In 2008, will we stop destroying the planet?
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Posted on January 4, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized, Deep ecology, Ecological hope, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Inspiration and reflection
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
These days, it is not hard to find iconic images of what we humans have done to ravage our precious Planet Earth. This one would make a good poster image and ought to break our hearts. It is of a completely denuded mountain in Washington State, which was soaked by the recent rainstorms, resulting in mudslides that cascaded into a tributary of the beautiful Chehalis River.
The photo appeared in this NY Times article yesterday, Anger and Blame After Deadly Flood in Northwest, but originated in the Seattle Times in December. The Seattle article talks about how this ravaging came about, brought to you by the paper company, Weyerhaeuser.
Oops, said Weyerhaeuser, we didn’t mean for people to actually see this — bad for the public image.
This is at the heart of what is wrong with us.
Doesn’t matter what anyone says about the reason for the mudslides. The photo says it all. Look closely beyond the mountain at the forefront and see how much clear-cutting is being done in this area. Every time I travel to Washington State (I have family out there), I see the evidence of this. The state government has let timber and paper companies do profound damage to the natural wonders of Washington’s mountains and forests, and so every storm will have greater impact, result in more destruction, because we continue to mess with the Earth’s own protective ecosystems.
Can we stop ourselves from consuming products made from this destruction? Can we finally arrive at a time when freedom does not mean freedom to ravage the Earth but to create the laws and economies that will preserve its rich, biodiversity?
Do we remember what beauty itself means to the human spirit, beyond the fact of the importance of these systems for our very existence?
There are so many sad headlines in these past several days, and one could list them like a dirge: Migration, Interrupted: Nature’s Rhythms at Risk. This article is a review of a new book by biologist David Wilcove about human destruction of migration patterns of species who must migrate in order to live:
…in his new book “No Way Home,” David Wilcove, a Princeton biologist, warns that “the phenomenon of migration is disappearing around the world.”
Despite their huge numbers, migratory species are particularly vulnerable to hunting, the destruction of wild habitat and climate change. Humans have already eradicated some of the world’s greatest migrations, and many others are now dwindling away. While many conservation biologists have observed the decline of individual migrations, Dr. Wilcove’s book combines them into an alarming synthesis. He argues that it is not just individual species that we should be conserving — we also need to protect the migratory way of life.
Our subdivisions, sprawling retail malls and car dealerships, expanding roads and wilderness-living is bringing about what could be a profound collapse of thousands of species that depend upon migration for their existence.
Here’s another from the NY Times, this one about the rape of public lands by off-roaders. This phenomenon reveals an attitude towards nature that is violent at its heart. I do not use that word lightly. This is violence, pure and simple — and for nothing but human pleasure and play. The article: Surge in off-roading stirs dust and debate in West.
Accompanying this article is another iconic photo. I can tell you, dear readers, if this is our attitude towards Nature, and if we do not believe we not only have the right to stop this kind of destruction but must stop it, if we think the freedom to destroy a greater freedom than the freedom to protect and respect, then we are doomed as a species.
Because I can tell you this: this planet cannot take much more of this abuse. As we destroy more and more local ecosystems, we are also destroying the systems that hold all this together — the biosphere and atmosphere that made possible this era of evolution, rich in biodiversity, including homo sapiens.
In this year, can we begin this new way of being? Can we restore our bodies and spirits to the Nature that gave birth to us? Can we then learn again what it means to protect our home, the only home we have, the only one in which the human was made possible at all?
Can we learn that this is the true ‘right to life?’
Technorati Tags: Washington State mudslides, off-roading, destruction of Nature, Weyerhaeuser, David Wilcove, biodiversity, animal migration, right to life
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Dear Friends,
Perhaps we can agree that global challenges, already visible on the far horizon, could soon be posed to humanity. Because economic globalization could be approaching a point in human history when it becomes patently unsustainable on a planet with the relatively small size and make-up of Earth, the current scale and unbridled growth of global consumption/production/propagation activities of the human species could produce a colossal wreckage of either the global economy or Earth’s ecology, even in these early years of Century XXI.
If leaders are presented with a forced choice between protecting the global economy and preserving Earth’s ecology, it seems crystal clear to me that the leadership of the kind we have today will reflexively choose the economy…..first, last and always.
What do you think?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001