What's heartening is that - in the scientific community - more and more research is being conducted around the idea of true well being, hard choices and deep change.

The evidence points to the idea that - while there is a certain level of human comfort required to achieve a sense of well being - having more and more doesn't make a person happier and happier.

 

Deborah Byrd Earth & Sky Radio Series "A clear voice for science."

Such is the fate of all official holidays. Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity, labor is an afterthought if that on Labor Day, and on Memorial Day we are thankful that it is not our butts "over there." And if you really want to get sick to your stomach, just look at the joke Martin Luther King's birthday has become. I call it National Racial Hypocrisy Day.

So don't feel too crushed about Earth Day. It has suffered the same fate as other holidays in our fallen and profane world.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

A) simply a time-lag, or
B) they way it will remain

I would worry that if it stays we will have our answer, and that is that human nature is too focussed on short term reward rather than long term action.

Economists say it all comes down to the "discount rate" ... another way of saying it's more important to drive fast now:

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007 ...

The culture of entitlement will fight any change or sacrifice to the bitter end.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

To most, personal sacrifice is separating recyclables.  Conspicuous consumption is as honorable as military service in our culture.

As soon as you hear the words "But what about my rights?" in a conversation, smile and walk away because the person who  said that is also thinking "You Commie bastard!".  That conversation is lost.  That person is lost.  Move on to someone whose eyes do not glaze over at the mention of sustainable living.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

I just started a staff job with a large local company (some 7,000 employees), that is owned by a large media conglomerate.  In a weekly staff meeting, we were asked to consider and suggest ways to help make the company more profitable.

I suggested that if everyone simply would turn off their computers, monitors, and lights when they leave each day, the company would save a lot of money.

My suggestion was met with eye rolls and giggles. Needless to say, I am the only one who powers down.  How f*ing hard is it to switch off a computer and a light switch?!!

Greta

P.S. -- Talented Multimedia Specialist for hire.  :-)

NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org

Whenever he runs into the situation you mentioned Greta, he finds out what the companies profit margin is. Or what percent of the department's cost he is talking about. At that point he presents the savings in way meaningful to the person he is talking to: doing this will save x percent of your profit, or x percent of a typical employee salary, or "save enough to buy an additional ad campaign" "save enough to buy everyone in the department a free luch once a week". He translates the saving into something those he is talking to values.

But ... but ... but ... glass half full ... Fortune with green cover ... Vanity Fair ... society magazines ...

"Green is chic" ... is that setting the stage, moving the Overton Window, that will enable meaningful change at all levels in our societies?

Blogging regularly at Get Energy Smart. NOW!!! to Energize America .

Great, so being "green" is the new hip trend.  So, the point here is to APPEAR green, not actualy be it.  Chic = superficial.  
It's the perfect trend for America.  Everyone wants to feel good about themselves, but NO ONE wants to earn that feeling.

I caught some "green" special on 20/20, dateline, or one of those shows, and I LOVE how absolutely adverse to conflict it was.  God forbid you actually come right out and tell people that they're actions have more negative consequences than good (and the only good seems to be a stroke of the ego).
No, absurd levels of meat consumption don't cause problems, it's really just (in passing, mind you) "ranching."  What kind of ranching?  Beef? NO! It must be all that Iguana ranching doing the harm, not the beef! Don't take away my beef!  I want to still feel good about it!

This entire culture is adverse to cognitive dissonance; We take willful ignorance to a whole new level.  Not only do we NOT want to know, we don't want to know SPECIFICALLY so we don't have to feel bad....

:(  Let's all go turn off the faucet now...boy oh boy, we could "save" a whole 450ml of water!  Then I can feel good about pissing away water on the growing, processing, etc of meat!  
"I did my part!  I saved that gallon of water in the shower [turns a blind eye to the HUNDEREDS of wasted gallons caused by me steak]!"

A three day weekend seems just the ticket :p

Okay, it doesn't solve anything environmental in itself, but it would be a soft, weekly reminder.  The naming of the days of the week seems to originate in (real or metaphorical) heavenly bodies from a time when we didn't realise that the earth itself was such a body.

Ending the separation between "the earth" and "the heavens" is an important part of environmental thinking IMHO.

The wimpy tokenism. The determination to be upbeat. Good news! The grizzlybear has been taken off the endangered species list! Diane Sawyer suggested replacing one (one!) incandescent light bulb with a CFL, and turned off the studio lights above Times Square - for about twenty seconds. Her closer: "a small thing but sending a big message". That "big message" has of course been going out through an assortment of feel-good initiatives for over thirty years now, during which time the scale of our environmental depredations has increased almost beyond imagining.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

This is exactly what I am doing. Even trying to get the local power company to help me -- in analyzing their current use and how simple measures would affect that usage...and the savings as a result.  (The company is privately held, so I will not have direct access to profit statements.  Although, since they are a cable company, there might be something public.)

