Everything and Everyone is Connected
Earth Meanders
http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/
By Dr. Glen Barry
August 19, 2004
The global environmental crisis requires holistic approaches, based upon the revelation that all of the Earth's life is sacred and connected. All environmental ills that threaten the Earth and her life are illustrative of the same issue - too many people, consuming too much, while having lost touch with their oneness with the Earth. The Earth and her water, forests, air and oceans have been afforded little worth and are treated as little more than expendable trash dumps.
Environmentalists are doing valuable work on single issues such as climate change, forest and water conservation, and toxics. There are good reasons to focus on more scoped and manageable issues in isolation. Solutions are easier and less intrusive, lending themselves to reformist policies that do not threaten the status quo.
However, it is highly unlikely that any single major environmental issue facing the world will ever be solved without progress on all the others.
Forests will not be sustained if climate change is not addressed. Soils will continue to be eroded and water diminished as long as forests and wetlands are lost.
Recent flooding in Asia and Haiti illustrates comprehensive collapse of ecological systems in whole. There climate change brought intense rainfall, water run-off was exacerbated by poor land management, and great human suffering and further ecological decline resulted. Numerous studies have recently shown that air pollution is global, i.e. America receives Asia's pollution, while itself polluting Europe.
The global ecological whole - which I like to refer to as Gaia - is a tightly coupled system composed of ecological sub-systems that cycle nutrients and energy. This finally honed ecological apparatus of immense complexity makes life possible. Thus photosynthesizers release oxygen while consuming carbon dioxide, and animals do the reverse, completing the cycle. Oceans and terrestrial ecosystems effect and are effected by climate. Water is the life blood of all life.
Failure of any one ecological system reverberates through the whole. The realization that forests are connected to the well being of virtually every other ecological system, and vice versa, has turned this forest conservationist into a global ecological sustainability crusader.
Forests, climate, water and oceans - and the Earth in total - will only be sustained if there is more emphasis upon the big picture and the interactions between these issues.
Humanity cannot continue to procreate and consume as if the Earth does not matter. The Earth does matter - other species and emergent ecosystem processes make humanity and our society possible. There are real physical and biological limits to the Earth's capacity to provide sustenance and maintain a habitable environment for humans. Increasing numbers of people are being faced with this reality as their water supplies falter, climatic patterns fade, land becomes desert, and oceans are made lifeless.
Humanity and all that we have been able to achieve has been by and of the Earth. Wal-Mart parking lots do not sustain us - the wind, water and trees do. Any suggestion that the Earth's intricate ecosystem services can or should be engineered is misguided foolishness. The Earth is a tightly honed system perfected for one purpose - to provide for all her life.
Why tinker with the perfection found in a seed? All the Earth requires in return for making our lives possible is an acknowledgement of our oneness with her, and that we not dismantle the ecological machinery whereby the Earth is maintained, regulated and restored. This seems reasonable.
The Human Nation
It may be easier to accept that we are all connected to the natural world than to accept we - all of humanity - are deeply dependent upon each other. As ecological, political, social and technological trends converge, the idea of nation-states has become antiquated. For globalization to be sustainable, desirable and successful the concept of the human nation must be embraced.
I am a strange messenger to be delivering the message that the fate of all humans is linked. I do not much like people, and have spent much of my life feeling depressed and alienated. Yet my experiences have led me to conclude that what happens to a poor child in Bangladesh is intimately bound with my and my Planet's fate.
In the globalized world there is no such thing as another country's problem. How much longer can the luxurious over-developed world expect billions to peacefully suffer a fate of acute human need and desperation?
It is greedy and evil for American and other mega-polluters to demand that peasants in China limit their carbon emissions before Americans work to reduce their much larger impact.
An expenditure of some 40 billion dollars a year would provide basic health services, clean water, and primary education to everyone in the World. This is some 1/10 of what the United States alone spends on its militaristic solutions to world conflict. Might does not make right, and security in a globalized world will not come solely from the barrel of a gun.
Liberal democracy and market economies need not be synonymous with militarism, Earth devouring industrialism, nor continuation of massive economic inequities and other social injustices.
We are one human nation. For the Earth to have a future we can not afford to think otherwise.
Life Journeys
Realizing that everything and everyone is connected, and thus sacred, has been a long journey for me. I first caught a glimpse of this in my young adulthood spent in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea. I was faced with, and tried to make sense of, the evil of huge logging concessions of ancient rainforests to make cardboard boxes and toilet paper while local peoples continued to live in abject material poverty.
During this time, I crudely sought to synthesize what I was learning of life's meaning with spirituality and ecology. I wrote that given "Truth is God" in the Ghandian tradition, and that I was coming to realize that "Earth is Truth", then it must be that "Earth is God".
These first attempts to enunciate the ecological intuition that all life is connected and their sum - Gaia - is holy, met with a wide range of responses. These ranged from appearances on public radio, to speaking events; to derision, ridicule and incomprehensive by naïve and consumerist relatives.
I love the Earth and all her life very much. It is this love that restores me constantly. Never, ever let the laughter of the consuming heathens thwart your deep emotional attachment to Mother Earth. As goes the Earth will go us all.
