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When did earth day get so lame?

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Leigh Fanning

When did earth day get so lame?

I thought this might be of general interest, the author is an
environmental philosopher.

http://enviroethics.org/2014/04/22/blog-when-did-earth-day-get-so-lame/

"Today is Earth Day, April 22, 2014. Like most Earth Days these days, a
few grey-haired environmentalists may take note of the event,
celebrities will tweet meaningless platitudes like Daryl Hannah?s
exhortation that we should all ?love your mother,? and college students
will have celebrations at their campuses emphasizing individual consumer
choice and the pursuit of sustainability through better technology. When
did Earth Day become so lame?"

...

Leigh

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Steve Smith

Re: When did earth day get so lame?

I spent a very ambiguous Earth Day today.

I visited the Pajarito Environmental Education Center to consult with them on the infrastructure/technology for the 30' Planetarium they are building with their new center in Los Alamos.   They have a very aggressive mission around educating the public and children in particular about environmental issues. They have a small community garden now where children and adults can "get their hands dirty" and the new facility will have a much larger one.   It will have stunning views of the outdoors (Pueblo Canyon and the Jemez mountains) and their programs all have an element of encouraging people to go out in the real world and experience it directly as well as through the interpretive materials they have onsite.

At the end of the day, there was a "groundbreaking" ceremony at the site on the edge of a beautiful canyon... we were surrounded by huge piles of recently scraped up dirt, piles of logs formerly known as trees and huge yellow machines to do that work.   Given their mission, it was a minor bit of cognitive dissonance that nobody else (as far as I could tell) noticed.

Meanwhile Jack Loeffler was attending and went on to give a very compelling talk at the Bradbury Science Museum.   He articulated many key things about the environment and threats to it, but focused primarily on water and watersheds.   At the end of the talk he gave out posters printed up with 4 color indications of the watersheds of the west as originally created by John Wesley Powell who strongly urged that the political boundaries of new states formed be aligned with watershed boundaries rather than arbitrary things such as lines of latitude and longitude.

It was vaguely poignant given my recent maunderings opposite Glen, Nick and others on the landscape metaphor of basins of attraction in dynamical systems.

Meanwhile Jack went on to speak the very well grounded and level if otherwise radical line that we recognize from his long time friend Ed Abbey.   He mentioned that Ed had died 25 years, N days and M hours ago... very powerful reminder that he walked Ed out into the Sonoran Desert where Ed spent his last hours dying as gracefully and privately as the situation allowed for.   Jack said "Ed died with things left to be done".   Later he mentioned Garrett Hardin of "Tragedy of the Commons" fame who both he and Abbey were greatly mutually influenced by.   He said that Garrett and his wife decided that they were no longer useful and chose to "leave this plane" in 2003.

Jack was not directly critical of LANL or it's mission but did speak unabashedly about the "military industrial" complex and of the (ab)uses of Science that are antithetical to a healthy environment over the long haul.   He also spoke directly of the nature of true anarchism which

Jack also took a moment to survey the 50+ people in attendance, almost exclusively with grey hair and said "do you know, I rarely have anyone under 50 in my audiences!?"    But then nobody was tweeting or txting or checking their e-mail or looking up references on their Notebook devices. Nobody asked him digitally sign a digital copy of any of his books either.

It was a sweetly ambiguous Earth Day.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

<a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edward_abbey.html" onclick="aCl('quote','/quotes/quotes/e/edwardabbe393644','/quotes/authors/e/edward_abbey','1')"> Edward Abbey

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. Ed Abbey

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/edwardabbe393644.html#lllfigmbpmOvJlwZ.99

Love your Mother (earth)! Darryl Hannah

Earth First! Dave Foreman

- Steve

I thought this might be of general interest, the author is an
environmental philosopher.

http://enviroethics.org/2014/04/22/blog-when-did-earth-day-get-so-lame/

"Today is Earth Day, April 22, 2014. Like most Earth Days these days, a
few grey-haired environmentalists may take note of the event,
celebrities will tweet meaningless platitudes like Daryl Hannah?s
exhortation that we should all ?love your mother,? and college students
will have celebrations at their campuses emphasizing individual consumer
choice and the pursuit of sustainability through better technology. When
did Earth Day become so lame?"

...

Leigh


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Carl Tollander

Re: When did earth day get so lame?

In reply to this post by Leigh Fanning

It got more lame about the time it got more real for more people.

