Whether we see the beauty or not, the whole of nature, the whole of existence, is interconnected. Each of us lives in relation to every other. This is not mystic mutterings, but the actuality if we look. And this is a sound basis for a politics of inclusion and hope. thank you
Whether we see the beauty or not, the whole of nature, the whole of existence, is interconnected. Each of us lives in relation to every other. This is not mystic mutterings, but the actuality if we look. And this is a sound basis for a politics of inclusion and hope. thank you
You are right Richard. It doesn't require mystic visions, a fancy education, scientific acumen, religious beliefs, or political leanings to recognize that it is humanity that will destroy or save our world. It just requires an open mind and humility to recognize that the fate of our one and only planet earth is in our hands.
In fact it requires the casting aside of the elements of the Abrahamic religions that posit humanity's separation from and lordship over nature. In that sense many of the so-called primitive religions have it right and should be learned from rather than exterminated. We also need to recognize how big business has manipulated public values to prioritize monetary gain as the sole purpose of human existence. And they do so with the active partnership of many religious leaders.
The two points you mention are the basis of trillions of bad decisions and horrific mistakes by the dominant people of the planet.
If I were a novelist or script writer, I would pen a story about European "explorers" of the New World who met indigenous people and saw them differently. What if the Europeans had been impressed rather than frightened by Native Americans? What if the earliest invaders were to have embraced the ancient wisdoms they encountered? What if they had decided to learn rather than plunder? What if they had discovered that the real treasure in the Western Hemisphere was the highly developed cultures that had evolved over thousands of years?
What if we hadn't started our lives in this chunk of the planet as greedy, ignorant and arrogant. What if we had become students?
One of the most wonderful and symbolic acts by President Biden was the nomination of Deb Haaland for Interior Secretary. Another reason to vote Blue - from the top of the ticket to the bottom.
Good thoughts to ponder, Bill. "What if" indeed. What if we'd learned instead of taught? What if we'd listened instead of shouted. What if we'd talked instead of fought?
Ally, yes, what if. We have a set of orders issued to one of my husband's relatives here in Oregon during a war against Native Americans in southern Oregon. The commanding officer ordered his men to pursue them by any means, including eating horses and Native Americans if necessary. if they didn't, they would be mentioned unfavorably. I used this set of orders in my writing class as an original document for students to analyze and they had their eyes opened.
The little local museums invented and operated by local lovers of history are often treasures. The Bandon Historical Society Museum is where I learned of the massacre of local people by gold miners in the 1850s.
Our first ecologist, Henry David Thoreau, wrote some of these thoughts 170 years ago. Unfortunately, instead of protecting the interconnectedness of all life, the Gold Rush preoccupied the 19th century American mind set and continues into the 21st.
May I mention human greed, human aggression, human arrogance as among but not only our innate natures. We are a vicious, domineering species. We have over populated the earth, we are over consuming it's resources, we are killing it's creatures. Indigenous people everywhere and throughout history have succumbed to the numbers and technology of outside invaders. But Gaia will get even as we run out of fresh water, run out of wild fish (have you bought fish lately), experience the increasingly weather extremes of rain, drought, heat, and wind. Have you noticed that popular music is increasingly angry, our current artists increasingly incomprehensible? Artists are more sensitive to our current situation. Well maybe benign robots and A.I. devices will replace us.
George, yes Gaia will have her say and she is already quite loud. But so many ascribe what happens to God (not the same here as Gaia) and give thanks they survived and then go on to do the same foolish things. My sister's family is doing their best to help with overpopulation as I now have at least a dozen great greats. I had a long conversation via messenger last night with my nephew's wife. They have money woes of course and are caught in red tape when trying to get help. They have a house which counts as part of their income even though it is not ready money. They are too busy trying to survive to understand what we are up against.
George, human flaws are many. I wish, at the Garden of Eden, God would have noticed that his two prototypes were not very good. He could have started over. Later, God was so disgusted he flooded the earth to get rid of the bad actors. The problem with Noah and his family is that they had the original lousy operating system. The only solution is to change the OS. We now have a tool for modifying DNA called CRISP-R. We ought to use it.
Patrick, the problem is that genetics and behaviour are not well connected. Religion does not seem to work well either. An education system that stresses decency might help.
People may have been frightened by Native Americans at times and some died as the result of encounters with indigenous peoples, but Europeans often viewed them as part of the fauna to be eliminated, that the continent was basically empty, and that it could be used as a giant workhouse to send problem people to. And then of course, like every other part of the world outside of Europe, it was full of goods to be plundered and exploited. Indigenous people had highly developed societies, but since they didn't look like the European model, they had no government. And then they also needed Christianity which often brought death and destruction. When they didn't make good slaves, Europeans started importing Africans. Here we have a country that was built largely on genocide, land theft, and slavery. I am so pleased that Biden chose a Native American to lead Interior. A nice change from the exploiters and believers in the Second Coming. Also I do see instances where land is being returned to Native Americans and they are included as stakeholders in decisions....at least some of the time.
Interior Department secretary Deb Haaland is another reason why it is imperative that President Joe Biden be re-elected. He will use the next 4 years to solidify the healing turn around that is working.
The fact that European diseases came with European invaders and killed 90% of the indigenous population so that Europeans saw only a remnant of the highly developed societies that had been, reinforced the european prejudice that the indigenous people were sub human.
The Iroquois lost so many people that they started warring with other nations to gain more population. The Spanish found obviously sophisticated civilizations, but were overwhelmed by their greed for gold and silver. As for North America, while many died, I doubt very much that Europeans were looking very hard. They had to somehow justify their rapaciousness. All they could see was land, fur, and always they were looking for gold. And then the Native Americans were not Christians, so let's bring some missionaries.
Have you read "The Years of Rice and Salt," by Kim Stanley Robinson? It has a similar theme of an alternate world history. The Native Americans fared much better in it.
Read The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow. One of the things they cover in some depth is what they call "the indigenous critique." When Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere looking for slaves and gold and a route to China, there was a large, well-developed indigenous society all over the North American continent. Europe immediately sent over Jesuits to convert the natives, but what actually happened was much more interesting.
European culture was very top-down. Every nation had a king and a hierarchy, and valued obedience.
American culture was very horizontal and valued individual liberty.
One of the consequences of this differences was that Americans were horrifically good debaters, because there was essentially no way to get an American to do anything without arguing him/her into wanting to do it. In most cases, the Americans concluded that the Jesuits were insane, and absolutely had to be lying about conditions in Europe. So some of the Americans went to Europe, and were the "toast of the town" everywhere they went. They debated with the intelligentsia in Europe. The Europeans didn't do well in their arguments, and the Americans returned with the conviction that the Europeans were, indeed, insane. At the same time, the earlier Jesuit diaries, in which the priests had recorded the nature of American society as well as the indigenous critique, became what we would call "best sellers" throughout the European intelligentsia.
What's particularly interesting is the "coincidence" that this rise of American ideas in Europe, which started in the 1600's and spread into the early 1700's, just happened to precede two major upheavals, one being the French Revolution, which essentially destroyed the "regime ancien" of King, Church, and Country, while in the American Colonies, there was this complete revolt against the British system, and US British "democracy" was born. All of the authoritarian regimes of Europe were badly shaken, and every one of them has been transformed.
Graeber and Argument suggest that American Native intellectual influence on Europe was much stronger than in the other direction. All the Europeans managed to do to the Americans was kill them, and it took a whole lot of fighting dirty, like using smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction. The Native Americans effectively wiped out the regime ancien, and created the EU.
What if we could find the cause and a remedy for the mental disease that makes men think it's a good thing to invade and plunder? Who the F do they think they are? Calling them Pigs is an affront to the animal!
