Category Archives: Sustainability

Respect for and care for the planet. Taking responsibility for the good green Earth.

Standing firm @ Standing Rock

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Tomorrow, December 5, is a watershed moment.

It’s the government-ordered deadline for the oil pipeline protesters to vacate the federal land where they have camped for water preservation since early 2016.

Today, the eve of the confrontation, several thousand U.S. military veterans are joining the protesters. So is a large group of religious leaders from around the country and world. Why? Because some moments are watershed moments, times when the watershed itself is in danger. Times when the earth cries out, as in the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Times like today when, according to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, “our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger.” The People’s conference document continues as follows.

We confront the terminal crisis of a civilizing model that is patriarchal and based on the submission and destruction of human beings and nature that accelerated since the industrial revolution.

The capitalist system has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profit without limits, separating human beings from nature and imposing a logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself.

Under capitalism, Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.

Capitalism requires a powerful military industry for its processes of accumulation and imposition of control over territories and natural resources, suppressing the resistance of the peoples. It is an imperialist system of colonization of the planet.

Tomorrow those who stand firm at Standing Rock face forcible removal, arrest, and violence. In this watershed moment, they will do what America’s First Peoples have always done. They will beat the drums and lift their voices in prayer to the Great Spirit, standing firm at Standing Rock to honor Mother Earth and future generations.

Today, tomorrow, and for years to come, Standing Rock will symbolize the necessary turn from a civilizing model that insists on “man over nature”. A time when we turned to believing we (the human species) are above nature.  A watershed moment when we came to see that water is us. We are water. We are nature. Nature is us.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, December 4, 2016.

 

 

Sierra Club: “#BlackLivesMatter!”

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Sierra Club, the nation’s highly respected environmental conservation and preservation non-profit, weighed in on the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile this week with this statement by Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune:

“It is impossible to not be outraged by the devastating images of black people being gunned down by police on a shockingly regular basis and it should be impossible to remain silent in the face of this sustained injustice any longer. Sadly, the tragedies that are unfolding before our eyes are just a fraction of the violence that has been happening off camera in our nation for far too long.

“The Sierra Club believes all people deserve a healthy planet with clean air and water, a stable climate and safe communities. That means all people deserve equal protection under the law and the right to a life free of discrimination, hatred and violence. Unfortunately, those aspirations and goals are not a reality in our country, and that is why that is why the Sierra Club stands in solidarity with all of those saying #‎BlackLivesMatter, demanding justice, accountability, and action to confront the racism and inequality that has allowed these tragedies to persist. We can do better and by standing together to work for the changes that are needed, we will.”

The violence on the street and the violence to the environment are cut from the same cloth.

Thanks to Sierra Club’s executive director for making the connection and taking the risks of fallout among purists donors who don’t want the Club to stray outside of its core environmental mission.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, writing from Georgetown, MT, July 8, 2016.

Verse – Night Vision

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The rotating blades make the red lights
appear to blink atop the windfarm
electrical generators far in the distance, while In the back yard the lightening bugs flash their need for love.
All our chargers need charging, too.
Electronic lives have been drained
by machines powered by dinosaurs.
Coal miners and oil rig workers
die to supply the energy we covet.
Piles of nuclear wastes surround us
glowing unblinking in the dark.

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, June 6, 2016

Earth Day 2016 – farewell to evergreens

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white-spruce-apThe tall White Spruces that add beauty to Village Point Urban Townhomes in Chaska, MN require annual treatment for spider mites. Without early spring treatment the spider mites eventually will kill all the evergreens: the arborvitaes, junipers, and pine trees.

Last week the arborist who treats the association’s evergreens told us what we didn’t want to hear. Because of rising temperature, the Greater Twin Cities Area of Minnesota will no longer be suitable habitation for the evergreens. In five years they will be dead or on their way to becoming a memory of a cooler climate in Minnesota.

It’s one thing to believe that climate change is real. It’s another to learn of a real consequence that drives it home. You have to work really hard at denial!

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Earth Day, April 22, 2016

 

Pope Francis, Climate Change, and Literacy

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Long-time friend Dan Wagner attended the Vatican consultation on climate change at Pope Francis’s invitation in recognition of Dan’s work in global adult literacy education.

Click A Papal Education to learn more about the   link between, poverty, literacy, and action on climate change.

Daniel A. Wagner is UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy, Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and Director of the International Literacy Institute.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, IL, 2015.

A Papal Education by Daniel A. Wagner – Project Syndicate

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In September, the UN and Pope Francis both called on the international community to fight poverty and preserve the environment. At the center of these efforts will be education – particularly one goal on which the world is still falling short: literacy.

