Green thought, in a green shade, Green views The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy) |
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
The Goodies
good television
good movies
good books
good poetry
more good books
good songs
good children
good boys
good people
good leaders

Try a lucky dip:

Strange
Bedfellows
John Howard
Kevin Rudd
Al Gore
George Bush
Malcolm Turnbull
Leon Trotsky
Thomas Huxley
Oliver Goldsmith
Kurt Vonnegut
Tony Blair
Samuel Pepys
Winston Churchill
Peter Costello
Joan of Arc
Fidel Castro
Sarah Williams
Peter Beattie
Ned Ludd
De-Anne Kelly
Barack Obama
Kylie Minogue
Tony Abbott
Alexander Downer
Barbaro
Sam Kekovich
Alan Bennett
Osama bin Laden
Rupert Murdoch
George Lakoff
Bjorn Lomborg
Adolf Hitler
Ayn Rand
George Orwell
Julia Butterfly Hill
Saddam Hussein
James Carville
Charles Darwin
Philip Cooney
Jacky Kelly
Irshad Manji
James Lovelock
Bob Hawke
Brendon Nelson
Barnaby Joyce
Robert Menzies
Robert Tressell
Slim Dusty
Noel Coward
Samuel Johnson
Walt Whitman
Edmund Hillary
Robert Byrd
Phillip Adams
Alisa Camplin
Arnold Schwarzeneger
Blogger's Cut
Best slices from the watermelon
Future to the back
Ox power
Whacko Texas
Ticked off
Inhaling the Sixties
God unwilling
Bakers Oven 5
Game over
All change for
Dog bites man
Whale tears
Flowers for bosses
Curtin spinning
Gotta love it
Dodgy intelligence
A glass darkly
Truth and consequences
Media-ocrity
Cant get me Im part of the society
Growing like woody weeds in the nanny state
|
During the recent visit of Mark Latham to the Tasmanian forest a union official of the forestry workers was interviewed and said that the issue was simple, it was 'Spirituality versus jobs'. No question in his mind that the answer was 'jobs'.
Now this simple comment so beautifully highlights the public misconception about conservation of the environment that it deserves comment (although even if you thought it was true, imagine the case of a building worker's union observing that there was a shortage of land for building in the cities and that it was essential that churches be bulldozed and graveyards ripped up to make room for apartment blocks and shopping centres, and commenting that the issue was 'spirituality versus jobs').
There may well be people who have a spiritual dimension to their feelings about forests, just as there are people who have a spiritual dimension to feelings about V8 cars or Collingwood football, but the small number of such people are completely irrelevant to the reasons for the environmental movement. The union official seems to think that 'the environment' is over there somewhere. That piece of remaining forest is the environment and we can choose whether to clearfell it or not. But we would only choose to keep it, he thinks, because some people see that bit as like a church. No jobs or money in churches of course.
But the environment isn't that bit of forest, it is the world we live in, all of us, including union officials. In order for us to live in it the planet has to be capable of supporting life (unlike Mars or Venus). The only reason it can support life is that all of the living things that make up the environment - trees, bacteria, birds, fungus, grasses, ferns, frogs, insects, spiders, kangaroos, worms and so on - keep the soil and the air in a stable condition by circulating water and oxygen and nutrients.
So much damage has already been done to the environment, all over the world, not just in Australia, that it is in danger of losing its ability to support life, including human life. The global warming, and the rise in salinity, are just two of the symptoms that things are breaking down. It is as if someone took a sledge hammer to a V8 car and kept smashing off bits, each time saying 'look, it is still working. I can keep smashing a bit longer'. When environmentalists say it is time to stop clearing the last bits of Australian forests they are not saying it for spiritual reasons but for reasons of survival - for all of us, whether we are in a union or not. If the answer to jobs in Tasmania is to keep clearing forests then someone is asking a fatally wrong question.
{ Post a Comment }
{ Last Page } { Page 717 of 936 } { Next Page }
|
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
People listen!
Browse recent entries (below), or select a
Category
Climate change Crop Marks (my novel) Dream Economics Education Environment Evolution Fire Health History Conquerors Infrastructure Iraq Media Nuclear power Politics federal Politics general Religion Rural life Shepherds Calendar The Arts Values Water
"We do not choose our convictions, but they choose us and force us to fight for them to the death." (Wedgewood Benn)
Recent Entries
Eyes Right This is the schoolroom I see dead people Sailing down the river Just Imagine More Jam tomorrow Just imagine Dr Yes He is baaa-ack Say Aaaaah Mirror mirror on the wall Louis et moi Eternal truths Quiddities and quillets I see your $10 billion and raise ... No going back Must try harder Smile for the camera Animal crackers Room with no view Petrol Tales Costs nothing to be civil Just like money in the bank I heard the news today If a sparrow falls
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)