Beyond the response to my dept. head's question, I intend to submit my 'report' to the executives through the companies "employees suggestions" program.

Sadly, the company appears to be very non-green in many other ways (e.g., no recycling program whatsoever, that I can see).  Has made me consider researching and writing an article about the environmental policies of the top 10 leading companies in my area.  See how the others do, as well.

NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org

1. Green cards

2. Green blue-jeans

3. Green consumption at Amazon

4. Are hybrids for men? from Esquire magazine

5. Earth Day TV

J.S.


Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

Meanwhile the only humans who haven't been terminally cynicized yet, kids, are into the whole idea of still trying to save the planet.

Forget humans who think like adults.  They are too sophisticated to fight this hopeless battle.  For all of you, consider suicide.  It would end your suffering and help spaceship earth.

The facts are similar to the facts that were faced during WW 2.  Atomic bombs, radar, millions of liberty ships, tanks, jeeps, trucks, guns needed to defeat fascism?  Impossible.  Forget it.

Just stay out of the war, Hitler is a reasonable guy.  The US can make a treaty with him once he conquers Russia and europe.  It's the "adult" thing to do.

Idiots lead by a chimp.  Adults.  Screw 'em.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

re: Gar Lipow
Amory Lovins translates the benefits into something those he is talking to values.

And thats what needs to happen more often.

Translate the messages into something that decision makers value and understand.

-David Ahlport

You are suggesting Grist screen submissions based on "seriousness." If by serious you mean, containing little humor, your posts would have no problem. If by "seriousness," you mean "important," that's another story. Because seriousness is an arbitrary concept (as is humor), the level of seriousness of a given article would be largely in the eye of a given editor. In all honesty, if I were an editor, few, if any, of your numerous posts on animal welfare would pass muster. From my perspective they would land squarely on the trivial side of a trivial-to-serious scale.

Not being nasty, just painfully forthright, as is your forte.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

And did somebody mention the kids?  Wow, I am totally impressed with the awareness that many school kids have today, and many assignments involve environmental issues.  Need to clean up a beach or plant a thousand plants?  Heck man, just call up the science department at the local schools and they come out in school buses!  Old farts like us are often far too busy or out of shape to do that kind of hard work.

I know, I see the points raised in the lead article here and it is so easy to get depressed, especially when EXXON and TXU and Wal-Mart start doing "green" things, and here we are frustrated by saving a glass of water and a maybe turning off computers at night.  Maybe we don't like Earth Day being commercialized and trivialized, but we need all the help we can get.

As Steve Forberg (sp) said in his rock song, "Good planets are hard to find."  Have a happy Earth Day, 2007.
sammie

Onward through the fog

I found it ironic that while David and others are bemoaning the lack of seriousness on green issues by the public a quick perusal of Grist today seems to indicate just the sort of incrementalist, catchy, made for the mainstream stories that really don't address the key large issues, and which likely overwhelm the more important issues over time.

That's all. We can disagree. I don't claim to always refrain from triviality. Anyway, no one's perfect. But yes, the Farm Bill is NOT TRIVIAL- it's not about me or MY ARTICLE- it's about reality and the big stakes at hand.

And yes, I too think environmentalists could do a better job focusing. I've written about it many times and will continue to do so.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

Also, the immense torture of billions of sentient beings each yar for nothing more than our dinner plate is never trivial from a serious environmental ethic in my view, but again, we can agree to disagree.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

My personal ethics, and this is to you Jason, is that humans are omnivores and some fish and poultry isn't all that bad as a dietary supplement, under some conditions (organic, wild, free-range, not endangered species, etc.).  Thus I have absolutely no qualms about eating dolphinfish burgers, Thai squid salad, or local farm-raised Coq au Vin.  I have to admit that the CAFO is bad news, though.  Oh, and those wild pigs tearing up the environment - sorry, sir, we shoot them with bows and arrows and eat 'em up with great gusto.  To me, fake bacon is pure cancer in a bottle!
sammie

Onward through the fog

Denis Hayes is a founder of the Solar Lobby and Earth Day (formerly Sun Day).  Denis also incubated Grist.

Oh, and if it means anything, I'm big on solar water heaters ...
sammie

Onward through the fog

I am glad, Sammie, that environmental ethics is an emerging discipline.  It makes sense that it should have a number of not easily relatable parts.  How animal welfare -- a subject of great importance to me, and a few others -- fits in, is far from clear.

