J. Stan Rowe died this year and he left many significant contributions to ecology and environmental ethics. His Earth Manifesto includes the following principles which provide a good a simple guide to the big picture as I've come across:
CORE PRINCIPLES
Principle 01 The Ecosphere is the Center of Value for Humanity
Principle 02 The Creativity and Productivity of Earth’s Ecosystems Depend on their Integrity Principle 03 The Earth-centered Worldview is supported by Natural History
Principle 04 Ecocentric Ethics are Grounded in Awareness of our Place in Nature
Principle 05 An Ecocentric Worldview Values Diversity of Ecosystems and Cultures
Principle 06 Ecocentric Ethics Support Social Justice
ACTION PRINCIPLES
Principle 07 Defend and Preserve Earth’s Creative Potential
Principle 08 Reduce Human Population Size
Principle 09 Reduce Human Consumption of Earth Parts
Principle 10 Promote Ecocentric Governance
Principle 11 Spread the Message
Friday, December 31, 2004
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Seawead Newsletter Article
Volunteer Spotlight: Dan Lesh
The summer of 2002 I was a student intern with SEAWEAD in Icy Straits. As I soon learned, SEAWEAD is about biting off and chewing a lot. Some excerpts from my journal give examples of the effect this research had on me.
While doing reconnaissance for potential bear study sites:
"The outer coast landscape is much like the inside passage but the whole place has a very ancient and spiritual look to it as well with a feeling of great power hanging in the air. The balance of sea and land, potential and kinetic energy has never seemed so well fit anywhere else I've been. Kayaking in this land was a turning point in my life. A sudden trust in myself gripped me where it had somehow been held back before. "
While doing a Landmark Tree Stand in Black Bay Gorge River area:
"This precious old growth habitat was truly a different world for me even though I' thought I'd spent a good deal of time in the pristine forests of southeast. A two hour hike up to this ridge and down put us in one of the wildest and most amazing rivers i can imgaine. There was great old growth growing right up to the river and the river itself went from being a hundred feet wide and very shallow to twenty feet across with beautiful twenty foot deep pools. There was so much smooth gravel every where in the river it looked like a painting. Bob and I ended up spending all day trying to find the best stand in an unconcious and impossible effort to do this place justice."
Reflecting on the Brown Bear study in Mud Bay:
"The scat survey was the highlight though and taught me a lot about how to determine the contens of bear scat and what a bear bed looks like. The mind and activities of the bears began to be less mysterious to me."
One doesn't easily forget such experiences and though I left again after that summer for college in Iowa, I found myself back in the area for the next spring and summer. The bear study had grown into Cheryl's master's project and I was fortunate enough to be her paid research assistant and spend another summer observing brown bears, living remotely, and trying to figure out the meaning of our work, lives, and SEAWEAD. My own personal development has been so intertwined with my experiences with SEAWEAD that I'm not sure what to think. It seems that SEAWEAD is striving to provide a sane voice of experience and natural knowledge- a voice from the wilderness spoken through grant applications, web publications, and symposiums. Bob Christenson has done much to place SEAWEAD and its mission solidly in Southeast Alaska and hold it responsible to the land and to time, the ultimate judges of a society. The research undertaken provides us with an education to begin a markedly absent public discussion about the future of these places and these animals. The internship program is equally a experience apart from all others. It is a chance to work among the greatness of Southeast Alaska and begin to realize that what leads us to understand our surroundings leads us to understand ourselves.
The summer of 2002 I was a student intern with SEAWEAD in Icy Straits. As I soon learned, SEAWEAD is about biting off and chewing a lot. Some excerpts from my journal give examples of the effect this research had on me.
While doing reconnaissance for potential bear study sites:
"The outer coast landscape is much like the inside passage but the whole place has a very ancient and spiritual look to it as well with a feeling of great power hanging in the air. The balance of sea and land, potential and kinetic energy has never seemed so well fit anywhere else I've been. Kayaking in this land was a turning point in my life. A sudden trust in myself gripped me where it had somehow been held back before. "
While doing a Landmark Tree Stand in Black Bay Gorge River area:
"This precious old growth habitat was truly a different world for me even though I' thought I'd spent a good deal of time in the pristine forests of southeast. A two hour hike up to this ridge and down put us in one of the wildest and most amazing rivers i can imgaine. There was great old growth growing right up to the river and the river itself went from being a hundred feet wide and very shallow to twenty feet across with beautiful twenty foot deep pools. There was so much smooth gravel every where in the river it looked like a painting. Bob and I ended up spending all day trying to find the best stand in an unconcious and impossible effort to do this place justice."
Reflecting on the Brown Bear study in Mud Bay:
"The scat survey was the highlight though and taught me a lot about how to determine the contens of bear scat and what a bear bed looks like. The mind and activities of the bears began to be less mysterious to me."