I agree with this point, Stephen, the Abrahamic religions are part of the problem, claiming that Man has dominion over all. I now feel a sense of guilt at what we have done and are doing to our fellow creatures who inhabit this planet. It appears that in this regard we are clueless, just as the MAGA folks are clueless about Trump's danger to democracy and how the oligarchs use disinformation to manipulate their voting against their own best interests. These are not, on the whole, happy times.
IтАЩm thinking as this day opens of what is deeply sacred to all living things: air, earth, light, water.
Turtles, dolphins, eagles, lady bugs etcтАж.we must protect them.
The earth is sacred in all its diversity as you both implied.
Also, HCRтАЩs detailed rundown of how today came to be is a beautiful synopsis. Nixon of all people surprised me тАж.. I must have been sleep walking through much of this rundown! Shame on me. Now IтАЩm happily among The Woke thanks to Heather and her highly intelligent followers.
Nixon's positive work on the environment surprised me too and, like you, some shame at how hard it is for me to credit Nixon with anything good. I hope I'm not so binary on current events. Oh wait. I am! Lol. Yet another area of improvement to add my already long list.
But as a farm girl, I'm not so
quick to dismiss the mystical when it comes to our natural world.
You are so right! I share the sense of guilt almost daily of what we have done to our planet and life on it. If we could collectively turn that guilt into action, "What a wonderful life that would be!"
Lynne, having grown up in Texas where we shot and killed every creature with reckless abandon, it took me a while to realize how wrong we were to take other lives so wantonly. In many cases we can't even treat each other humanely, to say nothing about other creatures. We have racism and misogyny here, Putin invading Ukraine and killing innocent men, women and children. I fear for posterity if somewhere, somehow soon we don't start exercising our critical thinking faculties and put the lie to the climate deniers, the racists, the misogynists, etc.
I couldn't agree more. My husband I lived in Dallas for 12 years and I understand the cultural heritage you grew up with. There are many awakenings that can push us forward to awareness. Perhaps my first was seeing the aftermath of war in Stuttgart, Germany, when I was 4-6 years old: total destruction, men as amputees looking for food, families trying to find mother, father, sister, brother, and the economy in shambles. The situation in Ukraine and Gaza...and before that Syria (where I also have lived), wound deeply. Man's inhumanity to man is astounding...and our arrogance at destroying the environment and pushing species to extension...killing, killing, killing, is so obviously wrong. It does, however, feel like the younger generation is more sensitized to it all and that awareness is growing. That is the hope.
Richard, perhaps I am giving the oligarchs and Republicans too much credit, but they have created a society so overwhelmed with stress overload that prefrontal cortex-based critical thinking is secondary to amygdala-based fear and anger. It certainly works in their favor. ItтАЩs not that schools donтАЩt teach critical thinking (though they donтАЩt and never really did), itтАЩs that people struggling to survive are less able to think critically. Thus the oligarchs and their lapdogs are free to do whatever the hell brings them the most power and wealth.
Ah, it's good to have a handy scapegoat, but "Abrahamic religions" isn't going to work. It is human beings that develop religions for their own needs and human beings that twist the teachings of those religions for their own changing purposes. Dominion is an English word that has been used to translate ancient concepts that were originally closer to the word husband as in "animal husbandry". Scriptures that were handed down for centuries as oral stories of a nomadic/ pastoral population before being written down in languages that are no longer in common use, and then translated from translations into English are not the problem. The problem is human beings in a completely different form of society trying to use those scriptures to rationalize their own desires.
Mary Ellen, you write regarding the influence or non-influence of Abrahamic religions: "The problem is human beings in a completely different form of society trying to use those scriptures to rationalize their own desires." That's not to say that the scriptures didn't help to shape certain attitudes. I was brought up early on as a Presbyterian and the notion that God gave Man dominion over all the plants and animals was definitely a concept that I learned in Sunday School. Of course, when I grew to manhood I left behind my childish thinking.
Well, my point is that what people say the scriptures say is fungible. My opinion is that the change from an agrarian society to an industrial society is the cause of a new interpretation of scriptures that were handed down and eventually written for/by an agrarian society. English versions of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are, like the Aramaic and Hebrew and Latin versions translations of translations and all translations include the opinions of the translators.
Those scriptures continue to be translated and today we have Earth Day complete with theology that supports it from most US denominations including the one you grew up in.
Your Sunday School teachings as you remember them are probably not a very fair representation of the teachings of the Presbyterian Church today. The Presbyterian Church today is teaching that "we are called to stewardship of the earth".
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was an inflection point in more than one area.
That is an interesting tidbit, that TFG never had a dog. Could it be that they couldn't find a dog that would love TFG? Is that possible, given that dogs are pure love? I admire dogs for their very clever scheme to get humans to take care of their every need: housing, food, medical, etc. The scheme was simple: shower the humans with love and they'll do for you whatever you want. Brilliant. Genius. Why didn't we think of that?
I actually jumped to the conclusion of no pets - but just cannot imagine it. Then there are those great pictures of his "boys" with their guns & dead animals. I think most people who do care about animals have empathy towards them. And Empathy & Trumps just do not mesh!!
Amen, brother!! You took the words right out of my mouth!! "God gave man dominion over the earth"!! Which we greedily interpreted to mean, "Take what you want; despoil, decimate, destroy."
For centuries there was always a new frontier to conquer, so we left our trashed homelands to go in search of new lands to despoil, new people to enslave or destroy. Pogo was right: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
You hit it on the head and opened the core problem. However, we can change, through awareness or be forced to one way or another...hopefully before it's too late.
Stephen, I was just thinking about this as i started to read the comments. I recently read Genesis KJV as I was about to read a book about it. I did squirm at the verses about dominion over all the earth. I also recently read Braiding Sweetgrass by a biologist who also a member of a Native American nation. She reminded readers of indigenous wisdom and what we need to do. Yes, I thought, but the forces standing in the way of this have lots more power and money. And Wyoming is calling efforts "colonialism" which is just too rich. I live in Oregon and I am always amazed at how much destruction the US and white settlers managed to do in a relatively short time. We have real water problems with pollution in eastern Oregon and too many water rights. Also although I have known a few people who have made real efforts to do the right thing, most of us just forget that when we want to travel a long distance or do something else that doesn't help. Right now I am seeing pictures of a coast to coast trip and back again in a big RV taken by friends who incidentally pride themselves on their progressive Christianity. Our next door neighbor has lots to say about climate change, but also has a large RV. He does have solar panels on the roof for some things, but then there is the gas mileage. I confess too that we have not be free of doing things like this, but have never owned a RV. On overseas trips, I noted an article this week that Amsterdam wants to limit the number of tourists that come. The only good thing about COVID is that with things shut down, things got better in terms of traffic and pollution.
Hmmm...Since I live in an RV, and have since 2014, I would like a chance to defend living in a house that has wheels.
Yes, our truck burns more diesel when we are traveling, but we also have a pretty small "footprint" on the land. We go south for the winter and spend our summers volunteering for Oregon State Parks. We live in less than 400 square feet quite comfortably. We are not acquiring "things", we are acquiring memories.
I would say there are exceptions to the people who drag around their very large RVs and get very little mileage. I commend you for having a small footprint and acquiring memories instead of things. I could even go for more people in small spaces on wheels if they were all like you. Personally, I would go crazy living with anyone in that small a space, but I could probably manage a smaller house. We have almost a half acre and we have gardened it as organically as possible for many, many years. We inherited our dining room furniture. We grow some of our own food, we support local farmers and ranchers who do it right without loads of chemicals. We try to support local businesses and restaurants. I confess to a lot of travel at one time on airplanes. We do drive a Prius Prime and rarely drive outside the city and we have solar panels on our roof.
Yes, Stephen, big business is a big part of the problem. In the 12 western states Heather mentions, particularly Wyoming, the relevant big businesses are the fossil fuel industry and cattle grazing. There it is easy to manipulate public values when so many are employed in those industries. We need ways to support different employment opportunities in those states.
