FOLLOWING THOMAS, TWO TALKS FROM TED

In yesterday's post, marking the passage of Thomas Berry, the videos presented some of his wise and profound words:

The universe, and in particular planet Earth, is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. If you don't know that, nothing is going to work.

The planet Earth or the universe is the ultimate and noblest perfection in things and everything in the universe is ultimately for the perfection of the universe. So humans give to the universe a consciousness of itself. In fact, in a certain sense, humans are the way in which the universe creates itself, because the human can be defined as that being in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself in a special mode of conscious self-awareness.

What happens to the outer world, happens to the inner world. Without the soaring birds, without the great forests, the free-flowing streams, the sight of the clouds by days, and the stars by night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.

This is more than a "philosophy". Indeed, it's VERY real. Here are two TED TALKS that provide marvelous portrayals of why...





It's all about HOME -- Healing Ourselves and Mother Earth

THOMAS BERRY



1914 - 2009

Environmentalist, Priest, Eco-Theologian, dies at 94

Many of us were privileged to be touched by the words of this great soul who believed that "the most important spiritual qualities were amazement and enchantment. Awe is healing. A sense of wonder is the therapy for our disconnection from the natural world."

At the age of 11, he says, his sense of "the natural world in its numinous presence" came to him when he discovered a new meadow on the outskirts of the town to which his family had just moved. "The field was covered with white lilies rising above the thick grass," he said. "A magic moment, this experience gave to my life something that seems to explain my thinking at a more profound level than almost any other experience I can remember."

It was not only the lilies, he said. "It was the singing of the crickets and the woodlands in the distance and the clouds in the clear sky. … This early experience has remained with me ever since as the basic determinant of my sense of reality and values. Whatever fosters this meadow is good. What does harm to this meadow is not good."






For more about Thomas Berry go here and here and here.

[UPDATE 5 June 2009: More on Thomas Berry -- be sure to check out Andrew Revkin's NY Times obituary and his DotEarth piece appropriately called The Great Worker.]

SLAUGHTERING THE AMAZON


In a series of major reports, Greenpeace is explaining to the world that beef production is the main driver of deforestation in Amazônia. Earlier this year, it issued a report showing that nearly 80 percent of land deforested in the Amazon from 1996-2006 is now used for cattle pasture.

The most recent report, Slaughtering the Amazon, charges that major international companies are unwittingly driving the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest through their purchases of leather, beef and other products supplied from the Brazil cattle industry. Greenpeace found that Brazilian beef companies are important suppliers of raw materials used by leading global brands, including Adidas/Reebok, Nike, Carrefour, Eurostar, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Honda, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada, IKEA, Kraft, Tesco and Wal-Mart, among others.

Clearly, the intention is to sensitize major global consumers and the corporations that manufacture and deliver beef-related products to bring pressure for real operative conservation practices in Brazil. A few years ago a campaign targeting soybean production resulted in an industry-led soy moratorium on planting in illegally logged areas of the Brazilian Amazon. Similarly, consumer consciousness may be able to reduce the linkage between ranching and future illegal deforestation. As with the soy campaign the hope is that eco-sensitive public opinion in the marketplace -- as in the EU -- might become a wedge toward better practices on the ground.

The global market is capable of delivering carrots as well as sticks. Recently, emerging global climate policies such as REDD have been offering the possibilities of new market incentives. Already they seem to be producing something of a rapprochement between antagonists like Minister of Environment Carlos Minc and Soy King and Mato Grosso Governor Blairo Maggi who recently agreed to new policies intended to guide landowners into a new era of protecting the environment in exchange for payments for ecosystem services.

There are, of course, many doubts concerning the details and distrust of market mechanics. But, also, there are high profile campaigns by world leaders -- such as Prince Charles and Wangari Maathai -- and cautious support from many large environmental groups for payments for avoided deforestation. At this early point, the new carbon economy is full of contradictions and Greenpeace and several other environmental groups remain highly skeptical of using carbon offsets for avoided deforestation.

