In 1989, following in the footsteps of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and William Eggleston, I drove across the country and documented malls across America. I had a cheap Nikon FG-20 and an even cheaper lens - but I had a lot of passion.
I shot about 30 rolls of slide film in malls from Long Island to North Dakota to Seattle. It was hard to tell from the images where they were taken, and that was kind of the point. I was interested in the creeping loss of regional differences. I thought a lot about Frank's "The Americans" as we drove from place to place without any sense of place.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal and robust way of life.– Read the full ThinkProgress repost.
As you may know, last month I journeyed back to the Brazilian Amazon with James Cameron and this time, he brought Arnold Schwarzenegger. We returned to the Arara village on the threatened Big Bend of the Xingu River and were met by hundreds of villagers, the legendary Kayapo Chief Raoni, world-renowned climate scientists and local movement leaders. Their resounding message was the same: "We urge the Brazilian government stop the Belo Monte Dam and pursue truly renewable energy alternatives!"
Following the visit to the Xingu, we traveled to Manaus to the Global Sustainability Forum where world leaders, including Clinton, reminded Brazil that it is responsible for "the stewardship of the greatest rainforest of the world", and called on Brazil to lead the world on a green energy pathway.
"You need more electricity. You need it to be clean. You want to preserve native cultures and you need to preserve the rainforest. If you reach a critical juncture, you'll change it forever and it can't be recovered and the rest of the world is depending on you because about 20% of non ocean oxygen comes from you...The whole world needs you to resolve this."Unfortunately, the Brazilian government doesn't appear to be listening. After dismissing demands from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States to suspend the dam's licensing process until serious human rights violations have been remedied, the government is fast-tracking the dam's full installation license and seeking to initiate construction as early as next month.
It is urgent that the Brazilian government hear the call from Brazilians and the international community to defend the Amazon, indigenous rights and reconsider its plans for the Belo Monte Dam and 60 other large dams planned for the Amazon. Energy efficiency and clean renewable energy, such as solar and wind, are viable and essential solutions to more dirty dams. The entire world depends on it.
Watch and share this video. Take action today by signing and sharing a petition to the Brazilian government.
I was in line at the supermarket and the cashier told the elderly woman ahead of me that plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to her and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”
That’s right, they didn’t have the green thing in her day. Back then, they returned their milk bottles, Coke bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, using the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled - but they didn’t have the green thing back in her day.
In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine very time they had to go two blocks - but she’s right. They didn’t have the green thing in her day. Back then, they washed the baby’s diapers because they didn’t have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts – wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing - but that elderly woman is right, they didn’t have the green thing back in her day.
Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house – not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a pizza dish, not a screen the size of the state of Nebraska. In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn’t have electric machines to do everything for you. When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used wadded up newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, they didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They exercised by working so they didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operated on electricity - but she’s right, they didn’t have the green thing back then.
They drank from a fountain when they were thirsty, instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water. They refilled pens with ink, instead of buying a new pen, and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull - but they didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar and kids rode their bikes to school or rode the school bus, instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint - but they didn't have the green thing back then.
(Disclosure – I almost always write these newsletters myself but this crossed my desk and in sending it out I would certainly give appropriate attribution but I have no idea who originated it)
Donnie Dann at Facebook notes.
To understand the utter absurdity of America’s intervention in the Libyan civil war, I recommend a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to see its new exhibition of German Expressionism. It will be much more instructive than reading the media commentary about the president’s opening of yet another Mideast war.
I’m not merely referring to the surrealism (in the work of the artists Ernst Kirchner, Emil Nolde and Max Beckmann) of Nicolas Sarkozy’s “leading” a coalition of the righteous against the evil Moammar Gadhafi, who not so long ago was the French president’s honored guest in Paris. Nor am I alluding to the stupidity of entering a sectarian battle (the German Expressionists were deeply affected by the overthrow of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the factional fighting that followed in 1918-19) in which the goals and personalities of the opposition leaders are largely unknown; or even to the hypocrisy (the Expressionists were big on pointing out moral hypocrisy) of Barack Obama, once considered the anti-Bush, who now wages his very own “war of choice” without bothering to ask Congress for permission.