To BioD: I cannot help defending Jason at least to this extent: the treatment of non-human animals by human beings is a serious, indeed grave, ethical issue; and it would be encouraging to know that members of the Gristmill community have at least given it some unprejudiced thought.  Therefore I have found all his posts on animal welfare very interesting (much more so than his other posts, for the most part).  And I heartily applaud him for consistently presenting his learned and principled opinion (in which he is joined by only very few others, if any, in Gristmill, I think) that vegetarianism, and even better, veganism, is the committed environmentalist's best dietary option.

That said, I agree, BioD, that Jason's Puritan-preacherly grimness, or humorlessness, not to say aggressiveness, is often hard to take.  "Trivial" is certainly not synonymous with "humorous."  That which is good and desirable for us to know about, presented in a light-hearted fashion, is by no means to be confused with anything that might be considered a fluffy waste of time.  The light-heartedness has a valuable purpose.  Cf. the opening of Book IV of "On the Nature of the Universe," by the Roman Epicurean Lucretius, and the image of the honeyed cup of wormwood.  

That is the ingenious insight, after all, of Chip Giller, who apparently can do a head-stand, even wearing heavy boots, with the best of them.

Also, while as I say I am interested in Jason's animal-welfare posts, and while I think it is good that the Gristmill community understand the issues, I think perhaps this is not the best place to introduce and discuss the subject of animal welfare, in the manner in which he has done it.

(But then again, the bitter resentment, and even sense of outrage, with which some people responded to him on that subject, bespeaks a remarkable and surprising thin-skinnedness.  Perhaps that is part of the environmentalist job description: You must be acutely sensitive to any charge, even the most subtle, against your motives, practices and ideological impeccability.)

Back to Sammie: Just so you realize, there are several unrelated issues involved in human beings' eating the meat of animals that they have killed; and how they bear on environmentalism, you decide:

• Is the population of the species of animals to which the killed animal belonged plentiful, or diminishing, or in any way threatened?

• Did the manner of life, and manner of death of that animal, and the manner of its preparation as a meal for human beings or other domestic animals, involve the emission of green-house gases, or other pollutants?

• Is the meat, or other organic matter, taken from the killed animal, healthful for consumption by human beings or other domestic animals?

• In the course of its life and death, was the general experience of the killed animal unduly stressful or painful, on account of human activities?

• In the course of the life and death of the killed animal, were human beings discouraged from thinking seriously about the animal's vulnerabilities, sensibilities and interests?

As for killing pigs with bow-and-arrow: Presumably these animals are numerous; and presumably there are no remarkably high (though not inconsiderable) GHGs emitted in going after them, killing them, bringing them home, cooking them and eating them.  But surely only a very skilled archer can kill at once a pig, a tough-skinned and intelligent animal, with a single shot.  The chances are good that this method involves the suffering of many very sensitive animals.

As for the "human beings are omnivores, period" argument: Ethically, that is out of the Dark Ages, and I strongly hope we can move beyond it soon.  That in the course of our evolution, and culturally, we have been and (mostly) are omnivores, is an important consideration.  But that by no means ends the conversation.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

• mercury in dophinfish (mahi-mahi) is very low, possibly due to rapig growth rates and food energy conversion, not unlike squid.  Both species are doing very well and squid can be considered an infestation in certain parts of California.  

• chickens, it is hard to find a real "farm chicken" but we try; otherwise I'm allergic to the food they feed the CAFO chickens and avoid it like the plague.

• pigs, recall that I did mention that wild pigs were a growing environmental disaster in the lower US.  You might have missed that clue.

Invasive species are a tough one for "environmental ethics" but some folks have no compunction about killing such invasive pests as the Chinese Mitten Crab, Moon Snail, Brazilian Pepperwood Bush, tick-infested Niglai, wild pigs, and many, many more.  It is basically a huge slaughter and the weak-stomached should not be there to watch.  In my opinion, cleaning out these pests if a worthy cause to defend the native environment.

But back to nicer things, I'm going to have a home-crafted beer and raise a toast to Mr. Denis Hayes.  
sammie

Onward through the fog

There are countless reports, from many parts of the world, of invasive plants and animals, which pose great danger to native plants and animals.  And the elimination of them may very well be considered a duty.

The introduction of new, aggressive vertebrates into many islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans is an especially great tragedy.  I recently read an article about how people on the Big Island of Hawai'i leave offerings to Pele (or to somebody) at the summit of Mauna Loa, including bounteous food offerings.  Naturally, rats are drawn to this feast; but once they settle in up there, they in turn will endanger the native high-altitude birds, and even the very rare and beloved Hawaiian goose, the Nene.