One of the biggest differences between the east and west sides of the Rocky Mountains is the percentage of land that is owned by the federal government. In the 12 western states together, the Federal Government owns at least 50% of the land. Wyoming is a little over 48% federally owned. Nevada is 80% federally owned and Oregon is about 53% federally owned. This means that one of the bigger employers in those states is the Federal Government. Secretary Haaland's reintroduction of preservation as part of multiple use may be a source of those different employment opportunities.
Big business certainly created and promoted тАЬMoney is the sole purpose of human existenceтАЭ by freezing wages, cutting benefits, busting unions, and destroying the social safety net. For people working several part-time jobs just to survive, big business has successfully forced them to prioritize jobs over nature, clean air and water, and environmental protections.
I think you'll find that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring changed theology as well as other forms of thought about the relationship between human beings and the earth. On Sunday most "mainline churches" heard a sermon about stewardship rather than the 1950s version of dominion.
Rolyac & Richard, while it may not take a scientific education to recognize the doom to which we are heading, it does take recognizing the psychology leading such a loarge proportion of oue population to fight the changes we must make if we are to slow and eventually reverse the terrible effects of our industrial activities here on earth. It will not be just those who became rich and powerful through their exploitation of earth's resources but all the masses of people who are employed and make their livings from the products of these rich, powerful and persuasive leaders who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the changes in our behavior which are so essential to the planet's survival as we know it, a planet whose very weather patterns are daily becoming less recognizable to us.
John, many have been fighting tooth and nail against regulations all along - that is nothing new. Having spent my career working to protect the climate, I have seen many examples, even of good smart people, not willing to make changes in order to protect and preserve for future generations. (Read Naomi OreskesтАЩ тАШMerchants of DoubtтАЩ, which covers the historical efforts of oil companies to reframe the known effects of carbon emissions on the atmosphere. Oil companies are still lying about how dangerous it is and worse yet, making all out efforts to increase oil production. )
The work to protect this small blue orb and its inhabitants remains the same. Help elect sane candidates, support sane federal, state and local policies, help get out the vote, and reduce our own use of precious resources. And we will protect this precious democracy at the same time.
Time for my morning dog walk in the restored prairie across the street. Trumpeter Swans, all manner of duck and song birds, hawks, eagles, deer and the occasional coyote sightings make everything better. Soon, the wildflowers will be blooming too!
Sheila B THANK you for your persistent efforts on behalf of our beleaguered planet! And may your morning walk serve to renew your firm attachment to and residence on our shared earth! Swans, ducks, song birds, hawks, eagles, even deer and especially the occasional coyote remain our best reasons and reinforcers of the crucial importance of what you do.
The wildflowers will be the frosting on that cake!
After-the-fact , too late for many, lives lost buried by infamous cover-upmanship- their lengthy lethal omissions for callous greed as plastic enters our blood stream the harbinger of tossed principles by practiced pollution.
Recycling here is dumping over the hillside in obscured тАШhollersтАЩ, thrown or flicked out a vehicle window, burned in caustic pits yet deny the downwind responsibility, too poor in mental awareness to care or is thatтАжbother?
The ripple affect has now become a tsunami , eradicating species , raising denials from even our own тАШrepresentativesтАЩтАжas the Erin Brockovich tare and tears fall to costs deferred by profit margins or lobby tactics.
The <<sighs>> are from Mother NatureтАЩs tally тАжand she will win.
You make an excellent point about people who make their living from companies who exploit earth's resources. Have you seen the "I am an energy voter" ads? They are well produced ads sponsored by Koch Industries, as in Charles Koch. The smiling people seen in the ads are Koch employees, going about their daily work. These people are doing their jobs, paying their bills, putting food on their table, etc. exploiting resources for Charles Koch's companies. They don't recognize themselves as contributing to the damage of the planet. Earth's resources, no matter what resources they are, are finite. They might look infinite at first glance, but they WILL run out. Many animals have been driven to extinction or almost to extinction because they were useful to humans in some way, example- whale oil.
Kochland is a frightening book of the two faced Koch industries.....How they employ a 110% rule for "compliance" while working to change the regulations so they can do as they wish.
Your insight into the need to attend to the psychology of change is right on. Yet, as my seventh grade gym teacher used to say, тАЬItтАЩs a dumb bird who shits in his own nest.тАЭ It doesnтАЩt really take much more sophistication than that to see the need to join the environmental movement. What does that say about all those resisting sustainability?
And perhaps a different perspective is that itтАЩs a dumb bird to produce too many egg hatches for the nest to hold. Because we are such a fractured populace, environmental issues will only be met half way if at all. Economics rules and our industries own Congress unique in the world, with so much influence. Continued population expansion will continue to cut short environmental goals. We are but one step away from electing a person who will turn every progressive clock back to the 19th century.
I remember attending the first Earth Day at the State Capital of CT. ItтАЩs amazing that the fully corrupted Nixon who prolonged the Vietnam war through obstruction of the Paris Peace Talks could be the person who created the EPA. The loss of additional life plus destruction of nature in Vietnam verses EPA. I canтАЩt reconcile this. I am unable to get pass this mental road block.
We now have a candidate whose only mission is winning for his own glory and selfish desires to accumulate more wealth. But arenтАЩt most like this? This populist character is in the extreme as demented as can be. he speaks to a disquieted populace. Now our gas stoves are bad for the environment. Biden must choose battles and not make everything a choice. I want my gas stove. So TFG makes gas stoves an issue. My God. What next. Back to pollution, while itтАЩs very necessary to regulate (sure another bad lexicon for our populist candidate) we have long forgotten one aspect to natural balance: population expansion and it will never end because man is essentially a greedy species. We want it all. We want the now polluted oceans of polluted fish filled with micro plastics. We want expanded economic development and economists always tell us that an expanded population assures economic development. Man is in constant pursuit of his tail. And the tale is not a wonderful story to tell.
Nixon also tried to do something that would have made a big difference today. Nixon established a commission on population, as he understood that environmental harm is proportional to the numbers of people in a population, and the average consumption per person. There were slightly more than 200,000,000 Americans at the time of the first Earth Day, and now there are 336,000,000--an increase of well more than 50 percent.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church let Nixon know in no uncertain terms that if he persisted in this vein the Church would ensure that he would not be re-elected.
And equally unfortunately, the US began opening the floodgates to mass immigration, which was the source of 40 million from 1990-2020, and which has added close to 10 million in just the four years of the Biden Administration.
Don't get me wrong--despite the fact tht Biden has not been good on immigration, I think he is the best president of my lifetime, which began the first summer of the Eisenhower Administration, but the Census Bureau projects our population will grow ~20 million per decade over the next four decades. Among much else, on average people who move to the US produce three times as much greenhouse gas as they did in their home countries. The US has the highest per capita consumption of the major industrialized nations--we're the worst place on the planet to put more people.
Thanks to our exploding population, insects, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have been in steep declines over the last 50 years. Overpopulation is killing nature.
While I think it is possible to rub one too many crystals, we are all earthlings (I hope),and as such part of a system. A very large and complicated system.
I remember being in Mt Rainier hiking from Ipsut creek in the early 60's . Around '63 or so. My dad and I were looking at the Carbon glacier. He said "when I was your age that glacier was down here, and when you're my age it'll be out of sight around a corner that corner in the canyon." It is.
The ice caves in the Paradise glacier have been gone for some time now, and as kid they were huge and went very far into the ice. Beautiful.
When I see my life in respect to glacial time it's a trip.
A great tour guide for my trip of being interconnected in geological time is Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. In her book, she has a chapter on metabolic literacy. She says, "To experience the world and ourselves in it as metabolism gives us one way of recalibrating our existence--away from separability and toward entanglement". Since her book appeared in 2021, people around the globe have been gathering and using its content as a prompt for practicing this awareness. The book: "Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism."
