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26 Dec 2003 @ 12:45, by sharie. Environment, Ecology
Toxic Factory = A Healthy Economy ... Really?
When the Equation is clearly crazy, the formula needs to be altered, the factors... re-considered.
A Toxic Factory CANNOT result in a Healthy Economy.
The consequence of a Toxic Factory is a toxic environment and a poisoned population.
A poisoned population means the people are unable to contribute to the well-being of one another... this... results in an unhealthy economy, an impoverished way of life.
An exception to this is when Industrialists and their chemists poison a community, leaving the people dependent on more chemists and their chemicals (pharmaceutical companies) in order to survive. In which case, pharmaceutical company executives, their chemists, sales executives, and the doctors will get rich while the poor poisoned people die.
(Just thought I'd mention it.)
Joy to the World.
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 9 Mar 2003 @ 19:02, by ming. Environment, Ecology
One of my favorite places to go for a walk is along Mulholland Drive. Mulholland runs along the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains separating the Los Angeles basin from the San Fernando Valley, where I live. So, you're in the middle of the metropolis, but can still be in what is pretty much a wilderness. And most people stay down there in the smog, so you can even sometimes walk for a little bit without meeting anybody else. These pictures are some I took today. This one is pointed South, towards L.A. More >
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 27 Dec 2002 @ 23:59, by ming. Environment, Ecology
Evolution on this planet has gone through many steps towards developing gradually more complex creatures. There seems to be a fractal nature to evolution, where for example stages that microbes pass through in a small scale are later repeated at higher levels of complexity. Young life forms will often irresponsibly try to use up all available resources, and will act aggressively against their neighbors, but later on in the cycle, as they become more mature, the various players will negotiate mutually beneficial arrangements amongst each other. The microbes are in many ways ahead of us complex humans in terms of figuring out how different kinds of beings can live together in peace, to everybody's mutual benefit.
Even the most small and simple single celled organisms, bacteria, classified as monera, specialized themselves in amazing ways and organized themselves into complex social structures where they were supporting each other's existence. They specialized in breaking down different kinds of chemicals, and other bacteria would start using the chemicals the first produced, etc., forming a complete ecosystem. That was 1.7-3.7 billion years ago. These organisms then moved on to a higher level of cooperation. Multiple different kinds of creatures together formed a cell. These cells, which formed another kingdom called protista, were around a thousand times bigger than the monera. They were still single-celled, but we could say that they are multi-creatured, because they combine many previously separate creatures into one unit.
The protists, large multi-creatured cells, further evolved. At first they were prokariotes (before nucleus) and then they developed into eukariotes (cells with a nucleus). Eukariotes are now around a thousand times bigger than the prokariotes. Essentially they are very complex bacterial cooperatives, in many ways as complex as human cities, containing millions of specialized parts that would have been independent life forms in previous evolutionary steps. The nucleus of the cell is the information center, containing a DNA blueprint of how things are arranged.
Next step is that multiple nucleated cells combine into multi-celled creatures. And on and on to more and more complex multi-celled creatures, with more and more different specialized parts. Along the way death is invented, to make it easier to improve on the designs along the way, while recycling the old models.
Now, billions of years later, we humans have developed reflective intelligence, so we have the luxury of being able to sit and think about these things. But we are also rather ignorant about the complex social order that adds up to our existence. And we tend to be rather arrogant about it, even thinking that all these tiny creatures are nothing but a nuissance to us. Not realizing that our own bodies are amazingly complex cooperative organizations of billions of cells that each are complex organizations of millions of smaller specialized creatures. And all of it is pretty much working in perfect unison. And we humans tend to be so naive that we think that our conscious awareness is somehow in control of all of this, despite that we hardly understand it, and we mostly are totally unconscious of it.
Anyway, a question is what comes next, beyond us humans maturing into figuring out how we all can co-exist on the same planet. One quite logical thought would be that we all will arrange ourselves as components of a bigger organism of a higher order. That we'll be cells in the global brain, so to speak, and that humanity maybe will become conscious as a whole. Or, maybe other, more unexpected things will happen. Maybe parts of each of us will start cooperating with each other, and new kinds of life forms will emerge.
I'm no biologist. Better places to study some of this would be, for example the book Earth Dance - Living Systems in Evolution by Elisabet Sahtouris. More >
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 18 Nov 2002 @ 22:24, by ming. Environment, Ecology
"'Living Machines' are whole systems approaches to treating wastewater. They are solar-powered, accelerated versions of the water treatment facilities found in mature natural systems. Incorporating helpful microbes, plants, snails and fish into diverse, self-organizing and responsive communities, Living Machines are site-specific, biological solutions that re-route waste streams into resources." That is from this introduction. See companies like Ocean Arks or Living Machines that create ecologically sound ways of dealing with waste water, often better than any purely technological solution could accomplish. A lot of good stuff seems to be going on in the State of Vermont, with companies such as Ben & Jerry's leading the way. More >
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18 Sep 2002 @ 12:52, by i2i. Environment, Ecology
Since I was a barefoot child, I wondered, but was too shy to ask, "When you throw something away, where is away?"
Little by little I am learning the location of Away.
Today, in the news from Yahoo and AP News, is the announcement of a cleanup of nuclear waste we began creating in 1943 in Washington state.
What a dreadful mess!