It is one thing to appreciate watersheds, biodiversity, save the
rainforests, preserve the wolves and so on. These are good things, yes.

It is quite another thing to understand that we are not merely
interconnected in an abstract sense, but that we participate in and are
intimately bound to, deeply regulated networks of many kinds. Indeed
they are very the stuff of our being. As our understanding of
regulation in all spheres grows, our notion of the commons and thus our
responsibilities grows and deepens with it.

This notion of a continuously expanding commons and associated
responsibilities is pretty hard for a lot of folks to deal with, given
deeply held notions of liberty, justice and individuality. So they tend
to pretend its not happening. Or throw up their hands in despair and
mumble some platitudes. Or think, say, that adapting to something like
climate change will mean stocking up on canned goods.

It is so weird to me that people would stop at saying, social or
government regulation historically sucks (no it doesn't), so we should
not (some would even say never) respect the attempt. On the contrary,
we need to get better at it. Much better. We need to excel at
understanding and adapting to regulatory processes. It is what we are
made of.

A nice summary and discussion of the key points of the IPCC report by
Steve Easterbrook is here:
http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/what-does-the-new-ipcc-report-say-about-climate-change-part-1/
We need more of this kind of explanation so more people can wrap their
minds around it and squeeze.

We need to get more real about this stuff every day and if that means
Earth Day gets more lame, then ok. It's like only planting trees on
Arbor Day.

Carl

On 4/22/14, 8:02 PM, Leigh Fanning wrote:

> I thought this might be of general interest, the author is an
> environmental philosopher.
>
> http://enviroethics.org/2014/04/22/blog-when-did-earth-day-get-so-lame/
>
> "Today is Earth Day, April 22, 2014. Like most Earth Days these days, a
> few grey-haired environmentalists may take note of the event,
> celebrities will tweet meaningless platitudes like Daryl Hannah?s
> exhortation that we should all ?love your mother,? and college students
> will have celebrations at their campuses emphasizing individual consumer
> choice and the pursuit of sustainability through better technology. When
> did Earth Day become so lame?"
>
> ...
>
> Leigh
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

Owen Densmore

Re: When did earth day get so lame?

Administrator

Interesting that Cosmos, the new TV series based on the earlier Carl Sagan series, now by Neil deGrasse Tyson, has been out front on the earth day concerns.

The last one included lead and the story behind finding its dangers in modern (last century) times.

-- Owen

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Carl Tollander <[hidden email]> wrote:

It got more lame about the time it got more real for more people.

It is one thing to appreciate watersheds, biodiversity, save the rainforests, preserve the wolves and so on. These are good things, yes.

It is quite another thing to understand that we are not merely interconnected in an abstract sense, but that we participate in and are intimately bound to, deeply regulated networks of many kinds. Indeed they are very the stuff of our being. As our understanding of regulation in all spheres grows, our notion of the commons and thus our responsibilities grows and deepens with it.

This notion of a continuously expanding commons and associated responsibilities is pretty hard for a lot of folks to deal with, given deeply held notions of liberty, justice and individuality. So they tend to pretend its not happening. Or throw up their hands in despair and mumble some platitudes. Or think, say, that adapting to something like climate change will mean stocking up on canned goods.

It is so weird to me that people would stop at saying, social or government regulation historically sucks (no it doesn't), so we should not (some would even say never) respect the attempt. On the contrary, we need to get better at it. Much better. We need to excel at understanding and adapting to regulatory processes. It is what we are made of.

A nice summary and discussion of the key points of the IPCC report by Steve Easterbrook is here: http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/what-does-the-new-ipcc-report-say-about-climate-change-part-1/
We need more of this kind of explanation so more people can wrap their minds around it and squeeze.

We need to get more real about this stuff every day and if that means Earth Day gets more lame, then ok. It's like only planting trees on Arbor Day.

Carl

On 4/22/14, 8:02 PM, Leigh Fanning wrote:

I thought this might be of general interest, the author is an
environmental philosopher.

http://enviroethics.org/2014/04/22/blog-when-did-earth-day-get-so-lame/

"Today is Earth Day, April 22, 2014. Like most Earth Days these days, a
few grey-haired environmentalists may take note of the event,
celebrities will tweet meaningless platitudes like Daryl Hannah?s
exhortation that we should all ?love your mother,? and college students
will have celebrations at their campuses emphasizing individual consumer
choice and the pursuit of sustainability through better technology. When
did Earth Day become so lame?"

...

Leigh

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com