"We have this big solar resource, we should use it." - Jimmy Carter, 1977
" A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.""
- Jimmy Carter, 1979 at dedication of the installation of solar panels on the White House
"The Department of Energy has a multibillion-dollar budget, in excess of $10 billion . . . It hasn't produced a quart of oil or a lump of coal or anything else in the line of energy."
- Ronald Reagan,
"By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologiesтАФrecommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers. . . In 1986 the Reagan administration quietly dismantled the White House solar panel installation."
"I will end his war on American energy . . . Drill Baby Drill."
- Donald Trump
"A key plank of our Build Back Better Recovery Plan is building a modern, resilient climate infrastructure, and clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying union jobs тАФ not 7, 8, 10, 12 dollars an hour, but prevailing wage and benefits. If executed strategically, our response to climate change can create more than 10 million well-paying jobs in the United StatesтАЭ - Joe Biden
"The Biden AdministrationтАЩs climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. . . The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is our 180-day Transition Playbook and includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency. Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful. "
- Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 a plan for the next Trump administration
"The prized target for TrumpтАЩs Republican allies, should the former president defeat Joe Biden in NovemberтАЩs election, will be the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark $370 billion bill laden with support for clean energy projects and electric vehicles. . . the legislation
was signed by Biden in 2022 with no Republican votes."
"Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch."
"Since 2021, Leonard LeoтАЩs network has funneled over $50.7 million to the groups advising Project 2025, including donations from key Leo-linked groups such as The 85 Fund, the Concord Fund, and DonorsTrust."
Over 40% of funding for Project 2025 comes from groups affiliated with and funded through Koch bagman Leonard Leo. (Yet HCR has never mentioned Leo.)
When I was a kid, there was a TV commercial for a brand of margarine. It featured a woman dressed in a flowing gown, in a forest setting, surrounded by тАШcrittersтАЩ. She was given some of the margarine to taste, and announced it was тАШmy sweet, creamery butterтАЩ, when she was corrected that it was this brand of margarine.
She raised her hand and brought down thunder and lightning, and shouted, тАЬItтАЩs not NICE to fool Mother Nature!!
Lin, you have provided us an excellent "highlights" summary of the climate policy battle yet I think it will be enormously important for us to focus major efforts on the persuasion of our neighbors and family and friends and co-workers of the urgent and essential conversion to a whole-earth way of thinking, and more important a whole-earth way of working and buying or more often not-buying what the Leonard Leo's and Charles Koch's are selling. Those of us who can, MUST make our buying decisions based on whole-earth consideration so that the prattlings of the fossil fuel magnates fall on deaf ears. Think of NOT "cashing in" on all the CO2-emitting vehicles which fill the pages of "bargains" in the auto-dealers' endless promotional material. As convenient as it has become we must stop relying on deals-delivered-directly-to-our-doors via the Amazons of the world, a dramatically more fuel-wasteful, street-clogging way of shopping than going to the stores which sell them... SO MUCH TO DO!
L Leo is refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the Senate judiciary committee looking into right wing dark money that may be influencing the Supreme Court. I hope this story is going to take off like wildfire and an investigation begins!!!
The DC AG is investigating Leo regarding his not for profit and for profit organization. Leo refuses to cooperate and has instigated a campaign against the DC AG - being carried out by Leo's cronies in high places, including James Comer and Jim Jordan.
(Listen - Leo is a guy who got local police to arrest a neighbor kid for yelling at him from a passing car. And when police leadership refused to arrest a senior citizen for chalking 'google Leonard Leo', Leo got a town official to divert staff to follow her around washing away the chalk.)
Re: DC AG investigation
"The report highlights the circular payment scheme between LeoтАЩs nonprofit and for-profit organizations, which sparked the DC Attorney GeneralтАЩs investigation into LeoтАЩs activities and his cozy financial ties to Supreme Court justices. LeoтАЩs central role in the corruption crisis at the high court spurred Senate Judiciary subpoenas of Supreme Court тАЬbillionaire matchmakerтАЭ Leo and billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow. "
What happens when an AG dares to investigate Leonard LeoтАЩs network. Brian SchwalbтАЩs probe followed a complaint that nonprofit groups associated with the judicial activist violated their tax status.
Representatives James Comer and Jim Jordan recently launched an investigation into AG SchwalbтАЩs reported investigation, accusing him of having political motivations, and citing concerns about donor privacy. CREW sent a letter to Comer and Jordan urging them not to interfere in the investigation, and laying out the precedent for investigators not cooperating with such congressional efforts. As the letter says, тАЬCongressional interference in an ongoing investigation is not legitimate oversight; it is itself a weaponization of CongressтАЩs oversight power that threatens to undermine our justice system and the American peopleтАЩs faith in it.тАЭ
Lin, thank you for your detailed update! I appreciate that you are following and reporting on the L Leo evil doings. I will read the articles you referenced!
Yes, she has mentioned Leo (article about Clarence's abuses, April 6, 2023): "Crow has worked hard to move the judiciary and the legal system to the right, and at one of the properties where Thomas vacations, there is a painting of him in conversation with a number of figures, including Leonard Leo, the leader of the Federalist Society who has orchestrated the courtтАЩs hard-right turn. Leo is now overseeing Marble Freedom Trust, established to disburse funds from a $1.6 billion bequest to manipulate elections in favor of Republicans."
Richard, you are so right. And mine are also not mystic mutterings, but we are all connected to the past and to the future as much as to each other: we are all carbon-based life forms. We recycle carbon constantly by the mere act of breathing. Every inspiring breath contains atoms that were once metabolically part of a living thing, and every exhalation will again be part of something. If that were the only carbon we recycle we'd have no worries about human-induced climate change. Our actions today very much touch the future, and I feel guilt about that.
Thank you, Richard. Today, Earth Day, is my only observed religious holiday. The Earth, the vast greatness of the out-of-doors, is my cathedral. Enjoy the day, everyone!
So right, Richard. It'll be sometime before we've managed to make civilization self-sustainable in terms of our interaction with the larger world, but going in that direction is purely in our self-interest.
The Earth and some of its life will survive. We may not, if we can't overcome our greed. We can't do that without inclusion and kindness.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. ~ Thomas Paine
Whether we see the beauty or not, the whole of nature, the whole of existence, is interconnected. Each of us lives in relation to every other. This is not mystic mutterings, but the actuality if we look. And this is a sound basis for a politics of inclusion and hope. thank you
You are right Richard. It doesn't require mystic visions, a fancy education, scientific acumen, religious beliefs, or political leanings to recognize that it is humanity that will destroy or save our world. It just requires an open mind and humility to recognize that the fate of our one and only planet earth is in our hands.
In fact it requires the casting aside of the elements of the Abrahamic religions that posit humanity's separation from and lordship over nature. In that sense many of the so-called primitive religions have it right and should be learned from rather than exterminated. We also need to recognize how big business has manipulated public values to prioritize monetary gain as the sole purpose of human existence. And they do so with the active partnership of many religious leaders.
Stephen, excellent observations.
The two points you mention are the basis of trillions of bad decisions and horrific mistakes by the dominant people of the planet.
If I were a novelist or script writer, I would pen a story about European "explorers" of the New World who met indigenous people and saw them differently. What if the Europeans had been impressed rather than frightened by Native Americans? What if the earliest invaders were to have embraced the ancient wisdoms they encountered? What if they had decided to learn rather than plunder? What if they had discovered that the real treasure in the Western Hemisphere was the highly developed cultures that had evolved over thousands of years?
What if we hadn't started our lives in this chunk of the planet as greedy, ignorant and arrogant. What if we had become students?
One of the most wonderful and symbolic acts by President Biden was the nomination of Deb Haaland for Interior Secretary. Another reason to vote Blue - from the top of the ticket to the bottom.