Who are the people leaving the offerings?  The impression I took away from the article was that they are ethnic Chinese, and not native Polynesian Hawaiians, but I could be wrong.  Either way, this is clearly yet another sorry item to be placed in our catalogue, on the theme of "Religion is a force for evil in the world."

A hasty search of a couple of seconds did not turn up the article I had read, but I found this, an illustrated account of a hike in Volcano National Park, on the slopes of Mauna Loa:

http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/C1705165967/E2006 ...

It has some beautiful and fascinating photographs, almost as beautiful and fascinating as those taken by BioD himself.  There is a good summary paragraph on the damage done to native Hawaiian wildlife by rats, cats, mongooses, pigs and mosquitoes, the latter being bearers of diseases that kill birds.  The pigs help the mosquitoes by creating wallows: so who knew!

The mongooses are very cute, but in fact are monsters.  I know some people like that ...

As for your feral pigs, dear Sammie, in the "lower US" (not to be confused with "the South," apparently): Yes indeed, it seems pigs have been found, shot and hung up, in the woods of the state of Georgia, big enough to stare down a grizzly, and give it second thoughts.

'Course, those're likely no more'n kittens, next to what y'all got in Texas.

See now, the people o' the great state o' Texas claim to be the Bush-lovingest people in this here federation.  And yet, when the Vice-President himself flies in, on his fancy airplane, and the Texans put a gun in his hands, all he can do is pop off at some poor li'l ol' helpless birds, and some poor li'l ol' helpless Houston crony.  But what about them pigs?  Why din't he go pig-bustin'?  He coulda brought back a haunch an' a head to Laura, she'da 'preciated that kind gesture, she'da 'preciated that mightily; woulda reminded her o' those days back when she was just a Brownie, and was first learnin' to shoot with live ammo; she wanted that badge so bad ...

(Moving along ... )

As for the Nilgai: Right, this is something that I became aware of only recently, that there is a considerable number of species of artiodactyls, mostly Bovidae (cattle, sheep, goats, antelopes) and Cervidae (deer), mostly from Asia, introduced into Texas and other Western states; and that these critters are becoming (have already become) real problems.

It is important to remember, first, that these critters did not on their own plan and mount an invasion.  They did not seek to come here.

Their situation is, on one level at least, analogous to that of African-Americans who are the descendants of enslaved Africans, brought here entirely against their will, with the economic motives of Euro-Americans behind it, and with unspeakably heart-breaking suffering.

So, do the African-American descendants of "invasive" African slaves need to be "controlled," in the way that you say the Nilgai do?  Indeed, as you know, it was thought best by many white decision-makers in the 19th century, for the sake of social stability, or something like that, that the slaves, or former slaves, and their children, should be "returned" to Africa.

The analogy is obviously very imperfect.  And the history of US slavery, and post-Emancipation attitudes, is terrificly complex.

Back to "invasive" artiodactyls: Secondly, it must be remembered that when you actually see a Nilgai, a feral pig, or another member of an "invasive" species, that individual that you are looking at is responsible neither for the "invasion" nor for the environmental destruction attributed to its species' success.

Thirdly, even if you wish to kill it, and go through with that wish, it must be treated as kindly and humanely as you would wish any sentient being, including yourself, to be treated.

Demonizing it, wounding it with arrows, gloating over its death, have no place in any responsible exercise of environmental values.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

If anyone knows of a way of energizing those young enough to inherit the planet yet old enough to vote please tell the rest of us. Judging by the attendence of my local under 30 crowd at anything environmental I suspect that we are saving the planet for people who don't want it.

Any suggestions?

Put the Carbon Back

Let's just say the young folks work with maybe a different mindset than the hippies did back several decades ago.  I'm not sure if they are reacting negatively to the "Geezer Factor" or if they approach it a different way.

Maybe our sociologists can help here.  I have read some fairly good articles that the kids these days are more concervative, even supporting President Bush much more than their parents.  Exactly what is going on would be fascinating to learn.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

J.S.

J.S. htt://voicesofreason.info

Bad spelling is charming in only two contexts: home-made greeting cards by children to their parents and grandparents; and passionate and impatient letters by rough young suitors.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

...more Americans than ever -- 60%, up from 48% a decade ago -- believe that global warming has begun to affect the climate.

Eventually they'll believe that the sun affects the amount of light in the sky...or that cooling causes cold.

Personally, seeing how many people still don't believe there is a problem or that they can do anything about it seems to be the Biggest problem of all.

I am pleased to see stronger legislation being enacted but is every problem solved by money? I think people need to change their values and habits for something major to happen.

Walt