No. I’m talking about the growing divide between American illusion and the reality of war. Because we have been largely cut off from images of corpses and carnage since the invasion of Grenada — whether by official censorship or self-censorship by the timid U.S. media — Americans no longer have the capacity to connect military action with the casualties of war. Evidently, they think very little about the consequences of firing millions of bombs, bullets and missiles at distant targets occupied by unknown foreigners. Nowadays, with only 0.5 percent of Americans in the military (compared with 8.6 percent during World War II), we have relatively few witnesses to the butchery of soldiers and civilians who can come home to tell their stories.
I don’t know war up close. Thankfully, I’ve only gotten to hear the accounts of others who suffered through World War II and Vietnam. Even so, the MOMA exhibition grabbed me by the throat, since the German Expressionists, in particular Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, understood war quite well, having endured trench warfare during World War I.
The work of these artists before the war already wasn’t easy on the eye — their graphic style and printing techniques were disorienting, subversive and sometimes hideous — but the movement had sufficient idealism, says the MOMA show’s curator, Starr Figura, to believe “in art’s ability to transform society.” After the war, “Expressionism withered,” writes the historian Peter Jelavich. “As an art and a lifestyle, it was too dependent on an optimistic vitality that could not withstand the combined shocks of wartime and post-revolutionary trauma.”
The MOMA exhibition devotes an entire wall to 50 prints by Dix titled “Der Krieg” (“The War”). These terrifying pictures — the hideously wounded, a skull invaded by worms, monstrously disfigured faces, the dead and the living dead — confront the viewer with the fact that war’s impact stretches far beyond physical damage to buildings and flesh. Dix’s genius is in depicting the destruction of the human spirit that results from decisions made by politicians who never experience the direct effects of war. I applaud Rolling Stone magazine for publishing photos of Afghan civilians murdered by leering American soldiers (also Paris Match for its photo of two Libyan soldiers torn to pieces by NATO bombs), but Dix’s prints surpass photojournalism in their emotional reach.
Nowadays, with wars often waged from on high or from very far away by pilots, sailors and computer programmers who never encounter their victims, it’s easy to be blind. Phony talk about “targeted” and “precision” bombing, “no-fly zones,” “protecting civilians” with air strikes and “limited” war designed to prevent “massacres” (as opposed to the actuality of overthrowing the West’s favorite “reformed” Arab dictator to stabilize Libyan oil exports and boost Sarkozy’s low poll numbers) is intended to hide the horror of war. There’s no such thing as a wholly “just” war and certainly not a “clean” war.
Nevertheless, there is a paradox in Dix’s work and life that might help indifferent Americans empathize with the victims of war. Although Dix (a machine-gunner in the Kaiser’s army) was celebrated as an “anti-war” artist, he remained ambivalent about the organized killing that such statesmen as Obama and George W. Bush prefer to euphemize in slogans like “the war on terror.” In 1961, nearly four decades after “Der Krieg” appeared, Dix said that “the war was a horrible thing, but still something powerful. . . . Under no circumstances could I miss it!” Elsewhere, he said he had wanted to “experience everything very precisely. . . . Hence I am no pacifist. Or perhaps I was a curious person. I had to see everything myself.”
In justifying the attack on Gadhafi’s forces, our president piously declared that “some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”
Perhaps without knowing it, Obama has presented a wonderful opportunity to educate the citizenry, and with a patriotic justification to boot. From now on, all Americans should proudly open their eyes to atrocities committed by their armed forces abroad. For a little recent history, they could begin by traveling to Hanoi, Panama, Baghdad, Kabul and Benghazi. They would surely be edified by what they found, and maybe a little wiser.
Sweetening biofuel production
Expanding biofuel production into agricultural land reduces the need to clear natural ecosystems and can benefit the global climate through reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. A remote-sensing study of the Brazilian Cerrado now provides empirical evidence that sugar-cane expansion also cools local climate directly by altering surface reflectivity and evapotranspiration.
