ecology and liberation

A new paper in The Trumpeter by Simon Appolloni, entitled

Eco-Tethered Liberation: A New Spirituality for the Anthropocene

 takes us to some important realizations. 

“While poverty and oppression continue to afflict the majority of the human world population,

anthropogenic global environmental degradation is increasingly plaguing the planet. These

realities mark our epoch, labelled by many as the Anthropocene. The situation before us could

be defined by what theologian Cynthia Moe-Lobeda aptly labels ‘complex webs of

exploitation’: they defy easy characterization and resist ready solutions. One of the major

reasons for this predicament, I suggest, is the multi-layered and interrelated nature of these

exploitations: environmental and social, individual and collective, local and global. The result is

that we can no longer compartmentalize an ethical approach to problems in our search for a

just and sustainable world. “

See more at http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/1594/1747 

Poem, for Wendell Berry

In our recent lives

We've seen so many times

When we've allowed things to be trashed.

Selling off pieces of our birthrights

Of earth's gifts, and the dignity of men and women, institutions

That once served the good.

We've watched, so often dumbstruck

As brutality reigned

Lies masqueraded as truths.

Mr. Berry, far senior to me

Holds his tongue no longer

Lets his words enact the moment.

Read on, see truth unvarnished

He's tired of waiting

Prods my consciousness awake.

                             

                                             wpm; 4-17-19

Now, read the poem "Questionnaire", by Wendell Berry, at:

 https://reflections.yale.edu/article/money-and-morals-after-crash/questionnaire

up-ending science, and news from montane glaciers

Two pieces of scientific work and the journalism linked to them are worthy of your attention:

EPA Science Panel Considering Guidelines That Up-end Basic Air Pollution Science

"Several members of a powerful science panel for the Environmental Protection Agency expressed doubt at a hearing Thursday about the long-established scientific consensus that air pollution can cause premature death."

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707166015/epa-science-panel-considering-guidelines-that-upend-basic-air-pollution-science

In another discipline, we have had some information concerning melting montane glaciers and how they contribute to sea-level rise, but a new study takes a deeper view into "how much - and how quickly they're melting":

Photo by Wikim. Commons: Frankeman

Melting glaciers contribute a third of sea-level rise

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/world-mountain-glaciers-melting-sea-level-rise/

See the paper being discussed, in Nature:

Global glacier mass changes and their contributions to sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1071-0

journey to the short grass, and ghosts - and then back to the east

I went on a journey this autumn, through a real landscape, a metaphorical one, and a literary one. 

 

These four books (below) were parts of the third component. The physical landscape was shortgrass prairie in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota, and northwestern Nebraska. There are a lot of missing pieces: one can cover many miles without encountering native people, or bison - and some native bird species are also less common and widespread than formerly. Parts of the landscape are altered in a very thorough sense. In other places, except for the lack of bison and native people, one can get at least a "feel" of the land.

Sandoz wrote Crazy Horse many years ago. But through her words, we can remember how things were. Nerburn's books - especially the trilogy below, bring us closer to present time, but with a hard look at how we have affected generations of native people in cruel and merciless ways.

And yet we're not done, it seems.  Nerburn's books will possibly make you uncomfortable if you're white - and most of us are sorely unaware of many of the things happening in "Indian country" over the past 80-90 years. If you're curious about these facts and the stories where they are embedded, please read one or two or more of them.

Then travel east to Maine, for the PBS production "Dawnland" - for an eye-opening hour:
 http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/videos/dawnland/

The Ashes of Autumn

A coat-of-many-colors
is the ash in autumn.
Will we treasure them 
When their numbers, now
are fewer?
I love their palette,
Ranging from still-green
shades, to gold, orange, and
Purple...exquisite hues.