I blog about environmental and social justice issues because I am very concerned about the health of the interdependent web of life of which we are a part.
Melting Arctic ice.......beautiful and frightening!
Listen carefully - Canada didn't ban the use of Agent Orange until 1985!
Video from Al Jazeera - an excellent source of news.
And , apparently, Agent Orange was used country-wide. Whatthehell???!!!! I had an epiphany - and posted about it - early last year.
A repost of what I wrote then seems to be appropriate today.
I witnessed a soul retrieval healing for a friend recently. While my friend and the healer were journeying, the beat of the drum proved almost hypnotic. I wrote the following:
The healer suggested "outside, in nature find a stick...."
Are we not nature?
Not if we live in a linear world - a poverty stricken world without mess, change or growth.
And we do everything we can to destroy life and growth: spiders, bacteria, mice ....
We clean furiously,
lay traps,
sweep away cobwebs...
and we spray pesticides and weedkiller outside.
We detest life. We detest change.
We wish to end the cycle of life - death - life.
Oh - to be a machine......
We are not machines.
We are life. Stardust . Divinity. Energy.
We scintillate and shimmer and dance and coruscate and change and
die and are born once more.
From this we create balance.
We are ordered tension.
Crystals growing - decaying - shifting - changing.
When we prevent change we prevent life.
We wish to die - permanently.
That is why we try to kill Gaia.
We desire sterility.
Complete.
Utter.
Final.
END.
No change. When we achieve that, we too will be gone.
We want that. We hate ourselves.
If we learn to love ourselves, we will save the world.
She is a part of us - we are a part of her -we need her.
So -
when we are healed of self hatred, we will be healed of world hatred.
Environmental regulation is often cast as a burden on business. Clean air standards smother firms in red tape and stifle economies already facing tough times, opponents say. But what if environmental protection actually boosted economic performance? A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that reducing ground-level ozone (a main component of smog) significantly improved worker productivity. “Our results indicate that ozone, even at levels below current air quality standards in most of the world, has significant negative impacts on worker productivity, suggesting that the strengthening of regulations on ozone pollution would yield additional benefits,” the authors note.
How big are those benefits? A back of the envelope calculation suggests that a 10 ppb reduction in the EPA’s ozone standard would translate into an annual cost savings of $1.1-billion, Mr. Neidell said.
Economic benefits from smog free air at ground level? Who'd have thought clean air could improve productivity?
Perhaps Robert Owen would have thought so. - he bought a mill named New Lanark quite some time ago. A couple of hundred years or so....
New Lanark became celebrated throughout Europe, with many leading royals, statesmen and reformers visiting the mills. They were astonished to find a clean, healthy industrial environment with a content, vibrant workforce and a prosperous, viable business venture all rolled into one. Owen’s philosophy was contrary to contemporary thinking, but he was able to demonstrate that it was not necessary for an industrial enterprise to treat its workers badly to be profitable. Owen was able to show visitors the village’s excellent housing and amenities, and the accounts showing the profitability of the mills.
His ideas didn't spread even though he prospered while and becuase he treated his employees well .( For one thing, he paid them in coin of the realm instead of in tokens. For another , he didn't employ children of three.)
Often, ideology trumps our own interests - and we behave in self-defeating ways.
It would be in our long term interests to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Why don't we?