Rhett,
WOW! What a misleading title! I know the spin was given by Nature but why has Mongabay carried forth such an obvious ethanol ploy? Surely replacing cattle pasture with sugarcane plantations would have a cooling effect but there is nothing that suggests that doing it to produce ethanol would produce more local cooling than to do it to produce sugar.
Currently there is a crisis in ethanol production in Brazil. Soaring global sugar prices are sending the cane to sugar mills instead of ethanol refineries. Right now this has precipitated a supply crisis forcing Brazil to import 150 million gallons of US corn ethanol this month (and also import gasoline because the shortage of ethanol is causing owners of flex-fuel cars to go to gas).
One can be certain that the dual pressures of food and fuel will drive more land-grabbing from native cerrado or forest lands for agricultural production. Yes, there is a lot of degraded land that could be restored for agricultural production but it is still cheaper to grab intact ecosystem land with good soil than to pay the costs of soil renewal in degraded places.
The resulting land-use conversion is what ultimately drives carbon emissions and global warming and not whether the crops are used for food or fuel.
Lou Gold
Lou
Greg Asner and Scott Loarie have nothing to do with the cane ethanol lobby. The point of the paper is simply that converting cattle pasture to cane is better for climate than leaving it as pasture. The authors explicitly warn against converting natural vegetation, noting that loss of cerrado produces more warming than going from pasture to cane.
Rhett
Rhett,
Asner and Loarie are outstanding scientists and, of course, they have nothing to do with the ethanol lobby. I am not charging conspiracy.
I have read the original at Nature Climate Change.
It is clearly framed as a statement about BIOFUEL along with a less prominent caveat against converting native lands.
The data show that sugarcane plantations are more cooling than cattle pasture. The data do not show anything about leakage or triggered land-use change or sugarcane expansion for ethanol versus sugar. We have three pressures here -- sugar, ethanol and beef. To favor any one is to push the others to new locations as long as global demand is soaring.
These ledes:
(from Mongabay) "Sugar cane ethanol cools climate when it replaces cattle pasture"
(from Reuters) "Sugarcane grown for fuel cools Brazil's climate"
are going to spread quickly across the global media as a counter argument to the established science showing that the cumulative impact of using cropland for biofuel production can trigger unfortunate consequences in the big picture.
Poor framing of good science can easily lead to more disinformation.
Why not be more careful?
Lou
There is a dark cloud hanging over the city of Altamira and it has little to do with the Amazon's relentless seasonal rains. An oppressive feeling prevails through the city, linked to the imminent commencement of construction of the Belo Monte Dam complex on the Xingu River. Unlike an optimistic outlook on the promise of improved living conditions for the local population linked to a highly touted development initiative to accompany the construction of the dam, plans for the Xingu inspire uncertainty and anxiety for most. Such doubt springs from the lack of understanding of what is to become of the river and the cities and communities that depend on it. People are in the dark, bringing a gloomy sense of foreboding as the region braces itself for a storm.
At a time when many of the region's people need answers about Belo Monte, the dam-building consortium, known as Norte Energia or NESA, has maintained a startling lack of transparency. As mitigation projects intended to stave off the worst of the dam's impacts languish at the hands of the consortium, even its supporters have begun to ask serious questions about whether planners have any intention to soften the coming socio-environmental disaster that is Belo Monte. Yet, while such widespread doubt can demoralize and divide, it can also serve to vindicate those fighting tirelessly to defend the Xingu and its people, strengthening their resistance and determination.
Contrasts proliferate through Altamira. The recent visit of James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Xingu, as well as ex-President Bill Clinton's criticisms of Brazil's hydropower plans for the Amazon have again brought the controversial project – and the reckless development model it represents – to the world's attention. Last week's ruling by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights demanding that Brazil immediately suspend Belo Monte's licensing process was a serious blow to the project, just as the government expected a definitive license for the dam's installation to be issued. Yet in Altamira there is no sign that the wheels set in motion when the project received its "partial" installation license in January will come to a halt. Much to the contrary: NESA appears hell-bent on ramming Belo Monte forward by any means necessary.