But connected to that annoucement is a link to some hope: ... More >
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31 Aug 2002 @ 09:34, by ming. Environment, Ecology
Day six of the Summit. The leaders from around the world cannot agree on how to move forward on global environmental policy, which IÂ’m sure, is apparent in the news. Yet if you spend any time with the non governmental organizations (NGOs) it is clear there are 100,000s of global environmental citizens represented here, and their projects are the blueprints for the environmental clean up needs of today. The Summit only confirms by sense that there is new renaissance is a foot on this planet. ItÂ’s just a matter of time before the world leaders catch on to how much is being accomplished at the ground level in their own countries. More >
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 13 Aug 2002 @ 19:31, by quidnovi. Environment, Ecology
JOHANNESBURG SUMMIT
26 August - 4 September 2002
Johannesburg, South Africa
"Andelain I hold and mold within my fragile spell,
while world's ruin ruins wood and world.
Sap and bough are grief and grim to me, engrievement fall,
And petals fall without relief...
Teary visions come of wail and gore."
---The Forestal's song, S. R. Donaldson [The Wounded Land]
Our Planet is ill, VERY ill...
More >
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24 Feb 2002 @ 05:26, by istvan. Environment, Ecology
Deep Ecology
"From the point of view of deep ecology, what is wrong with our culture is that it offers us an inaccurate description of the self. It depicts the personal self in competition with and in opposition to nature... But if we destroy our environment, we are destroying what is in fact our larger self". - Freya Matthews
Deep Ecology is a worldview and associated way of life grounded in the new cosmology. It branches out of the awareness that the environment is not "out there" separate from us, but that we are part of vast cosmological, geological and biological cycles which are concentric and interrelated. My own body, for example, is constantly exchanging matter, energy, and information with the "environment". The atoms and molecules of my body now, what I collectively call "me", are not the same ones that made up my body a year ago. Every five days I get a new stomach lining. I get a new liver every two months. My skin is replaced every six weeks. Every year, 98% of my body is replaced. The molecules that are continually becoming "me", come from the air I breathe and the food I eat. Before that they were part of fish and snakes, lizards and trees, birds and humans, and all that we eat. I give out as I get. It makes little sense, then, to overly identify with my "ego" self, for that is only a very small part of "me". My larger body is the body of Life itself. Earth is my larger self. This is the essence of deep ecology.
"If the Rhine, the Yellow, the Mississippi rivers are changed to poison, so too are the rivers in the trees, in the birds, and in the humans changed to poison, almost simultaneously. There is only one river on the planet Earth and it has multiple tributaries, many of which flow through the veins of sentient creatures". - Thomas Berry
"A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable. The substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk... It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, war, poetry and music". - Alan Watts
Through the lenses of deep ecology we can begin to see clearly the nature and serious magnitude of our global ecological crisis. Consider the following parable:
Once upon a time, a group of brain cells debated the relative importance of the rest of the body. Some suggested that the body was dispensable. "After all", said one, "we are the only cells in the body that know that we know things"."Only we can reflect on our dreams", said another, "so we must be the only part of the body that is spiritual, right?". "Why just think of the awesome accomplishments we are capable of!". And they all thought... thinking that they were separate from and superior to the rest of body. Occasionally a brain cell would realize that it was one with the entire body; but it was usually martyred trying to tell the others about this good news. You see, the brain cells had convinced themselves that the Great Life lived outside the body and could be known only through their dreams. They believed that they were destined to leave the body and dwell in a place called heaven. They also assumed that the rest of the body was not really alive at all, that it was an inexhaustible supply of "resources" for the benefit of the brain. Needless to say, the health of the body worsened by the day and was soon on the verge of dying.
"A cancer cell is a normal cell disconnected from its genetic memory, cut off from the wisdom of millions of years of evolutionary development. It doesn't cooperate in harmony with the rest of the body. It experiences itself as separate from the body, overpopulates, and consumes the organism which supports it. Cancer eventually kills itself by consuming its own environment". - Brian Patrick
The message of deep ecology is timely news for humanity, and for the planet as a whole. It offers reconnection to our genetic memory and billions of years of evolutionary wisdom. Its application can empower us to live in synergistic cooperation and harmony with the rest of the body of Life. We can begin to experience a harmonious connection alien to us when we thought of ourselves as separate from and superior to our larger body. We can begin to experience a consciousness of heavenly rapport with all of life.
Timely as it may be, the message of deep ecology must be taught and integrated into our society on a massive scale if our grandchildren and theirs are to be saved from a toxic and literal hell on Earth. It must be put into fervent daily practice in every area of our lives. The planet is calling us to create communities that live and love ecologically. This is essential for the salvation of millions of species, especially our own.
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically". - Henry David Thoreau
"The main task of the immediate future is to assist in activating the inter-communion of all living and non-living beings in the emerging Ecozoic era of Earth development. What is most needed in order to accomplish this task is the great art of intimacy and distance: the capacity of beings to be totally present to each other while further affirming and enhancing the differences and identities of each". - Thomas Berry
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20 Feb 2002 @ 15:55, by istvan. Environment, Ecology
It might be a Question what vegetarianism has to do with Newciv. After reading this link You dcide.
[ [link] ]
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 1 Feb 2002 @ 04:32, by ming. Environment, Ecology
Here are some interesting facts about recycling from the Resourceful Schools website. More >
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