Category: Earth Intelligence

Can you put a price on the beauty of the natural world?

Those who reduce nature to a column of figures play to an agenda that ignores its inherent value – and seeks to destroy it

George Monbiot

The Guardian, Monday 21 April 2014

George Orwell warned that “the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle“. This is a story of how it happens.

On the outskirts of Sheffield there is a wood which, some 800 years ago, was used by the monks of Kirkstead Abbey to produce charcoal for smelting iron. For local people, Smithy Wood is freighted with stories. Among the trees you can imagine your way into another world. The application to plant a motorway service station in the middle of it, wiping out half the wood and fragmenting the rest, might have been unthinkable a few months ago. No longer.

When the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, first began talking about biodiversity offsetting – replacing habitats you trash with new ones created elsewhere – his officials made it clear that it would not apply to ancient woodland. But in January Paterson said he was prepared to drop this restriction as long as more trees were planted than destroyed.

His officials quickly explained that such a trade-off would be “highly unlikely” and was “very hypothetical“. But the company that wants to build the service station wasn't slow to see the possibilities. It is offering to replace Smithy Wood with “60,000 trees … planted on 16 hectares of local land close to the site“. Who cares whether a tree is a hunched and fissured coppiced oak, worked by people for centuries, or a sapling planted beside a slip-road with a rabbit guard around it?

As Ronald Reagan remarked, when contemplating the destruction of California's giant redwoods, “a tree is a tree”. Who, for that matter, would care if the old masters in the National Gallery were replaced by the prints being sold in its shop? In swapping our ancient places for generic clusters of chainstores and generic lines of saplings, the offsetters would also destroy our stories.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Nature is Priceless — Economy is a Sub-Set of Nature, NOT the Other Way Round”

Greetings!

I hope this finds you well. There is a story of “unprecedented unified action” unfolding as unlikely parties have come together to protect and restore our sacred Mother Earth. First Nations, Native Americans, and their allies, in the form of ranchers, farmers, landowners, lawyers, educators, activists, environmentalists, faith and spiritual leaders and others are teaming up to stop all tar sands projects; to challenge us to confront our dependency on fossil fuels, demand that we accelerate the shift to renewable energy, and stop destroying our planet.

The recent delay by President Obama on the Keystone XL pipeline is not just connected to the courts in Nebraska; the actions in the Dakotas and Nebraska come as the most unlikely of parties are joining forces. There are international treaties being signed between sovereign nations to stop the tar sands projects from all directions. There are prayer and spiritual camps being set up along the KXL pipeline route. First Nations, Native Americans and their allies have come together to form the Cowboy Indian Alliance (CIA).  This new CIA is engaged and working cooperatively like never before to stop the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obama's 50 Wounded Knees???? from Sacred on Vimeo.

A video message – “Obama's 50 Wounded Knees????” has been prepared for President Obama reminding him of the names he was given and the promises he has made. This video message is a call to remember and awaken to our common home and shared destiny.

The new CIA has also put out a call to action – Reject and Protect – to invite everyone to come to Washington DC starting this Tuesday, April 22 through Sunday, April 27. On Tuesday April 22, Earth Day, the new CIA will ride into Washington DC and set up camp near the White House to tell President Obama to reject the pipeline.  They are building the camp on the national mall and will have tipi and water ceremonies.

The motivation to come together is not driven by the insatiable desire to continue to grow without limits, consume more of our precious resources, or produce more profits for a few. The inspiration is the fulfillment of a sacred promise to our ancestors and future generations to act as stewards of our precious planet and to summon the courage to “Warrior-Up” if needed and stand up to these risks and threats!

If you can't make it to Washington DC this week we ask that you join with us and help spread the word. It is time to Reject and Protect. Please share the Obama's 50 Wounded Knees???? video and sign up to volunteer on the Protect the Sacred website!

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Wise, this is.

Nevada range war: Western states move to take over federal land

The fight over Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cows grazing illegally on federal land is a symbol of a much larger issue: control of land in western states, where the federal government is dominant.

EXTRACT

In Salt Lake City Friday, representatives from Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Oregon, and Washington met for a “Legislative Summit on the Transfer of Public Lands.”

“Those of us who live in the rural areas know how to take care of lands,” Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder said at a news conference. “We have to start managing these lands. It's the right thing to do for our people, for our environment, for our economy and for our freedoms.”

In other words, today’s revival of the “Sagebrush Rebellion” is as much about political philosophy as it is about great stretches of the largely-arid territory west of the 100^th meridian splitting the Dakotas and running down through Texas.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Yoda: Movement Grows to End Federal Land Ownership”