Altamira is experiencing its first waves of dam-related migration. But these aren't the construction workers that threaten to flood into the city by the thousands; the current arrivals are mainly representatives of engineering firms contracted by the NESA consortium to carry out surveying of terrain strategic to the early stages of construction. International rulings aside, the consortium still has the right and means to build Belo Monte's massive workers camps, aimed at making the project a fait accompli.
Intense speculation surrounds the road known as "Kilometer 25 crossing" a narrow and rugged dirt passage that juts off the Transamazon highway through forests and rich agricultural land to the large camp of the Brazilian parastatal company ElectroNorte, also the site of one of the mega-dam's main work camps. Nearby Pimental Island is intended to provide a foundation for the main wall of the dam, a 6 km long and 36 m high monstrosity that will divert 80% of the river's flow into artificial canals and a fetid reservoir, destroying a 100 km stretch of the Xingu known as the Big Bend. If Belo Monte is to proceed, this strategic road will need to be converted into a broad thoroughfare to accommodate heavy machinery and a steady stream of workers to and from the camp.
What's unclear is the extent to which NESA has already progressed on the road; some say the technicians are only performing detailed surveys while others claim they are already clearing forest and farmland to widen the road. While the season's heavy rains impede any serious progress, most agree that NESA will pounce on this area when the rains let up in June. At that point some fear the game is up, while others are quietly confident that it only signals a new intensified stage in the struggle to stop Belo Monte. What is clear is that the morally bankrupt NESA consortium and its government backers will continue to do what they can to crush resistance to the dam and sidestep any responsibility they have to preserving a semblance of social and environmental stability in the region.
Failing promises
While rumors swirl about the state of Belo Monte, concerns are growing over whether the NESA consortium will actually comply with its legal obligations to meet dozens of socio-environmental conditions prior the dam's construction. These include taking emergency measures to install infrastructure and social services adequate to meet the needs of a population that threatens to spike in coming months. The government expects that Altamira's population could double if the construction of Belo Monte begins, with the flood of over 100,000 people to the region in search of employment.
Recent reports have shown that more than 70% of the infrastructure projects that NESA is required to implement prior to initiating any form of construction have yet to begin. In addition to improving much needed basic services for the existing population, the projects are intended to help accommodate the enormous influx of migrants to Altamira and other municipalities.
Such projects, like new health clinics, schools, and sanitation works, are already in dire need in Altamira. The shocking fact is that projects offering basic services and a modicum of "development" to the region are only on offer because the government is determined to install an incredibly hazardous mega-project adjacent to the city. And it's highly questionable that the ambitious plans provide infrastructural and human development – planned to accompany the construction of the dam – will begin to mitigate the untold social and environmental costs of Belo Monte. As I passed through an Altamira neighborhood of palafita homes built on stilts along an igarapé (small river) accompanied by Toinha of the local women's movement, she stopped our car and said grimly "all this will be gone. And these people don't know where they will go." More than a third of Altamira could disappear under Belo Monte's artificial reservoir.
The imminent dangers posed by this mega-project require immediate solutions. Yet there is no indication that the same government promising such "development" to the people of the middle Xingu will encourage the NESA consortium to meet their obligations to mitigate the project's impacts. Indeed, the indifference and irresponsibility of the Brazilian government and NESA could spell disaster for the cities of the region, much as Belo Monte's critics have warned from the beginning.
Crisis and shared concerns
The potential for social crisis unfolding in Altamira has spawned an unusual relationship between Belo Monte's proponents and its detractors. Faced with the prospect of seeing cheerful promises of infrastructural development and investment in local businesses evaporate, local government and business leaders have begun to raise concerns about how benefits to local people will materialize. Most agree that the people of Altamira and surrounding cities and communities will pay a steep price for the construction of Belo Monte; the question is, what are the advantages?