One doesn't easily forget such experiences and though I left again after that summer for college in Iowa, I found myself back in the area for the next spring and summer. The bear study had grown into Cheryl's master's project and I was fortunate enough to be her paid research assistant and spend another summer observing brown bears, living remotely, and trying to figure out the meaning of our work, lives, and SEAWEAD. My own personal development has been so intertwined with my experiences with SEAWEAD that I'm not sure what to think. It seems that SEAWEAD is striving to provide a sane voice of experience and natural knowledge- a voice from the wilderness spoken through grant applications, web publications, and symposiums. Bob Christenson has done much to place SEAWEAD and its mission solidly in Southeast Alaska and hold it responsible to the land and to time, the ultimate judges of a society. The research undertaken provides us with an education to begin a markedly absent public discussion about the future of these places and these animals. The internship program is equally a experience apart from all others. It is a chance to work among the greatness of Southeast Alaska and begin to realize that what leads us to understand our surroundings leads us to understand ourselves.
Christmas
I am going to Belize in March 2004 to study ecology! I am going to buy a pair of nice binoculars for the trip. If you want to help with this project, put a UMB envelope on the tree for me!
CD's I have recently been enjoying
Classic Maritime Music: Simsonian Folkways Recodings
Back Roads to Cold Mountain: Simsonian Folkways Recordings
Jimmy Martin
Jimmie Rodgers
Back Roads to Cold Mountain: Simsonian Folkways Recordings
Jimmy Martin
Jimmie Rodgers
Letter to the Editor August 2004
The natural economy
Letter to the editor
Some, such as the author of a recent My Turn ("Alaska needs to revitalize dormant timber industry," by George Woodbury), argue that timber sales will bring much needed investment to Southeast Alaska's economy and benefit our communities. Others have a different notion of the industries essential to our future.
What is missing in the never-ending and high-impact debate, though, is that the future of the human race depends on nature's economy, not ours. We can discuss technologies, jobs, subsidies and pollution abatement advances till we are blue in the face. But does Mother Nature care?
Our species has a 10,000-year history of making a living by mining the cheapest and easiest energy-rich carbon sources we can find. We started with the soil (agriculture) and we are losing that at high rates. In 1859, we hit the jackpot when the first oil well was drilled by Col. Drake, and we have already consumed close to half of the world's oil.
From our spending sprees of ecological capital, we have learned that we don't need to worry about environmental sustainability, that gross national product is the best measure of a society, and that technology will fix all of our problems.
But will the lessons our society learned while drunk on soil, coal, oil carry us into the future?
In order to learn how nature works and create systems of food and shelter production that don't deplete our sources of life, we need intact ecosystems. In Southeast Alaska, we need the 300-year-old forests, clean rivers, and abundant salmon runs. These represent our only enduring models of how to live in this place.
As we continue to discuss logging and the future of the Tongass and our region, I hope we realize that potential importance of maintaining the Tongass' ecological integrity transcends benefits to today's communities and our tourism and fishing industries. Someday the cheap carbon sources will become prohibitively expensive and our societies politics and economics will be forced against the same limits as other species.
Future generations need a whole and prosperous Tongass more than we need short-sighted jobs and "economic growth" today.
Dan Lesh
Gustavus
Letter to the editor
Some, such as the author of a recent My Turn ("Alaska needs to revitalize dormant timber industry," by George Woodbury), argue that timber sales will bring much needed investment to Southeast Alaska's economy and benefit our communities. Others have a different notion of the industries essential to our future.
What is missing in the never-ending and high-impact debate, though, is that the future of the human race depends on nature's economy, not ours. We can discuss technologies, jobs, subsidies and pollution abatement advances till we are blue in the face. But does Mother Nature care?
Our species has a 10,000-year history of making a living by mining the cheapest and easiest energy-rich carbon sources we can find. We started with the soil (agriculture) and we are losing that at high rates. In 1859, we hit the jackpot when the first oil well was drilled by Col. Drake, and we have already consumed close to half of the world's oil.
From our spending sprees of ecological capital, we have learned that we don't need to worry about environmental sustainability, that gross national product is the best measure of a society, and that technology will fix all of our problems.
But will the lessons our society learned while drunk on soil, coal, oil carry us into the future?
In order to learn how nature works and create systems of food and shelter production that don't deplete our sources of life, we need intact ecosystems. In Southeast Alaska, we need the 300-year-old forests, clean rivers, and abundant salmon runs. These represent our only enduring models of how to live in this place.
As we continue to discuss logging and the future of the Tongass and our region, I hope we realize that potential importance of maintaining the Tongass' ecological integrity transcends benefits to today's communities and our tourism and fishing industries. Someday the cheap carbon sources will become prohibitively expensive and our societies politics and economics will be forced against the same limits as other species.
Future generations need a whole and prosperous Tongass more than we need short-sighted jobs and "economic growth" today.
Dan Lesh
Gustavus
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