behavioral response to climate change

Although it is already a few years old, this article from the Garrison Institute is worthwhile reading in the discussion regarding our behavioral response to climate change:
 http://www.garrisoninstitute.org/combatting-global-climate-change-with-individual-behavioral-change

We have serious choices to make. Making some of those choices will inconvenience us in powerful ways. It's time to hold the personal soul-searching conversations, and decide on personal courses of action.

Some areas for consideration:

Air travel:

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/climate-change-basics/air-travel-and-climate-change/

Ways to respond:

http://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/reduce-your-carbon-footprint/travel-sustainably/

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/climate-change-basics/carbon-offsets/

But, then what?

There are long-term personal investments to make in educating ourselves about the issues at stake. 

Big-picture related issues:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001881/188198e.pdf

http://www.alternet.org/environment/ethics-climate-hope-naomi-kleins-response-elizabeth-kolberts-review-changes-everything

http://www.un-redd.org/

Thinking ethically (about the environment)

A good outline from a course at SCU: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/environmental_ethics/short-course.html

Winter Reminder

***

Reminder to Myself

Say, where would you be, if only you could?

On a winding footpath, going into a wood.

But choose wisely, know that your days can fly by.

Don't wish away jeweled hours, longing for a different sky.

Be present, know that now is the the time that you're living.

Don't lose touch with this moment, it is the one that you're given.

"value" in nature

Holmes Rolston III, one of the fathers of environmental ethics, explains his system of "valuing" in "non-anthropocentric" terms. Read about this: http://www.carroll.edu/msmillie/envethics/naturalizingvalues.htm

"According to Rolston, the "classical value theory" is anthopocentric or at least anthropogenic. Rolston describes this as "value apartheid"—the unjustifiable axiological separation of humans from nature. This is inconsistent, when we affirm that humans are not metaphysically different from nature, but axiologically different. There is a second inconsistency when we argue that we cannot know enough about the natural world to know if it is valuable, when we claim on the other hand to know that the values arise."

Read more about Rolston here:  http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rolston/Preston.htm

Internal Lighting

Internal Lighting

Only now and then is the mind clear
Opening to real internal lighting
Most of the time I miss the truth that is
Right here, right now
in all of the now, every moment.

Does this mean that most of it is
failure to see?
Or that I only see dimly, and incompletely.
Keep looking.