According to Vilmar Soares, the coordinator of FORT Xingu, a group of local business interests that have supported Belo Monte, the installation of emergency infrastructure is occurring at an alarmingly slow pace. This is all the more disquieting, he says, because more than 10,000 migrants are expected to arrive in Altamira this year alone. "We can't start this dam project without having schools and health clinics to attend to the needs of this population."
If recent events on Brazil's Madeira River are any indication, the municipalities of the middle Xingu should be bracing themselves for social chaos of unprecedented proportions. In the Amazonian state of Rondonia, where the Brazilian government is executing its ill conceived plans to construct two mega dams on the Madeira River, workers at the Jirau dam site recently rioted against unjust and precarious work conditions, burning work camps and transport vehicles.
As signaled by the lawyer Felicio Pontes of Para's Federal Public Ministry – an institution that has filed ten lawsuits against the project – the social fallout of the Belo Monte project could exceed what we are seeing on the Madeira. "This is not Jirau, and it's not Rondonia," says Pontes. "The question of land tenure [in Pará] is much more problematic. Conflicts here could be five times as bad. We are champions of slave labor and the death of workers in the fields. And by moving forward with this project, without paying special attention to infrastructure projects, you can be sure that we are announcing countless future deaths."
While FORT Xingu and the Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre (MXVPS) have highly divergent views about how to achieve equitable development for their region, they do share a concern for the health of their families and communities. Should NESA continue to sow doubt and confusion in Altamira, these conflicting local groups could find they have more in common than they think.
Yet at a time of so much ambiguity and anxiety, one thing is certain: the resistance of the MXVPS will not waver. Nor will the voices of the thousands of indigenous peoples, riverbank dwellers, farmers, and fisherfolk who call the Xingu home.
Development is a right, not a consequence
If you are to believe NESA and its sponsors at the top rungs of the Brazilian government, all of this is taking place in the name of "development" for an underdeveloped region in addition to meeting Brazil's growing energy needs. Belo Monte will offer local populations a dignified life where there had been misery, dignified housing and social services where there has been precariousness. Yet as Antonia Melo, the coordinator of the MXVPS, routinely points out, these are basic human rights that should be met independently of the plans for mega-projects. Should the residents of the Xingu have to sacrifice their river, their livelihoods, and indeed their way of life for what is already their right to a dignified life, enjoyed by any citizen?
Last week a friend from Brasilia, and a longtime supporter of Brazil's Worker's Party (PT), joined me in Altamira to spend a few days learning first hand about the grim story unfolding there. As we sat at a restaurant built on stilts over the high waters of the Xingu, he told me: "I'm shocked. I never expected the PT to inflict this sort of violence on local populations in the name of progress." The jovial restaurant owner joined us as we looked over a vast span of the powerful river. What a marvelous place, we agreed. But then he grew sad, casting a wistful gaze over the waters. I knew what his sadness meant; it was the same as I felt again and again from people in Altamira and it's surroundings: all this could come to an end.
In the distance dark clouds were forming another rainstorm. Yet unlike the driving rains that drain into the Xingu, its unclear how local communities will weather the building storm that is Belo Monte. Resistance to the project will remain fierce, without a doubt, as its foundations continue to be eroded by a stream of legal challenges, financial shortfalls, reputational challenges, and waning popularity as the Brazilian public increasingly learns the ugly truth about the dam. Yet the government's authoritarian and incredibly stubborn march towards the destruction of the Xingu will likely continue unabated, inviting tragedy in the turbulent heart of the Amazon.
... of an informed society able to anticipate and respond to climate and its impacts to make the best social and economic decisions. He said that the NOAA Climate Service is designed to inform the mitigation and adaptation decisions needed to respond to the impacts of a changing climate. The Service aims to support decision-makers regionally to globally, on timescales of weeks to decades, in areas including public policy, resource management, infrastructure investment, business development, and decisions of individuals in their daily lives
... an initiative that would add no net cost to the budget and would streamline the operations of a Federal agency ... was torpedoed when 227 Republicans and 6 Democrats voted in favor of an Amendment ... prohibiting any funding from being used to establish a NOAA Climate Service.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has a new report out highlighting global military expenditures. As the above chart indicates, the U.S. retains a healthy lead.