Source: A Papal Education by Daniel A. Wagner – Project Syndicate

Daniel (“Dan”) Wagner is UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy, Professor of Education, and Director of the International Literacy Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and a long-time friend.

Thanks to Dan’s spouse, Mary Eno, a Ph.D. practicing psychologist in private practice and friend of Kay Stewart since junior high school, for bringing Dan’s article to our attention.

Texas Flood, Ted Cruz, and Zombie games

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The other night a professional baseball game was played during a torrential downpour at Target Field in Minnesota. Meanwhile down in Texas, historic level floods were rising.

Senator Ted Cruz, the climate change denier who opposed the bill providing disaster relief to the Northeast following Hurricane Sandy in 2013, was shouting for urgent federal assistance above and beyond ordinary disaster relief.

Back in 2013 when the victims of Sandy were in New York and New Jersey, the Senator from Texas opposed the federal government “wasting” tax payers’ money.

“This bill,” he said, “is symptomatic of a larger problem in Washington—an addiction to spending money we do not have. The United States Senate should not be in the business of exploiting victims of natural disasters to fund pork projects that further expand our debt.”

Now that the scene of the disaster has shifted to Texas, he says, “At a time of tragedy, I think it’s wrong to try to politicize a natural disaster.”

“Amen” to that!

But, then again, according to The Daily Beast on May 28,

At the moment, Cruz is playing “Plants vs. Zombies,” a game where users collect sunlight points to feed plants who fight off waves of zombies; “Candy Crush,” the puzzle game where he claims he’s in the 217th level; and “The Creeps!,” a tower defense game.

One can almost hear the voice of Senator Cruz’s predecessor, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D), crying from the grave, wondering how the zombies took over his beloved Texas.

Senator, please join the rest of us in fighting for the plants against the zombie Climate Change denier obstructionists. What’s happened in New York and New Jersey, and what’s happening now in Minnesota, Texas and Oklahoma is not a video game. “Let’s play ball!”

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN 55318

Good News! Goodbye fossil fuels

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Tesla Energy’s announcement of a global solar solution to carbon pollution is a potential game changer. Imagine the world where carbon pollution is nipped in the bud. Tesla Energy has agreed to share its technology in the interest of the planet itself. What a breath of fresh air.

Click Tesla’s Elon Musk just changed the world to hear the story.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, May 3, 2015

Climate change or just weather?

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Cyclone PamReading  The Atlantic story – “A Cyclone that Destroyed a Nation” [March 15, 2015] – about the category 5 storm that has left most of Vanuatu’s population homeless, brought to mind our earlier post, Winston Churchill on Climate Departure.

New Zealand and Australia are coming to the rescue with massive aid. The question that hovers over every compassionate relieve and rescue attempt is how many rescues it will take before “we” – the human species – plan differently for habitable habitations that take climate change as inevitable.

“The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are now entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now…” – Winston Churchill

Click A Cyclone that Destroyed a Nation to read the story in The Atlantic. Then chime in on the topic of climate change, weather, and climate departure.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 16, 2015

Shall the meek inherit the earth?

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The meek shall inherit the earth, according to the fourth Beatitude of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth” [ Gospel of Matthew 5:5].

Will they?

And, if they will, what kind of earth will they inherit? Will it be worth inheriting?

Will there be….

As in the rest of Jesus’ teachings, the contrary value system of the powerful, the rapacious, and the vested interests is turned on its head. The prevailing fourth beatitude then and now is different, the beatitude that parades under the cover of freedom from government interference:

“Blessed are the indomitable, for they will have title to the planet.”

This morning’s story “Dayton, safety rules get blasted” [StarTribune, p. 1], is a local illustration of the two sets of beatitudes playing themselves out in American public life.

The Minnesota Legislature is muscling in on the power of state agencies in a broad effort to assume more influence on everything from from water quality to health and safety regulations.

A  coalition of Republicans and DFLers from the Iron Range and rural districts say regulators are socking businesses and cities with burdensome, expensive rules in order to keep Minnesota’s water clean of sulfates, phosphorus and other contaminants.

What will be left of the Earth by the indomitable may not be worth inheriting. The StarTribune article goes on to quote a South Saint Paul legislator at a recent hearing, which makes the connection between the need environmental protection and the need for campaign finance reform. “The pollution in the system is money.”

However that may be, one thing is clear. No one owns a planet.

Only the meek deserve the inheritance we’re now wasting — the Earth to which no one owns title.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, Minnesota, March 11, 2015