I love the creativity and dream you envisioned! The path not taken, but maybe we can hope for a path re-discovered.
Good thoughts to ponder, Bill. "What if" indeed. What if we'd learned instead of taught? What if we'd listened instead of shouted. What if we'd talked instead of fought?
Ally, yes, what if. We have a set of orders issued to one of my husband's relatives here in Oregon during a war against Native Americans in southern Oregon. The commanding officer ordered his men to pursue them by any means, including eating horses and Native Americans if necessary. if they didn't, they would be mentioned unfavorably. I used this set of orders in my writing class as an original document for students to analyze and they had their eyes opened.
The Modoc Wars. An awful time in our history.
WOW.
The little local museums invented and operated by local lovers of history are often treasures. The Bandon Historical Society Museum is where I learned of the massacre of local people by gold miners in the 1850s.
ThatтАЩs a real eye-opener order!
Our first ecologist, Henry David Thoreau, wrote some of these thoughts 170 years ago. Unfortunately, instead of protecting the interconnectedness of all life, the Gold Rush preoccupied the 19th century American mind set and continues into the 21st.
May I mention human greed, human aggression, human arrogance as among but not only our innate natures. We are a vicious, domineering species. We have over populated the earth, we are over consuming it's resources, we are killing it's creatures. Indigenous people everywhere and throughout history have succumbed to the numbers and technology of outside invaders. But Gaia will get even as we run out of fresh water, run out of wild fish (have you bought fish lately), experience the increasingly weather extremes of rain, drought, heat, and wind. Have you noticed that popular music is increasingly angry, our current artists increasingly incomprehensible? Artists are more sensitive to our current situation. Well maybe benign robots and A.I. devices will replace us.
George, yes Gaia will have her say and she is already quite loud. But so many ascribe what happens to God (not the same here as Gaia) and give thanks they survived and then go on to do the same foolish things. My sister's family is doing their best to help with overpopulation as I now have at least a dozen great greats. I had a long conversation via messenger last night with my nephew's wife. They have money woes of course and are caught in red tape when trying to get help. They have a house which counts as part of their income even though it is not ready money. They are too busy trying to survive to understand what we are up against.
George, human flaws are many. I wish, at the Garden of Eden, God would have noticed that his two prototypes were not very good. He could have started over. Later, God was so disgusted he flooded the earth to get rid of the bad actors. The problem with Noah and his family is that they had the original lousy operating system. The only solution is to change the OS. We now have a tool for modifying DNA called CRISP-R. We ought to use it.
Patrick, the problem is that genetics and behaviour are not well connected. Religion does not seem to work well either. An education system that stresses decency might help.
People may have been frightened by Native Americans at times and some died as the result of encounters with indigenous peoples, but Europeans often viewed them as part of the fauna to be eliminated, that the continent was basically empty, and that it could be used as a giant workhouse to send problem people to. And then of course, like every other part of the world outside of Europe, it was full of goods to be plundered and exploited. Indigenous people had highly developed societies, but since they didn't look like the European model, they had no government. And then they also needed Christianity which often brought death and destruction. When they didn't make good slaves, Europeans started importing Africans. Here we have a country that was built largely on genocide, land theft, and slavery. I am so pleased that Biden chose a Native American to lead Interior. A nice change from the exploiters and believers in the Second Coming. Also I do see instances where land is being returned to Native Americans and they are included as stakeholders in decisions....at least some of the time.
Interior Department secretary Deb Haaland is another reason why it is imperative that President Joe Biden be re-elected. He will use the next 4 years to solidify the healing turn around that is working.
The fact that European diseases came with European invaders and killed 90% of the indigenous population so that Europeans saw only a remnant of the highly developed societies that had been, reinforced the european prejudice that the indigenous people were sub human.
The Iroquois lost so many people that they started warring with other nations to gain more population. The Spanish found obviously sophisticated civilizations, but were overwhelmed by their greed for gold and silver. As for North America, while many died, I doubt very much that Europeans were looking very hard. They had to somehow justify their rapaciousness. All they could see was land, fur, and always they were looking for gold. And then the Native Americans were not Christians, so let's bring some missionaries.
Have you read "The Years of Rice and Salt," by Kim Stanley Robinson? It has a similar theme of an alternate world history. The Native Americans fared much better in it.
Sara, thanks for the book recommendation. Noted.
Read The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow. One of the things they cover in some depth is what they call "the indigenous critique." When Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere looking for slaves and gold and a route to China, there was a large, well-developed indigenous society all over the North American continent. Europe immediately sent over Jesuits to convert the natives, but what actually happened was much more interesting.
European culture was very top-down. Every nation had a king and a hierarchy, and valued obedience.
American culture was very horizontal and valued individual liberty.
One of the consequences of this differences was that Americans were horrifically good debaters, because there was essentially no way to get an American to do anything without arguing him/her into wanting to do it. In most cases, the Americans concluded that the Jesuits were insane, and absolutely had to be lying about conditions in Europe. So some of the Americans went to Europe, and were the "toast of the town" everywhere they went. They debated with the intelligentsia in Europe. The Europeans didn't do well in their arguments, and the Americans returned with the conviction that the Europeans were, indeed, insane. At the same time, the earlier Jesuit diaries, in which the priests had recorded the nature of American society as well as the indigenous critique, became what we would call "best sellers" throughout the European intelligentsia.
What's particularly interesting is the "coincidence" that this rise of American ideas in Europe, which started in the 1600's and spread into the early 1700's, just happened to precede two major upheavals, one being the French Revolution, which essentially destroyed the "regime ancien" of King, Church, and Country, while in the American Colonies, there was this complete revolt against the British system, and US British "democracy" was born. All of the authoritarian regimes of Europe were badly shaken, and every one of them has been transformed.
Graeber and Argument suggest that American Native intellectual influence on Europe was much stronger than in the other direction. All the Europeans managed to do to the Americans was kill them, and it took a whole lot of fighting dirty, like using smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction. The Native Americans effectively wiped out the regime ancien, and created the EU.
What if we could find the cause and a remedy for the mental disease that makes men think it's a good thing to invade and plunder? Who the F do they think they are? Calling them Pigs is an affront to the animal!
I hope you become a writer. That book would find a loving home with me!
I agree with this point, Stephen, the Abrahamic religions are part of the problem, claiming that Man has dominion over all. I now feel a sense of guilt at what we have done and are doing to our fellow creatures who inhabit this planet. It appears that in this regard we are clueless, just as the MAGA folks are clueless about Trump's danger to democracy and how the oligarchs use disinformation to manipulate their voting against their own best interests. These are not, on the whole, happy times.
Yes Stephen and Richard,
God in our image is a grandiose fantasy.
IтАЩm thinking as this day opens of what is deeply sacred to all living things: air, earth, light, water.
Turtles, dolphins, eagles, lady bugs etcтАж.we must protect them.
The earth is sacred in all its diversity as you both implied.
Also, HCRтАЩs detailed rundown of how today came to be is a beautiful synopsis. Nixon of all people surprised me тАж.. I must have been sleep walking through much of this rundown! Shame on me. Now IтАЩm happily among The Woke thanks to Heather and her highly intelligent followers.
Wow, Samm, your phrase "God in our image" is startlingly accurate. ЁЯОпЁЯФе
Nixon's positive work on the environment surprised me too and, like you, some shame at how hard it is for me to credit Nixon with anything good. I hope I'm not so binary on current events. Oh wait. I am! Lol. Yet another area of improvement to add my already long list.
But as a farm girl, I'm not so
quick to dismiss the mystical when it comes to our natural world.
More proof to how mired in the cesspool of waste Sleepy DON has taken the former GOP.
You are so right! I share the sense of guilt almost daily of what we have done to our planet and life on it. If we could collectively turn that guilt into action, "What a wonderful life that would be!"
