http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/When-did-earth-day-get-so-lame-tp7585288p7585289.html
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
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/edwardabbe393644.html#SwrH6dIRqSMejstu.99
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.99Love 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
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