Earth Meanders is a series of personal essays that places questions of environmental sustainability within the context of other contemporary issues. Past writings can be found at
http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/blog/archives/cat_earth_meanders.htm
Permission is granted to reprint this essay provided it is properly credited.
http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/
By Dr. Glen Barry
August 19, 2004
The global environmental crisis requires holistic approaches, based upon the revelation that all of the Earth's life is sacred and connected. All environmental ills that threaten the Earth and her life are illustrative of the same issue - too many people, consuming too much, while having lost touch with their oneness with the Earth. The Earth and her water, forests, air and oceans have been afforded little worth and are treated as little more than expendable trash dumps.
Environmentalists are doing valuable work on single issues such as climate change, forest and water conservation, and toxics. There are good reasons to focus on more scoped and manageable issues in isolation. Solutions are easier and less intrusive, lending themselves to reformist policies that do not threaten the status quo.
However, it is highly unlikely that any single major environmental issue facing the world will ever be solved without progress on all the others.
Forests will not be sustained if climate change is not addressed. Soils will continue to be eroded and water diminished as long as forests and wetlands are lost.
Recent flooding in Asia and Haiti illustrates comprehensive collapse of ecological systems in whole. There climate change brought intense rainfall, water run-off was exacerbated by poor land management, and great human suffering and further ecological decline resulted. Numerous studies have recently shown that air pollution is global, i.e. America receives Asia's pollution, while itself polluting Europe.
The global ecological whole - which I like to refer to as Gaia - is a tightly coupled system composed of ecological sub-systems that cycle nutrients and energy. This finally honed ecological apparatus of immense complexity makes life possible. Thus photosynthesizers release oxygen while consuming carbon dioxide, and animals do the reverse, completing the cycle. Oceans and terrestrial ecosystems effect and are effected by climate. Water is the life blood of all life.
Failure of any one ecological system reverberates through the whole. The realization that forests are connected to the well being of virtually every other ecological system, and vice versa, has turned this forest conservationist into a global ecological sustainability crusader.
Forests, climate, water and oceans - and the Earth in total - will only be sustained if there is more emphasis upon the big picture and the interactions between these issues.
Humanity cannot continue to procreate and consume as if the Earth does not matter. The Earth does matter - other species and emergent ecosystem processes make humanity and our society possible. There are real physical and biological limits to the Earth's capacity to provide sustenance and maintain a habitable environment for humans. Increasing numbers of people are being faced with this reality as their water supplies falter, climatic patterns fade, land becomes desert, and oceans are made lifeless.
Humanity and all that we have been able to achieve has been by and of the Earth. Wal-Mart parking lots do not sustain us - the wind, water and trees do. Any suggestion that the Earth's intricate ecosystem services can or should be engineered is misguided foolishness. The Earth is a tightly honed system perfected for one purpose - to provide for all her life.
Why tinker with the perfection found in a seed? All the Earth requires in return for making our lives possible is an acknowledgement of our oneness with her, and that we not dismantle the ecological machinery whereby the Earth is maintained, regulated and restored. This seems reasonable.
The Human Nation
It may be easier to accept that we are all connected to the natural world than to accept we - all of humanity - are deeply dependent upon each other. As ecological, political, social and technological trends converge, the idea of nation-states has become antiquated. For globalization to be sustainable, desirable and successful the concept of the human nation must be embraced.
I am a strange messenger to be delivering the message that the fate of all humans is linked. I do not much like people, and have spent much of my life feeling depressed and alienated. Yet my experiences have led me to conclude that what happens to a poor child in Bangladesh is intimately bound with my and my Planet's fate.
In the globalized world there is no such thing as another country's problem. How much longer can the luxurious over-developed world expect billions to peacefully suffer a fate of acute human need and desperation?
It is greedy and evil for American and other mega-polluters to demand that peasants in China limit their carbon emissions before Americans work to reduce their much larger impact.
An expenditure of some 40 billion dollars a year would provide basic health services, clean water, and primary education to everyone in the World. This is some 1/10 of what the United States alone spends on its militaristic solutions to world conflict. Might does not make right, and security in a globalized world will not come solely from the barrel of a gun.
Liberal democracy and market economies need not be synonymous with militarism, Earth devouring industrialism, nor continuation of massive economic inequities and other social injustices.
We are one human nation. For the Earth to have a future we can not afford to think otherwise.
Life Journeys
Realizing that everything and everyone is connected, and thus sacred, has been a long journey for me. I first caught a glimpse of this in my young adulthood spent in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea. I was faced with, and tried to make sense of, the evil of huge logging concessions of ancient rainforests to make cardboard boxes and toilet paper while local peoples continued to live in abject material poverty.
During this time, I crudely sought to synthesize what I was learning of life's meaning with spirituality and ecology. I wrote that given "Truth is God" in the Ghandian tradition, and that I was coming to realize that "Earth is Truth", then it must be that "Earth is God".
These first attempts to enunciate the ecological intuition that all life is connected and their sum - Gaia - is holy, met with a wide range of responses. These ranged from appearances on public radio, to speaking events; to derision, ridicule and incomprehensive by naïve and consumerist relatives.
I love the Earth and all her life very much. It is this love that restores me constantly. Never, ever let the laughter of the consuming heathens thwart your deep emotional attachment to Mother Earth. As goes the Earth will go us all.
Earth Meanders is a series of personal essays that places questions of environmental sustainability within the context of other contemporary issues. Past writings can be found at
http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/blog/archives/cat_earth_meanders.htm
Permission is granted to reprint this essay provided it is properly credited.
Starmail - 19. Aug, 22:56