Lynne, having grown up in Texas where we shot and killed every creature with reckless abandon, it took me a while to realize how wrong we were to take other lives so wantonly. In many cases we can't even treat each other humanely, to say nothing about other creatures. We have racism and misogyny here, Putin invading Ukraine and killing innocent men, women and children. I fear for posterity if somewhere, somehow soon we don't start exercising our critical thinking faculties and put the lie to the climate deniers, the racists, the misogynists, etc.
I couldn't agree more. My husband I lived in Dallas for 12 years and I understand the cultural heritage you grew up with. There are many awakenings that can push us forward to awareness. Perhaps my first was seeing the aftermath of war in Stuttgart, Germany, when I was 4-6 years old: total destruction, men as amputees looking for food, families trying to find mother, father, sister, brother, and the economy in shambles. The situation in Ukraine and Gaza...and before that Syria (where I also have lived), wound deeply. Man's inhumanity to man is astounding...and our arrogance at destroying the environment and pushing species to extension...killing, killing, killing, is so obviously wrong. It does, however, feel like the younger generation is more sensitized to it all and that awareness is growing. That is the hope.
Richard, perhaps I am giving the oligarchs and Republicans too much credit, but they have created a society so overwhelmed with stress overload that prefrontal cortex-based critical thinking is secondary to amygdala-based fear and anger. It certainly works in their favor. ItтАЩs not that schools donтАЩt teach critical thinking (though they donтАЩt and never really did), itтАЩs that people struggling to survive are less able to think critically. Thus the oligarchs and their lapdogs are free to do whatever the hell brings them the most power and wealth.
Ah, it's good to have a handy scapegoat, but "Abrahamic religions" isn't going to work. It is human beings that develop religions for their own needs and human beings that twist the teachings of those religions for their own changing purposes. Dominion is an English word that has been used to translate ancient concepts that were originally closer to the word husband as in "animal husbandry". Scriptures that were handed down for centuries as oral stories of a nomadic/ pastoral population before being written down in languages that are no longer in common use, and then translated from translations into English are not the problem. The problem is human beings in a completely different form of society trying to use those scriptures to rationalize their own desires.
Mary Ellen, you write regarding the influence or non-influence of Abrahamic religions: "The problem is human beings in a completely different form of society trying to use those scriptures to rationalize their own desires." That's not to say that the scriptures didn't help to shape certain attitudes. I was brought up early on as a Presbyterian and the notion that God gave Man dominion over all the plants and animals was definitely a concept that I learned in Sunday School. Of course, when I grew to manhood I left behind my childish thinking.
Well, my point is that what people say the scriptures say is fungible. My opinion is that the change from an agrarian society to an industrial society is the cause of a new interpretation of scriptures that were handed down and eventually written for/by an agrarian society. English versions of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are, like the Aramaic and Hebrew and Latin versions translations of translations and all translations include the opinions of the translators.
Those scriptures continue to be translated and today we have Earth Day complete with theology that supports it from most US denominations including the one you grew up in.
Your Sunday School teachings as you remember them are probably not a very fair representation of the teachings of the Presbyterian Church today. The Presbyterian Church today is teaching that "we are called to stewardship of the earth".
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was an inflection point in more than one area.
Ever notice the dumpster's "attitude" towards other species appears to be the same as towards anyone who he considers less important - or beneath him?
No concept of nature or wildlife or any other being than "himself". And honestly I think that includes his children - certainly his wives (plural).
No pets ever in that "family". Which really is a good thing - for the animals.
That is an interesting tidbit, that TFG never had a dog. Could it be that they couldn't find a dog that would love TFG? Is that possible, given that dogs are pure love? I admire dogs for their very clever scheme to get humans to take care of their every need: housing, food, medical, etc. The scheme was simple: shower the humans with love and they'll do for you whatever you want. Brilliant. Genius. Why didn't we think of that?
I actually jumped to the conclusion of no pets - but just cannot imagine it. Then there are those great pictures of his "boys" with their guns & dead animals. I think most people who do care about animals have empathy towards them. And Empathy & Trumps just do not mesh!!
Amen, brother!! You took the words right out of my mouth!! "God gave man dominion over the earth"!! Which we greedily interpreted to mean, "Take what you want; despoil, decimate, destroy."
For centuries there was always a new frontier to conquer, so we left our trashed homelands to go in search of new lands to despoil, new people to enslave or destroy. Pogo was right: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Well, there is another Christain take on this:
https://sjvkirkland.org/what-is-the-meaning-of-dominion/#:~:text=In%20the%20first%20of%20the,control%20over%20the%20entire%20earth.
You hit it on the head and opened the core problem. However, we can change, through awareness or be forced to one way or another...hopefully before it's too late.
Stephen, I was just thinking about this as i started to read the comments. I recently read Genesis KJV as I was about to read a book about it. I did squirm at the verses about dominion over all the earth. I also recently read Braiding Sweetgrass by a biologist who also a member of a Native American nation. She reminded readers of indigenous wisdom and what we need to do. Yes, I thought, but the forces standing in the way of this have lots more power and money. And Wyoming is calling efforts "colonialism" which is just too rich. I live in Oregon and I am always amazed at how much destruction the US and white settlers managed to do in a relatively short time. We have real water problems with pollution in eastern Oregon and too many water rights. Also although I have known a few people who have made real efforts to do the right thing, most of us just forget that when we want to travel a long distance or do something else that doesn't help. Right now I am seeing pictures of a coast to coast trip and back again in a big RV taken by friends who incidentally pride themselves on their progressive Christianity. Our next door neighbor has lots to say about climate change, but also has a large RV. He does have solar panels on the roof for some things, but then there is the gas mileage. I confess too that we have not be free of doing things like this, but have never owned a RV. On overseas trips, I noted an article this week that Amsterdam wants to limit the number of tourists that come. The only good thing about COVID is that with things shut down, things got better in terms of traffic and pollution.
When the indigenous nations made decisisons, they considered the effects 6 generations into the future.
Gosh, what a concept. Most people only think as far as maybe the next few days.
Hmmm...Since I live in an RV, and have since 2014, I would like a chance to defend living in a house that has wheels.
Yes, our truck burns more diesel when we are traveling, but we also have a pretty small "footprint" on the land. We go south for the winter and spend our summers volunteering for Oregon State Parks. We live in less than 400 square feet quite comfortably. We are not acquiring "things", we are acquiring memories.
I would say there are exceptions to the people who drag around their very large RVs and get very little mileage. I commend you for having a small footprint and acquiring memories instead of things. I could even go for more people in small spaces on wheels if they were all like you. Personally, I would go crazy living with anyone in that small a space, but I could probably manage a smaller house. We have almost a half acre and we have gardened it as organically as possible for many, many years. We inherited our dining room furniture. We grow some of our own food, we support local farmers and ranchers who do it right without loads of chemicals. We try to support local businesses and restaurants. I confess to a lot of travel at one time on airplanes. We do drive a Prius Prime and rarely drive outside the city and we have solar panels on our roof.
Yes, Stephen, big business is a big part of the problem. In the 12 western states Heather mentions, particularly Wyoming, the relevant big businesses are the fossil fuel industry and cattle grazing. There it is easy to manipulate public values when so many are employed in those industries. We need ways to support different employment opportunities in those states.
One of the biggest differences between the east and west sides of the Rocky Mountains is the percentage of land that is owned by the federal government. In the 12 western states together, the Federal Government owns at least 50% of the land. Wyoming is a little over 48% federally owned. Nevada is 80% federally owned and Oregon is about 53% federally owned. This means that one of the bigger employers in those states is the Federal Government. Secretary Haaland's reintroduction of preservation as part of multiple use may be a source of those different employment opportunities.