It's definitely not going to be easy to birth a new era of harmony between conservation and development policies, either for the global economy or for Amazônia where the Brazilian Ministry of Environment has often been sabotaged in Congress or on the ground by the more powerful constituencies of the ministries of Agriculture, Energy and Transportation. Indeed, Minister Minc is already facing many of the obstacles that drove his predecessor Marina Silva to her resignation.

As politics and personalities and promises grab the headlines it is important keep in view the pictures of what is happening on the ground where we citizens of Planet Earth -- in Brazil and in the world -- may be losing the future of the Amazon forest.


Photos of Mato Grosso and Para by Leonardo F. Freitas.


*********

More Information -- The Guardian UK has an excellent series on the latest Greenpeace Report:

Amazon rainforests pay the price as demand for beef soars

Supermarkets accused over destruction of rainforest

How our appetite for beef is felling the Amazon

CHEAT OFFSETTING ???



At last, some humor in the climate debate.
Whatever you think of cap-and-trade you can
bet that CheatNeutral.com could go viral.
But just like with the real thing the question
is who will benefit?

WHITE IS WONDERFUL



Steven Chu, the US Secretary of Energy and a Nobel prize-winning scientist, said yesterday that making roofs and pavements white or light-colored ... would be the equivalent of taking all the cars in the world off the road for 11 years.

"Now you smile, but if you look at all the buildings and make all the roofs white, and if you make the pavement a more concrete-type of colour than a black-type of colour, and you do this uniformly... It's the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars in the world by 11 years," he said.

"It's like you've just taken them off the road for 11 years. It's actually geoengineering."

Read the full article at The Independent.

AMAZON PINK DOLPHIN



In the folklore of Amazônia the boto rosa is an encantado, a shape-shifting enchanting spirit that can appear among the people and cause a lot of mischief (as in the Fortaleza 2006 theater photo above).

Now, the real thing is the subject of a marvelous photo essay in National Geographic and an article that unravels the mystery of why the males are pink. Great photos and a neat story.

THE SILENCE

These extraordinary photos by el silencio are way beyond words.


"Some cypresses still believe in God, and they are happy", originally uploaded by el silencio.




"Everything goes so fast", originally uploaded by el silencio.



"The queue to see the end of the crisis, originally uploaded by el silencio.

Visit el silencio's flickr photostream.

BORED NO MORE
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Click on any '0' to start and keep clicking.
WARNING: HIGHLY ADDICTIVE

"This visual musical synthesizer by Andre Michelle is awesome... It's incredibly simple, effective and provides instant positive feedback in that almost nothing you do will produce an awful bit of music."

GOOD WORDS FROM PAUL HAWKEN

Paul Hawken -- environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author -- recently gave a commencement address to the Class of 2009 at the University of Portland. The speech is full of good words but this paragraph really struck me as going to the core:

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

Read the full speech here and there's more about Paul Hawken here.

Dimitri Depaepe HDR




HDR means High Dynamic Range imaging and Dimitri Depaepe is clearly a master.




YES! These are actually photographs. Want to see more? You can scroll through over 400 breathtakingly spectacular images at Dimitri's Flickriver.

Undoubtedly, there are many treasures to be discovered -- there are about one million photos at Flickr tagged with HDR -- but right now the consistently delicious and imaginative images of Dimitri Depaepe are at the top of my list.

GETTING REAL



As they say, governing is a lot different than campaigning. After the initial honeymoon infatuations, it is now apparent that promises are yielding to pragmatics and compromises almost across-the-board.

Here are two assessments that seem worthy of serious consideration: Paul Krugman on climate change legislation and Andrew Sullivan on the wars. What strikes me most is how easy it was to take a clear and righteous stand against the absurdities of the Bush-Cheney years and how difficult the choices appear as Obama gets real.

