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Living within a living, loving planet
Archive for February, 2012
Austerity programmes
Feb 28th
Portugal to face bailout review
27 February 2012
BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17183345
“Portugal’s austerity programme has sparked major protests.
Portugal will find out on Tuesday whether it has passed the latest test of its main international backers… Last month, it reached an agreement with unions and employers to cut holidays and the compensation paid when workers are laid-off. Under the deal, it was also made easier to hire and fire staff. There have been deep cost cuts that are hitting public sector workers particularly hard. Many will see their income cut by a quarter this year compared to 2010.”
The “well to do”, many “one percenters”, who work for and manage the lending institutions, banks and corporations are responsible for the irresponsible “deals” that resulted in the great crisis of 2008. Yet, these same organisations ply their management with huge bonuses, have mostly more than recovered – many boosted their net worth with “bailout” money – and have emerged better off than before.
Sadly, we see here, as in other countries such as Greece, that it is the relatively poor – workers they are referred as – who bear the cost. With 25.4 millionaires around the globe, just think about what a mere 1% tax increase, which they wouldn’t miss, would mean to “the workers.”
EU rules ‘encouraging farmers to plough up grasslands’
Feb 27th
Experts say farmers have begun mowing down wildlife-rich pastures so that they can continue to claim European subsidies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/03/eu-farmers-plough-grasslands
“Farmers are being encouraged to plough up some of the most quintessential English landscapes so that they can continue to claim European subsidies, experts have warned.”
I fear that this is the beginning of a policy that will result in nearly every square inch of unpaved grounds ploughed up to “feed the masses” in other countries.
Is this the future we want to leave for our grandchildren? Is this all there is to life, a planet organised around the concerns of one species? Is this “right” only because we have the power to do it? Most dismal is the question, will you and I have an effective say on this issue? No, not with such immense wealth and power consolidated in the hands of so few. So we vote with our purchases. Support small and local in every way possible. Forget the “savings” at the supermarkets. One, overall you are not saving. Two, it is only on the highest volume items that there is a savings over your local shops.
Back to ploughing up grasslands. What about the loss of diversity and loss of health that lies in the mix of nutrients? Why plough up nutritious pasture to plant non-nutritious monoculture and then buy fertilizer and nutrients out of a bag to help animals survive?
Please tell me what I am missing here?
A farmer’s real wealth is in the soil, not in the price of a bale of hay.
A lovely Tribute to my Book
Feb 24th
Its been a couple of years since I’ve come across a book I wish I’d written myself, and interestingly this one is by the husband of the last author /editor I raved about (that was + is GreenSpirit Marian Van Eyk McCain) And this is written better than I could do. Sky has a lovely way with words, easy to read. I can imagine a twinkle in his eyes when he speaks of the Earth, and his love radiates out of the pages. For a very long time I have been looking for ways to convey the sense of I am Earth, her food my body, her water my blood, and I share the molecules from the stars with every other creature and plant. This isn’t just a fanciful worldview, it is a most fundamental fact and such understanding is vital for our survival. Sky takes it further: my mind is Earth’s mind, Earth as perceivable manifestation of God. It has been told in a style of someone speaking to me.
In this book is the first time outside of science fiction I have heard us referred to as “Earthlings.” Yes! And he puts into graspable practicality what Peter Russell (among others) has been helping me to understand since my aha! days in the early 1980s. This read is more to me than preaching to the converted: it is speaking for me, taking me further into life and builds my store of how. It is available as hard copy and e-book.
Cynthia Alves February 2012
“In The Global Brain Awakens Peter Russell shows that humanity has reached a crossroads in its evolutionary path. [Our expanding communications] technology, combined with a the rapidly growing human potential movement, is helping to create a collective consciousness that is humanity’s only hope of saving it from itself. However, Russell warns if we continue on our current path of greed and destruction, humanity will serve only as a planetary cancer.” http://www.lifepower.org.uk/
A Lovely Tribute to my Book
Feb 24th
Its been a couple of years since I’ve come across a book I wish I’d written myself, and interestingly this one is by the husband of the last author /editor I raved about (that was + is GreenSpirit Marian Van Eyk McCain) And this is written better than I could do. Sky has a lovely way with words, easy to read. I can imagine a twinkle in his eyes when he speaks of the Earth, and his love radiates out of the pages. For a very long time I have been looking for ways to convey the sense of I am Earth, her food my body, her water my blood, and I share the molecules from the stars with every other creature and plant. This isn’t just a fanciful worldview, it is a most fundamental fact and such understanding is vital for our survival. Sky takes it further: my mind is Earth’s mind, Earth as perceivable manifestation of God. It has been told in a style of someone speaking to me.
In this book is the first time outside of science fiction I have heard us referred to as “Earthlings.” Yes! And he puts into graspable practicality what Peter Russell (among others) has been helping me to understand since my aha! days in the early 1980s. This read is more to me than preaching to the converted: it is speaking for me, taking me further into life and builds my store of how. It is available as hard copy and e-book.