Big business certainly created and promoted тАЬMoney is the sole purpose of human existenceтАЭ by freezing wages, cutting benefits, busting unions, and destroying the social safety net. For people working several part-time jobs just to survive, big business has successfully forced them to prioritize jobs over nature, clean air and water, and environmental protections.
I think you'll find that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring changed theology as well as other forms of thought about the relationship between human beings and the earth. On Sunday most "mainline churches" heard a sermon about stewardship rather than the 1950s version of dominion.
So true, thank for posting my thoughts.
Excellent assessment, Stephen.
Rolyac & Richard, while it may not take a scientific education to recognize the doom to which we are heading, it does take recognizing the psychology leading such a loarge proportion of oue population to fight the changes we must make if we are to slow and eventually reverse the terrible effects of our industrial activities here on earth. It will not be just those who became rich and powerful through their exploitation of earth's resources but all the masses of people who are employed and make their livings from the products of these rich, powerful and persuasive leaders who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the changes in our behavior which are so essential to the planet's survival as we know it, a planet whose very weather patterns are daily becoming less recognizable to us.
John, many have been fighting tooth and nail against regulations all along - that is nothing new. Having spent my career working to protect the climate, I have seen many examples, even of good smart people, not willing to make changes in order to protect and preserve for future generations. (Read Naomi OreskesтАЩ тАШMerchants of DoubtтАЩ, which covers the historical efforts of oil companies to reframe the known effects of carbon emissions on the atmosphere. Oil companies are still lying about how dangerous it is and worse yet, making all out efforts to increase oil production. )
The work to protect this small blue orb and its inhabitants remains the same. Help elect sane candidates, support sane federal, state and local policies, help get out the vote, and reduce our own use of precious resources. And we will protect this precious democracy at the same time.
Time for my morning dog walk in the restored prairie across the street. Trumpeter Swans, all manner of duck and song birds, hawks, eagles, deer and the occasional coyote sightings make everything better. Soon, the wildflowers will be blooming too!
Then, back to being an activist.
Sheila B THANK you for your persistent efforts on behalf of our beleaguered planet! And may your morning walk serve to renew your firm attachment to and residence on our shared earth! Swans, ducks, song birds, hawks, eagles, even deer and especially the occasional coyote remain our best reasons and reinforcers of the crucial importance of what you do.
The wildflowers will be the frosting on that cake!
After-the-fact , too late for many, lives lost buried by infamous cover-upmanship- their lengthy lethal omissions for callous greed as plastic enters our blood stream the harbinger of tossed principles by practiced pollution.
Recycling here is dumping over the hillside in obscured тАШhollersтАЩ, thrown or flicked out a vehicle window, burned in caustic pits yet deny the downwind responsibility, too poor in mental awareness to care or is thatтАжbother?
The ripple affect has now become a tsunami , eradicating species , raising denials from even our own тАШrepresentativesтАЩтАжas the Erin Brockovich tare and tears fall to costs deferred by profit margins or lobby tactics.
The <<sighs>> are from Mother NatureтАЩs tally тАжand she will win.
ЁЯТЩЁЯТЩVOTEЁЯТЩЁЯТЩ
You make an excellent point about people who make their living from companies who exploit earth's resources. Have you seen the "I am an energy voter" ads? They are well produced ads sponsored by Koch Industries, as in Charles Koch. The smiling people seen in the ads are Koch employees, going about their daily work. These people are doing their jobs, paying their bills, putting food on their table, etc. exploiting resources for Charles Koch's companies. They don't recognize themselves as contributing to the damage of the planet. Earth's resources, no matter what resources they are, are finite. They might look infinite at first glance, but they WILL run out. Many animals have been driven to extinction or almost to extinction because they were useful to humans in some way, example- whale oil.
Kochland is a frightening book of the two faced Koch industries.....How they employ a 110% rule for "compliance" while working to change the regulations so they can do as they wish.
That should sit right beside Jane Mayers iconic "Dark Money."
Precisely on target Jenn SH! Great examples, shameful as they are!
And for a book about the Koch brothers, read Jane Mayer's DARK MONEY.
Your insight into the need to attend to the psychology of change is right on. Yet, as my seventh grade gym teacher used to say, тАЬItтАЩs a dumb bird who shits in his own nest.тАЭ It doesnтАЩt really take much more sophistication than that to see the need to join the environmental movement. What does that say about all those resisting sustainability?
And perhaps a different perspective is that itтАЩs a dumb bird to produce too many egg hatches for the nest to hold. Because we are such a fractured populace, environmental issues will only be met half way if at all. Economics rules and our industries own Congress unique in the world, with so much influence. Continued population expansion will continue to cut short environmental goals. We are but one step away from electing a person who will turn every progressive clock back to the 19th century.
I remember attending the first Earth Day at the State Capital of CT. ItтАЩs amazing that the fully corrupted Nixon who prolonged the Vietnam war through obstruction of the Paris Peace Talks could be the person who created the EPA. The loss of additional life plus destruction of nature in Vietnam verses EPA. I canтАЩt reconcile this. I am unable to get pass this mental road block.
We now have a candidate whose only mission is winning for his own glory and selfish desires to accumulate more wealth. But arenтАЩt most like this? This populist character is in the extreme as demented as can be. he speaks to a disquieted populace. Now our gas stoves are bad for the environment. Biden must choose battles and not make everything a choice. I want my gas stove. So TFG makes gas stoves an issue. My God. What next. Back to pollution, while itтАЩs very necessary to regulate (sure another bad lexicon for our populist candidate) we have long forgotten one aspect to natural balance: population expansion and it will never end because man is essentially a greedy species. We want it all. We want the now polluted oceans of polluted fish filled with micro plastics. We want expanded economic development and economists always tell us that an expanded population assures economic development. Man is in constant pursuit of his tail. And the tale is not a wonderful story to tell.
Ah, yes, the fate of the planet.
Nixon also tried to do something that would have made a big difference today. Nixon established a commission on population, as he understood that environmental harm is proportional to the numbers of people in a population, and the average consumption per person. There were slightly more than 200,000,000 Americans at the time of the first Earth Day, and now there are 336,000,000--an increase of well more than 50 percent.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church let Nixon know in no uncertain terms that if he persisted in this vein the Church would ensure that he would not be re-elected.
And equally unfortunately, the US began opening the floodgates to mass immigration, which was the source of 40 million from 1990-2020, and which has added close to 10 million in just the four years of the Biden Administration.
Don't get me wrong--despite the fact tht Biden has not been good on immigration, I think he is the best president of my lifetime, which began the first summer of the Eisenhower Administration, but the Census Bureau projects our population will grow ~20 million per decade over the next four decades. Among much else, on average people who move to the US produce three times as much greenhouse gas as they did in their home countries. The US has the highest per capita consumption of the major industrialized nations--we're the worst place on the planet to put more people.
Thanks to our exploding population, insects, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have been in steep declines over the last 50 years. Overpopulation is killing nature.
You are so right and I would love to give the Pope some advice. Birth control should have been part of environmental protection act.
While I think it is possible to rub one too many crystals, we are all earthlings (I hope),and as such part of a system. A very large and complicated system.
I remember being in Mt Rainier hiking from Ipsut creek in the early 60's . Around '63 or so. My dad and I were looking at the Carbon glacier. He said "when I was your age that glacier was down here, and when you're my age it'll be out of sight around a corner that corner in the canyon." It is.
The ice caves in the Paradise glacier have been gone for some time now, and as kid they were huge and went very far into the ice. Beautiful.
When I see my life in respect to glacial time it's a trip.
Yeah we're all connected.
A great tour guide for my trip of being interconnected in geological time is Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. In her book, she has a chapter on metabolic literacy. She says, "To experience the world and ourselves in it as metabolism gives us one way of recalibrating our existence--away from separability and toward entanglement". Since her book appeared in 2021, people around the globe have been gathering and using its content as a prompt for practicing this awareness. The book: "Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism."
