❝ honouring our earthshakers ❞ Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species – human – acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world. • writer, scientist and ecologist from rural Pennsylvania • seen by many as the patron saint of the green movement • author of Silent Spring , 1962 – a revelatory account of the damage done by unrestrained use of pesticides Rachel Carson
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Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species – human – acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.
What we must now face up to is the fact that human ethics cannot be separated from a realistic understanding of ecology.... The survival of the total ecosystem is the test of our value system.
Each of us has a creative power and vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable. Nor should we think of these as isolated from our own being or from the earth community. We have no existence except within the earth and within the universe.
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We must “reinvent ourselves, at the species level, in a way that enables us to live with mutually-enhancing relationships. Mutually-enhancing relationships - not just with humans - but with all beings so that our activities actually enhance the world. At the present time, our interactions degrade everything.
The whole universe is a blessing. All creation is a blessing. The first page of Genesis says it’s very good and we humans are part of that. But we have to act like it. We have to take responsibility.
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ(1996) • FounderoftheUniversityofCreation
SpiritualityinOaklandCA(1996)
Matthew Fox
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It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Our emotional, spiritual and cultural wellbeing and health depends on protecting the land. We cannot find our way with band-aid solutions. For Inuit, the environment is everything.
Societies and economies can be destroyed by bombs. Societies can also be destroyed by locking in every aspect of life like provision of food and water through an economic war.
It is simple, really. Human health and the health of the ecosystem are inseparable. ... We are working towards a shared vision of the future ... a vision that has poor people at its centre. And a vision which focuses action on the causes and consequences of the health conditions that create and perpetuate poverty.
I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while preserving the environment.
We should be treating, I think, the whole issue of climate change and global warming with a far greater degree of priority than I think is happening now.
The whole of science, and, one is tempted to think, the whole of the life of any thinking person, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what’s it all about?
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius... and a lot of courage... to move in the opposite direction.
We seem increasingly eager to lose ourselves within the forms of culture, society, technology, the media, and the rituals of production and consumption, but the price we pay is the loss of our spiritual lives.
Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
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Fortunately, life and its living systems offer us great teachings on how to work with a world of continuous change and boundless creativity. And foremost among life’s teachings is the recognition that humans possess capabilities to deal with complexity and interconnection. Human creativity and commitment are our greatest resources.
• recentlypublishedathirdeditionofLeadership and the New Science
Margaret Wheatley
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We need dramatic change in politics and in our attitudes. If the world had more (environmentally sensitive) leaders, we would be better equipped to handle the challenges of global warming, the decline in ocean species, biological diversity, and other global ecological issues of our time.
We (the Green Party of Canada) will move the world ahead. We will not wait for President George W. Bush. We will save the climate. Together we will stop fossil fuels from destroying our future.
I can’t conceive of anything being more varied and rich and handsome than the planet Earth. And its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it as well as I can and to absorb it and then I’d like to put it together and express it in my painting. This is the way I want to dedicate my life.
Every living being is connected intimately, and from this intimacy follows the capacity of identification and as its natural consequence, practice of non-violence... Now is the time to share with all life on our maltreated earth through the deepening identification with all life, foremost the greater units, the ecosystems and Gaia, the fabulous old planet of ours.
We know that 5 million people, most of them children, die every year from illnesses caused by poor drinking water. If we do not change our ways, by the year 2025, as much as 2/3 of the world will be living in either water-scarcity or total water deprivation.
The Concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction, and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it as “omnicide”.
It comes down to this: can we seize this opportunity, in this one place, to protect and sustain natural values of global significance, now and for ever?
I believe in the intrinsic value of the natural world. For me, that’s a good enough reason to engage in good, effective conservation of natural habitats. If more Canadians felt that good will toward nature, they would be more likely to support initiatives to conserve it.
Without doubt, the most important value at stake when we look at the earth is the principle that brings the earth back to her creator. The earth belongs to God! If, with regard to natural resources, especially under the pressure of industrialization, an irresponsible culture of “dominion” has been reinforced with devastating ecological consequences, this certainly does not correspond to God’s plan.
• Pope(1978–2005) • Actor • Priest,theologian •Leadingvoicefortheprotection
It is no accident that we’ve been born into these times, that we find our lives unfolding now with our particular histories and gifts, our brokenness, our experience, and our wisdom. It is not an accident.
Martin was fiercely intelligent. He loved the passion of “Insight:, he loved knowledge, he loved literature ...Yet he gave up the joy of that world of knowledge to live in an overly hot cinder-block shack in a poor section of a little known place between Kingston and Montego Bay among a people whose wisdom was not from books but from the soil and from generations of suffering. Like the Christ of Philippians 2: 1-11, Martin entered a poor place of this world, filled with turmoil and despair. (Monty Williams, S.J. Homily at the memorial Mass for Fr. Martin: Guleph, Ontario)