[UPDATES -- 22 may 2009: The first US Climate legislation cleared one of committees of the House last night. Grist has a review of the reactions to this historic legislation. There's also an excellent outline of the various positions of agreement and disagreement being staked out among US environmentalists. And, while still hoping for the improvement, treehugger notes that US Political Will and Scientific Recommendations Rapidly Drifting Apart.

Sullivan's blog The Daily Dish is all over the torture-Gitmo-security-vs-liberty debate. Here's a summary of reactions to yesterday's dueling Obama and Cheney speeches.]

PEACE IS EVERY STEP



Last weekend, at the time of the full moon, the Vesak festivals around the world celebrated the birth, enlightenment and the passing away of Gautama Buddha. I wanted to honor the time with the photo above, which is of a statue of some deity in the Chicago Art Institute seeming (to me at least) to be stepping out of the illusion, and out of the path of endless suffering (maybe even signaling, "no, don't go there").

But ancient art and a clever photo did not seem as enough so I read more about Vesak at Wikipedia and came upon this final entry:

Vesak in Vietnam

In 1963, the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic and younger brother of Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc banned the flying of the Buddhist flag. This led to a demonstration, flag-waving in defiance of the ban and the Hue Vesak shootings as Diem's forces opened fire on the Buddhist crowd, killing nine, sparking the Buddhist crisis and a period of non-violent civil disobedience by the monks.

Wow, that sure brought back memories. Not only memories. I thought also of how it's all exploding again under a different set of labels in Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere as the endless path of intolerance continues. And that led me, through the miracle of the Internet and YouTube, to one of the Vietnamese monks from the 60's -- Thich Nhat Hanh -- who today is perhaps the greatest living teacher of peace on earth and who is world-renown for his "engaged Buddhism" and "meditation in action."

If you care to be touched, please watch this extraordinary video...



Peace is every step
The shining red sun is my heart
Each flower smiles with me
How green, how fresh they all grow
How cool the wind blows
Peace is every step
It turns the endless path to dust

A CHILLING EFFECT

IT CHILLS ME FOR SURE that today Obama reversed his previous decision to release the torture photos, saying the images could "further inflame anti-American opinion." My first reaction is to agree with Xeni Jardin at boingboing who said, "What BS. You know what will help dampen those flames? An end to war crimes impunity, and the dawn of that true transparency he promised America during his presidential campaign."


The story is all over the media and, of course, the opinions and interpretations are multiplying as well. I am grateful for the possibility that some courageous journalists and bloggers like Andrew Sullivan will hold Obama's toes to the fire of public scrutiny.

It's understandable that releasing new evidence of the widespread torture and abuse policy of Bush and Cheney, including techniques that were tailored specifically against Muslims, could inflame the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the two newest military theaters for the US. On the brink of what may be a brutal summer in all theaters in a war whose purpose is now opaque, one can understand the caution, and there is no reason to doubt the genuine worries of commanders in the field. But it is important to remember that it is the abuse that inflames, not the accounting of the abuse. And for Obama to act as an extension of the Bush era of secrecy is potentially more damaging to the US and its interests and service members. read more

[NOTE - 14 MAY - There's a VERY interesting follow-up from Sullivan in which he speculates that there may be some clever strategy behind Obama's "Rope-a-Dope" ways and quite a real politik dissent here.]

Yes, I'm willing to be compassionate about the errors of the past if, and only if, I am convinced that they are past. And, YES, I do want to see Cheney, et al, brought to full public exposure. That makes me feel that the real test will come not over photos but over whether the various investigations of wrong-doing will proceed, whether Gitmo will indeed be closed, or whether loss of transparency will continue.

Now, as I watch the great morality play unfolding, I read Obama's signals as meaning that I better wear a heavier coat and not assume that spring flowers will soon bloom.

But I still hope...

AMAZING SÃO PAULO (1943)



A film sponsored by the U.S. Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to promote friendly relations with South American countries. It's fascinating both for the 1940's views of São Paulo and for the views of progress common to that era.

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TABBOULEH SONG



Just from the lighter side and no more >>>