak, judging by the lead-up talks to the climate summit in Copenhagen in December.
A DIFFERENT QUESTION
If I had one thing to impart to our leaders and opinion-makers, it would be this: Start worrying instead about the fate of human civilization. The Earth will survive the assault of the modern era. The urgent question is whether the Earth will remain a place that can support a complex, interconnected global civilization like our own. We could lose far more than coastal cities and cultural treasures to extreme weather and rising seas; the ultimate stakes in this planetary gamble is the stable climate that has made civilization possible.Rising emissions could destabilize the climate to a degree that would prove devastating to agriculture.
Op-ed: The fate of our fragile civilization — The Daily Climate.
ARTICLE FROM: “The Daily Climate”
…It’s clear that we do not yet understand our own time and are seriously mistaken about the geography of the future. When future historians look back on the twentieth century, this quick visit to the moon will surely look like a minor event compared to the giant leap humanity took here on Earth. The greatest challenges of the 21st century will not be those of the space age, but rather urgent earthly ones in a new planetary era that arrived in the second half of the 20th century.”
NEW UNITED NATIONS REPORT: The economic turmoil sweeping the globe has lead to a sharp spike in hunger affecting the world’s poorest, uncovering a fragile global food system requiring urgent reform, according to a report issued today by two United Nations agencies.The combination of the food and economic crises have pushed more people into hunger, with the number of hungry expected to top 1 billion this year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"When they are slaughtering camels it is like throwing away the pension"
The drought which has hit East Africa is wreaking havoc among the region’s pastoralists. Their herds of livestock have been decimated. Even the hardy camels are dying.
They were sitting in the sand and lying among them were dozens of emaciated goats – concave with protruding ribs.
“I had a herd of 100 goats but just in the last month 40 have died,” said Esther Ekouam, who had walked about 15km (10 miles) and had to carry her goat as it was too weak to make the journey.
“Now the children are very weak because, as the animals are dying, they are not getting enough food. This is the worst drought we have had here since 1969.”
via BBC NEWS | Africa | Drought: Kenya’s own “banking” crisis.