Thank you for the reference. I'm adding it to my reading list.
Ditto.
Your Dad, a wise man
We are all aliens. Exceptive for, possibly, Native Americans. Only aliens would do what we do to this beautiful place we live.
"We have this big solar resource, we should use it." - Jimmy Carter, 1977
" A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.""
- Jimmy Carter, 1979 at dedication of the installation of solar panels on the White House
"The Department of Energy has a multibillion-dollar budget, in excess of $10 billion . . . It hasn't produced a quart of oil or a lump of coal or anything else in the line of energy."
- Ronald Reagan,
"By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologiesтАФrecommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers. . . In 1986 the Reagan administration quietly dismantled the White House solar panel installation."
"I will end his war on American energy . . . Drill Baby Drill."
- Donald Trump
"A key plank of our Build Back Better Recovery Plan is building a modern, resilient climate infrastructure, and clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying union jobs тАФ not 7, 8, 10, 12 dollars an hour, but prevailing wage and benefits. If executed strategically, our response to climate change can create more than 10 million well-paying jobs in the United StatesтАЭ - Joe Biden
"The Biden AdministrationтАЩs climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. . . The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is our 180-day Transition Playbook and includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency. Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful. "
- Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 a plan for the next Trump administration
"The prized target for TrumpтАЩs Republican allies, should the former president defeat Joe Biden in NovemberтАЩs election, will be the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark $370 billion bill laden with support for clean energy projects and electric vehicles. . . the legislation
was signed by Biden in 2022 with no Republican votes."
"Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch."
"Since 2021, Leonard LeoтАЩs network has funneled over $50.7 million to the groups advising Project 2025, including donations from key Leo-linked groups such as The 85 Fund, the Concord Fund, and DonorsTrust."
Over 40% of funding for Project 2025 comes from groups affiliated with and funded through Koch bagman Leonard Leo. (Yet HCR has never mentioned Leo.)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/donald-trump-epa-energy-climate-policies-fossil-fuel-drill-baby-drill/
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/04/15/a-deep-dive-into-energy-plans-for-trump-2-0-00152281
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president
https://accountable.us/leo-koch-networks-funnel-55m-into-project-2025-groups/
lin*
Yeow. Spot on.
This recap gives me a Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow type of shiver.
We try to preserve and employ Earth friendly tools to drive our economy. They rape and pillage with no regard for the impact on the planet.
When I was a kid, there was a TV commercial for a brand of margarine. It featured a woman dressed in a flowing gown, in a forest setting, surrounded by тАШcrittersтАЩ. She was given some of the margarine to taste, and announced it was тАШmy sweet, creamery butterтАЩ, when she was corrected that it was this brand of margarine.
She raised her hand and brought down thunder and lightning, and shouted, тАЬItтАЩs not NICE to fool Mother Nature!!
Too bad we didnтАЩt take away the REAL message.
Lin, you have provided us an excellent "highlights" summary of the climate policy battle yet I think it will be enormously important for us to focus major efforts on the persuasion of our neighbors and family and friends and co-workers of the urgent and essential conversion to a whole-earth way of thinking, and more important a whole-earth way of working and buying or more often not-buying what the Leonard Leo's and Charles Koch's are selling. Those of us who can, MUST make our buying decisions based on whole-earth consideration so that the prattlings of the fossil fuel magnates fall on deaf ears. Think of NOT "cashing in" on all the CO2-emitting vehicles which fill the pages of "bargains" in the auto-dealers' endless promotional material. As convenient as it has become we must stop relying on deals-delivered-directly-to-our-doors via the Amazons of the world, a dramatically more fuel-wasteful, street-clogging way of shopping than going to the stores which sell them... SO MUCH TO DO!
And the contrast clearly presented in LinтАЩs post helps everyone know who can help us in that effort and who will not.
Project 2025 might be more accurately be named Project 666. The intent of the Heritage Foundation is simply horrifying.
Well said, Diane!
L Leo is refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the Senate judiciary committee looking into right wing dark money that may be influencing the Supreme Court. I hope this story is going to take off like wildfire and an investigation begins!!!
The DC AG is investigating Leo regarding his not for profit and for profit organization. Leo refuses to cooperate and has instigated a campaign against the DC AG - being carried out by Leo's cronies in high places, including James Comer and Jim Jordan.
(Listen - Leo is a guy who got local police to arrest a neighbor kid for yelling at him from a passing car. And when police leadership refused to arrest a senior citizen for chalking 'google Leonard Leo', Leo got a town official to divert staff to follow her around washing away the chalk.)
Re: DC AG investigation
"The report highlights the circular payment scheme between LeoтАЩs nonprofit and for-profit organizations, which sparked the DC Attorney GeneralтАЩs investigation into LeoтАЩs activities and his cozy financial ties to Supreme Court justices. LeoтАЩs central role in the corruption crisis at the high court spurred Senate Judiciary subpoenas of Supreme Court тАЬbillionaire matchmakerтАЭ Leo and billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow. "
https://accountable.us/report-leonard-leos-no-good-very-bad-2023/
Leonard Leo says he will not cooperate with D.C. Attorney General tax probe
A liberal group targeted by a similar tax probe said it would comply.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/03/brian-schwalb-arabella-investors-00119751
What happens when an AG dares to investigate Leonard LeoтАЩs network. Brian SchwalbтАЩs probe followed a complaint that nonprofit groups associated with the judicial activist violated their tax status.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/23/brian-schwalb-leonard-leo-investigation-00148385
Representatives James Comer and Jim Jordan recently launched an investigation into AG SchwalbтАЩs reported investigation, accusing him of having political motivations, and citing concerns about donor privacy. CREW sent a letter to Comer and Jordan urging them not to interfere in the investigation, and laying out the precedent for investigators not cooperating with such congressional efforts. As the letter says, тАЬCongressional interference in an ongoing investigation is not legitimate oversight; it is itself a weaponization of CongressтАЩs oversight power that threatens to undermine our justice system and the American peopleтАЩs faith in it.тАЭ
https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/letters/congress-should-not-interfere-with-investigation-into-leonard-leo/
Lin, thank you for your detailed update! I appreciate that you are following and reporting on the L Leo evil doings. I will read the articles you referenced!
Excellent compilation
Yes, she has mentioned Leo (article about Clarence's abuses, April 6, 2023): "Crow has worked hard to move the judiciary and the legal system to the right, and at one of the properties where Thomas vacations, there is a painting of him in conversation with a number of figures, including Leonard Leo, the leader of the Federalist Society who has orchestrated the courtтАЩs hard-right turn. Leo is now overseeing Marble Freedom Trust, established to disburse funds from a $1.6 billion bequest to manipulate elections in favor of Republicans."
Those aren't mystic mutterings. Those are facts. Thank you for stating them.
Richard, you are so right. And mine are also not mystic mutterings, but we are all connected to the past and to the future as much as to each other: we are all carbon-based life forms. We recycle carbon constantly by the mere act of breathing. Every inspiring breath contains atoms that were once metabolically part of a living thing, and every exhalation will again be part of something. If that were the only carbon we recycle we'd have no worries about human-induced climate change. Our actions today very much touch the future, and I feel guilt about that.
Happy Earth Day, to all who observe.
Exactly right!
#Oneness
Thank you, Richard. Today, Earth Day, is my only observed religious holiday. The Earth, the vast greatness of the out-of-doors, is my cathedral. Enjoy the day, everyone!
So right, Richard. It'll be sometime before we've managed to make civilization self-sustainable in terms of our interaction with the larger world, but going in that direction is purely in our self-interest.
The Earth and some of its life will survive. We may not, if we can't overcome our greed. We can't do that without inclusion and kindness.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. ~ Thomas Paine