Regionally, defense spending in Europe has fallen 2.8 percent while spending in South America has risen by 5.8 percent and in Africa by 5.2 percent. Brazil drove a lot of the South American growth. Asia rose only a modest 1.4 percent, which the Institute said was slower than previous years. Overall, global military expenditures ticked up slightly at 1.3 percent, the slowest growth rate since 2001.
Tomo froze, dropped into an attack crouch, and slipped
away from us, moving silently and steadily through a
thicket of heliconia until stopping at the base of an
enormous tree sixty feet from the trail. In a single gesture
he had withdrawn a dart, notched its tip, deftly
spun the kapok fiber around the base, and placed it in
the mouth of the blowgun that now hovered motionless
above his head. His cheeks suddenly puffed out with
tremendous pressure, which was released in an instant.
A moment later he was lunging through the vegetation,
laughing and shouting. By the time we caught up, he
held a rufous mot mot in his hand. The bird was still
alive. Tomo had managed to reach it before the poison
took effect. He dropped the frightened creature into his
basket and placed the dart conspicuously in the notch of
a tree so that all would know an animal had been taken.
Confronted with the unknown, they collect specimens
and do their best to identify a plant to family or genus.
Only later, in the comfort of the herbarium and invariably
with the assistance of a colleague specializing in
that particular group of plants, will they figure out the
species and obtain a complete determination.
He was once in a small plane that took off from a dirt
runway, brushed against the canopy of the forest, and
very nearly crashed. A colleague who was with him
recalled years later that throughout the entire episode
Schultes had sat calmly by a window, oblivious to the
screams of the terrified passengers. It turned out that he
had spotted a tree, a new species of Cecropia, and had
scarcely noticed the crisis.
could resolve botanical problems in the moment, write
descriptions in the field, realign species and genera just
by holding a blossom to the light. In the entire history of
Amazonian botany, only a handful of scientists have
possessed this talent.
The bark is rasped and placed in a funnel-shaped leaf
suspended between two spears. Cold water is percolated
through, and the drippings collect in a ceramic pot. The
dark fluid is slowly heated and brought to a frothy boil,
then cooled and later reheated until a thick viscous
scum gradually forms on the surface. This scum is
removed and applied to the tips of darts or arrows,
which are then carefully dried over the fire. The procedure
itself is mundane. What is unusual is that one can
drink the poison without being harmed. To be effective
it must enter the blood. The realization on the part of
the Indians that this orally inactive substance, derived
from a small number of forest plants, could kill when
administered into the muscle was profound and, like so
many of their discoveries, difficult to explain by the concept
of trial and error alone.
in unveiling the indigenous knowledge, his task was not
merely to identify new sources of wealth but rather to
understand a new vision of life itself, a profoundly different
way of living in a forest.
For the Waorani, as for many indigenous peoples, good
or bad health results not from the presence or absence of
pathogens alone but from the proper or improper balance
of the individual. Health is harmony, a coherent
state of equilibrium between the physical and spiritual
components of the individual. Sickness is disruption,
imbalance, and the manifestation of malevolent forces
in the flesh.
As romantics we idealize a past we never experienced
and deny those who knew that past from changing. We
forget perhaps the most disturbing lesson of anthropology.
As Levi-Strauss said, “The people for whom the
term cultural relativism was invented, have rejected it.”
Nothing thrills the Waorani more than killing game and
cutting down big trees. It’s what so many people don’t
understand who haven’t lived in the forest.You don’t have
to conserve what you don’t have the power to destroy.
Harming the forest is an impossible concept for them.
They have no capacity to understand. In a world of such
abundance, the word “scarcity” has no meaning. It’s
what makes them most vulnerable. It’s the same with
their culture. When you’ve lived in complete isolation,
how can you understand what it means to lose a culture?
It’s not until it is almost gone and when people become
educated that they realize what’s being lost. By then the
attractions of the new way are overpowering, and the
only people who want the old ways are the ones who
never lived it.
