This is part 3 of a three part report on a major Earth Day conference held in Madison WI on April 20-21, 2010. I am using that conference as an eavesdropping opportunity: What is the larger environmental movement discussing today? Rather than go talk-by-talk, I’ve pulled out four major themes from my pages of notes. Here are the last two:
3. It’s all about us and how we treat each other.
It was, frankly, surprising to note the number of times during this conference we were told that we should be – and most of the early leaders of this movement were – concerned about people as much as about nature. Nelson himself was as much concerned with conservation of urban resources as with environmental resources. Leopold’s “land ethic” was based on a concern not only for the health of the land but for the health of the people who live on it. Read more »
While I appreciate Pastor DeYoung’s sincere desire to “build a Christian foundation” (his very good image) under the concept of Earth Day, the ‘bricks’ he is using to build that foundation, most of which were purchased somewhat uncritically from Jay Richard’s Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, could have been baked a little longer.
Here are his ‘bricks’ and my thoughts in response: Read more »
This is part 2 of a three part report on a major Earth Day conference held in Madison WI on April 20-21, 2010. I am using that conference as an eavesdropping opportunity: What is the larger environmental movement discussing today? Rather than go talk-by-talk, I’ve pulled out four major themes from my pages of notes. Here are the first two:
Yes, it’s the familiar bumper sticker saying turned on its head. An estimated 10 million people celebrated the first Earth Day but this was not an organized campaign. There was no internet to coordinate events. There was a small office in Washington DC with a miniscule budget – but the 1500 colleges and 10,000 plus schools essentially organized themselves.
Last week an innocent conversation with my friend Lowell Bliss turned to the subject of weather. See “Weird Weather Around the World“. Lowell was apparently looking for things to do that afternoon, because a couple of hours later the following post appeared on Sustain Lane. As it is a nice follow up to my original post on the subject, I’ve asked Lowell’s permission to repost it here. (Civil) comments are welcome!
Today is March 31, 2010. This is not a news report; neither is it a weather report. It is a personal narrative of a one half-hour moment in climate change history. As the story goes, I’m at a coffee shop in my hometown of Manhattan, KS. I’m on my laptop reading the news. Despite Sen. James Inhofe helping his grandchildren mock Al Gore by building a snow igloo near the Capitol, climatologists are claiming that January 2010 is the hottest January on record. (I could direct you to the horse’s mouth, but you’d be better served hearing skeptic Dr. Roy Spencer concede, “The global-average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly soared to +0.72 deg. C in January, 2010. This is the warmest January in the 32-year satellite-based data record.”) Read more »
3. It’s all about us and how we treat each other.