Links
Huffington Post The Greens Common Dreams Australia Institute The Nation Independent Guardian Truth Dig Edge New Matilda Global warming Kitchen gardeners Conservation International Diggers Club Community Suported Agriculture Voiceless Toronto Globe International fund for animal welfare Humane Society Concerned Farmers Network Worldwatch Institute George Monbiot Sierra Club Aust Inst Health & Welfare Parks Association NSW Gun control Aust Council of Social Service Aust Council for Educational Research Education Network Australia Rural Australians for Refugees Greenpeace Bush Heritage Geoff Davies Naomi Klein BBC Mother Jones Tom Paine John Quiggin Human Rights Watch Amnesty International Doctor's Reform Society Dissent magazine David McKnight Aust Film Institute True Food Network Get up United Nations Assn Arms trade protest Michael Osborne Lee Rhiannon Intnl Peasant Movement World Conservation Union Biological Farmers of Australia Natural Sequence Farming Union of Concerned Scientists Rockridge Institute Climate action now Climate Ark Sustainable Population Australia Global warming blog Zero Footprint Charles Darwin Mars Climate Institute Jeremy Rifkin Gene ethics (GM) Slow Food movement Darwin Awards Stern Review Bob Brown Baghdad blogger Web Diary (Margot Kingston) Real Climate (science of climate change) Spatial literacy Oil and energy Stop global warming Wilderness Society Columbia Journalism Review NSW Rural Fire Service Google Book Search World Public Opinion Reporters without borders Doctors without borders Which? UK Choice Australia Energy Science Womankind Worldwide Work Foundation Rocky Mountain Institute Sustainable Development Commission International Forum on Globalisation Democratic Audit Australia Stem Cells Emily's List Electoral Commission Turning the pages Domesday Book W.I.R.E.S. Women's Electoral Lobby Leakey Foundation Richard Dawkins Intnl Agricultural Research Alpine ecology SETI at home Rare breeds Friends of the Earth Revolutionary women Afghanistan Nature & Society forum Sceptic's Society Republican Movement Tom Dispatch City of Joy aid Mumble (Peter Brent) NASA - Mars Murray-Darling Commission Marine Conservation Well Being Live science Women's Health Children & Youth World weather The Progressive Lester Brown Australian Archives Jay Rosen (Press think) World Policy Health & Global Environment Surtees Genealogy (IGI) Free census (UK) Genealogy mailing lists Farmer John Steve Waugh Jane McGrath Meteorology Global Fund for Women One World network Red Cross RSPCA Camp Quest Humanists Pierre Tristam Landscape design Creative non-violence human extinction movt Witness Save our rivers Terry Jones No sweatshops IPCC Forest Stewardship Global Security Bad science Green building Energy [r]evolution Free the bears Pamela Poole Press Emblem Inst. for Public Accuracy Progress Iraq oil Atheists of Florida Museum of Woman International Women's Day Rodale Institute David Michael Green Good LIfe Center Food First Robert Dreyfuss Oxfam Jubilee Debt campaign Astronomy photos Rock Ethics Institute Linda O'Brien Foreign policy in focus Global giving Rare species ringtones Biofuel dangers Commercial free childhood Tom Tomorrow Environment & Development Robert Kennedy Memorial Sustainability Institute Idealists Book Mooch Irish Radio Show Step it up David Korten Intnl Forum Globalization WIMN's Voices Blog Crooked Timber blog Earth Rights Intnl Women's Media FireDogLake blog Anti War Christopher Brauchli Robert Koehler Science Blog Green alliance Wildlife Coalition charity donations Idealists Aid Watch Solartopia Women blogging Envt Management Systems Fund for Peace Away with Words Peace Direct De Smog Blog UN climate change Water treaty Francophiles Peter Martin Question everything Story of stuff
Contact me directly -
greenviews at optusnet.com.au
Or subscribe to RSS feed
Subscribe
Site feed at http://www.blognow.com.au/ rss.php?w=mrpickwick

|