Cynthia Alves February 2012
“In The Global Brain Awakens Peter Russell shows that humanity has reached a crossroads in its evolutionary path. [Our expanding communications] technology, combined with a the rapidly growing human potential movement, is helping to create a collective consciousness that is humanity’s only hope of saving it from itself. However, Russell warns if we continue on our current path of greed and destruction, humanity will serve only as a planetary cancer.” http://www.lifepower.org.uk/
The Collective Consciousness of Nature
Feb 18th
Gaia and the Evolution of Coherence
First presented at the 3rd Camelford Conference on The Implications of The Gaia Thesis:
Symbiosis, Cooperativity and Coherence, November 7-10, 1989, The Wadebridge
Ecological Centre, Camelford,Cornwall; revised 10.8.93
“Thus, it seems that the essence of the living state is to build up and extend the coherent
spatio-temporal platform for communication starting from the energy of the sun initially
absorbed by green plants. Living systems are thus neither the subjects alone, nor objects
isolated, but both subjects and objects in a mutually communicating universe of meaning. In contrast to the neo-Darwinist point of view, their capacity for evolution depends, not on rivalry or on might in the struggle for existence. Rather, it depends on their capacity for communication. So in a sense, it is not individuals as such which are developing but living systems interlinked into a coherent whole. Just as the cells in an organism take on different tasks for the whole, different populations enfold information not only for themselves, but for all other organisms, expanding the consciousness of the whole, while at the same time becoming more and more aware of this collective consciousness. Human consciousness may have its most significant role in the development and creative expression of the collective consciousness of nature.”
Mae-Wan Ho
Sky: So, in other words, the collective consciousness of nature is the consciousness of the living Gaia and we as humans have the possibility of a role in the creative expression of this consciousness. However, if we do not recognise our true place within, we commit not only suicide but ecocide as well. We are on a trajectory toward a runaway warming which will, in time, turn Gaia into another Mars.
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Climate Skepticism Efforts
Feb 17th
Heartland Institute’s Leaked Documents Reveal Climate Skepticism Efforts
AP SETH BORENSTEIN
Updated: 02/16/2012 6:55 pm
“Leaked documents from a prominent conservative think tank show how it sought to teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming and planned other behind-the-scenes tactics using millions of dollars in donations from big corporate names.”
“Because Heartland was not specific about what was fake and what was real, The Associated Press attempted to verify independently key parts of separate budget and fundraising documents that were leaked. The federal consultant working on the classroom curriculum, the former TV weatherman, aChicagoelected official who campaigns against hidden local debt and two corporate donors all confirmed to the AP that the sections in the document that pertained to them were accurate. No one the AP contacted said the budget or fundraising documents mentioning them were incorrect.”
“The documents showed how heavily Heartland relies on a single person it identified only as “Anonymous Donor.” In the past six years, the man has given $14.26 million to the institute, nearly half its $33.9 million in revenue.”
When you find that there are 25.4 million (American million) millionaires which includes 1,200 billionaires, can you be surprised that one or more of these people can purchase, in so many words, public opinion? Is there a doubt that English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton was right when he said in 1839: “The pen is mightier than the sword”
We are in big trouble with our almost totally self-serving institutions. It is ‘kinda’ late now to do anything about it as we look forward to begging for crumbs as they take our dear Gaia and most lifeforms down the tube with them.
What is the planet worth to you?
Feb 15th
The Gift of Good Land, Wendell Berry, 1981, Counterpoint,USA
“The forest could not survive because we could not see it; we saw clear fields. The prairies could not survive because in their place we saw cornfields and pastures sowed to the cool-season grasses of the old world. And this habit of assigning a higher value to what might be than to what is has stayed with us, so that we have continued to sacrifice the health of our land and of our own communities to the abstract values of money making and industrialism.” pg 82
I enjoyed bed and breakfast at the Farmhouse B&B in Barwick near Yeovil this last Friday and Saturday nights. The breakfast room contains a fantastic library of literature, history, politics, religion, some fiction and much more. I happened to pick up this book and found the quote above. Barwick is just a hamlet. There I found the peace and quiet I crave more and more as the years grow on me. With the quiet and time to reflect, I let myself become somewhat depressed over the impact and truth of the above.
In my book, Planet as Self, I ask: why do we not love the Earth, Gaia? My answer is that it is because we don’t know who we are. We have lost the connection, the realisation perhaps of our higher self, the self that is the planet. We are taught that we live ON a planet when actually, we are the planet similar to how the leaves are the tree. Think about it, is the tree its roots? Is it its trunk, branches, bark? All these so called parts – as human language labels them – are the tree.
We are taught, as unbelievable as it may appear to some, that the planet is inanimate – dead, with live bits clinging to the surface. Stop and think about it, please. How does life emerge from non-life? There attempts to explain this, for instance, the hot bubbly, chemical soup that just happened to spring forth life. Emergent properties within matter. It may be our dichotomies that obscure our vision, our understanding. Those same people who go with the emergent properties story must agree that science will not and perhaps cannot agree as to just what it is life and what is not life. Without that answer, then to say that life just emerges from within somewhere, somehow doesn’t really help us much to understand existence.
At the present moment in history, there is far more evidence to support the idea of a living planet, a conscious planet than the idea of inanimate matter that just happened to conjure up life from non-life. The Gaia theory suggests that the Earth behaves as if it is a living organism. Many scientists agree on this. “As if.” However, let us be honest with ourselves, if it walks like a turtle, looks like a turtle, eats what turtles like to eat, pulls in its head and feet when threatened, then it is a turtle. Why not? How else do you recognise a turtle?
“We will not fight to save what we do not love.” Stephen Jay Gould. Yes, Stephen has a good point here. As long as the planet is “out there.” As long as we feel the separation and continue to think that Nature is to be somehow overcome and controlled we will remain still. I ask myself, how much sacrifice is the planet worth? I am not happy with my answer, are you happy with yours?
Tax Fairness
Feb 14th
President Obama: “Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much tax as his secretary… that’s just common sense”
Sky: It is difficult to disagree on this point isn’t it?
He also said: “In theUnited States of America, a teacher, a nurse, or a construction worker who earns $50,000 a year should not pay taxes at a higher rate than somebody making $50 million. That is wrong.”
Republican leaders, who portray Mr Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal stoking class warfare, have pronounced the budget dead on arrival.
Sky: Let’s not forget the 25.4 million millionaires. What a different world if they paid the same percentage tax as a secretary.