Our interaction with the environment should have brought us humility. Instead we are arrogant.
He said:
"All my life I have heard people talking about our big brains, our capacity to learn from our mistakes and the creativity we bring to fixing them,'' he said. "Every day, at some point, this is what I hear. But I have to say that it's not what I see. "Frankly, it's time we stopped kidding ourselves. "'If the history of our engagement with this environment has taught us anything at all, it should be that we have been blind-sided by our arrogance. It should have taught us humility."
I heard this on local radio (just a bit) this afternoon. I have always enjoyed Judi's acting, but this is something else! She has rescued the song for me.
I live in a paddock that was bare when we first arrived thirty five years ago. It was covered in phalaris and there was a horse but the paddock had not been heavily grazed for some years. There were a few rose briars in amongst the rocks. No trees at all.
We planted Eucalyptus cinerea and Fred and Derick planted masses of others in between preparing to build the house. Then the drought of the early eighties took most of them. But Fred persevered and trees grew. The original survivors grew tall and large. Others crowded into bushy patches that grew larger. We took seed from Joe and Bonnie's Black Sallys, propagated them in tubes and planted on the slope to the north of the house. (not shading the house!)
Fred is still planting trees.
I befriended "Tip" the original skink who had made his way from the rocks and briars on the south to the rock wall that Fred built. We came to know his family, deciding that he was a father and the other one was the mother. (proven when I actually saw the birthing of six live youngsters).
They lived near our back door, by the steps up to the shed in the rock wall and she produced six youngsters every year. Many of the years they all survived the winter hibernation until eventually they also began to produce young. (Did other skinks migrate in?)
We were having a population explosion. We still stopped the cats from catching them if possible and grieved when watching a Kookaburra eating one. But the cats did keep the mice away.
Then we became catless. And the magpies came and carolled us. Magnificent birds each with their own personality and preferences for particular foods! "Shadda" was the first who came to the back door looking in and casting her shadow on the glass. A brownish coloured magpie whom we thought was the mother. Was she an elder who died or a young male who was cast out? We don't know. But the next year "Auntie" came with three or four young ones but the attrition rate was high and eventually there was just two. "Aloyisius" and "Caruso". Caruso was a female and is still here despite attempts to get her independent. Aloyisius was the tamest, he sat on our laps to get food, but he was cast out to fend for himself.
We no longer name the young magpies. But they use the house verandah as a playground and sing and call out for more food; a call we increasingly ignore as fat worms get taken out of the garden.
So the years went on. Now this last season brought an early heatwave which brought an echidna to the house to get some shelter from the fierce Springtime heat. We have bushland here now! The wombats are on the creek and we have seen them in the garden when the grass was very bare during the drought. Now it is just the deposits in the gateway that excite us!
Occasionally we see kangaroos over here from the paddock across the road. Yesterday one was lying under the Black Sally's.
This year (2010) the skinks have seemed worried and frightened. Perhaps we were absent too long over September as they came out of hibernation. I don't know. Last week perhaps I saw the answer. A brown snake at the bottom of the stone wall. Is this the reason for the small number of baby skinks this year and the absence of last year's group? Fred did see the snake in springtime. Summer was fortunately for us a time when we didn't see it. But then while trying to keep safe, we also don't look deliberately. We know snakes are around. And the mice are here now too. The magpies get fed muesli these days. (no, no meat) and although crested pigeons, and crimson rosellas and blue wrens help to clean up, the mice do as well. Mice (and oats) bring snakes. I learnt that when we had chooks.
When I put clothes on the line under the verandah I have to be careful of the golden orb spider that is growing rather large by the post. A wonderful web is crafted every morning and glows gold in the sunlight.
So the bushland that Fred planted is flourishing. I'm not sure if I am pleased! I liked it better when we knew the animals around us as individuals. I rejoiced at births and grieved losses.
My apologies, this one is a ramble. But life is getting complicated. Perhaps there are some resources here for you to follow up.
Tonight (Monday 15th March) was a relief. The ABC News headlined the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology report that found the climate in Australia really has been warming over the last fifty years. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/
We know the change which has happened in Burra over thirty years. 39 years is long enough to get climate data.
I was getting worried by the level of media coverage some of the nay sayers were getting.
Sunday reminded me that the inner and outer circles of status are not fixed, are not defined clearly. Who is on the outside looking in, and who is in the centre are not always easy to say. The prodigal son seems to be marginalised. But the father runs to greet him and bring him in. And the older son who has stayed at home, in the "centre", is now outside in the fields. But even here, the father goes outside to try to bring him in also.
Who is in the centre? The IPCC, James Hanson? Al Gore? or is it now the deniers, the Lord Monckton's who seem to be feted by the media. ...
Hopefully the steady statements of Bureau of Met and CSIRO people will show us who to believe. <sigh>
I am chasing up Clive Hamilton's columns written for The Drum Unleashed (on ABC) about Climate Denialists.
Where does the plethora, the deluge of climate denial come from? Why the push to make the ABC "politically correct" and to tone down their advocacy of the climate science? I was shocked by a comment from Alex Sloane on 666 local ABC radio last week in a (short) interview with James Hanson, that she had not heard anything from him or other scientists, that the scientists were quiet. I thought rather that the media were neither reading "New Scientist", or listening to their own "Science Show".
On the 23rd Hamilton wrote:
What drives denial?
What motivates the legion of climate deniers to send hate-mail? In recent years a great deal of evidence has come to light linking fossil fuel corporations with organisations that promote climate denial, but it would be a mistake to believe that the army of sceptical bloggers is in any sense in the pay of, or directly influenced by, the fossil fuel lobby.
Climate denialism has been absorbed by an older and wider political movement, sometimes called right-wing populism. Emanating from the United States, and defined more by what it fears than by what it proposes, the movement's enemies were helpfully listed in a 2004 TV ad attacking Democrat Howard Dean, whose supporters were characterised as a:
"tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show."
.....
In more recent years, the denial movement has been joined by some hard-line conservative Christian groups, including the notorious Catch the Fire Ministries and its witch-hunting pastor Danny Nalliah. According to Paul Colgan, these groups were heavily involved in the lobbying to have Tony Abbott elected as Liberal Party leader. ...
I am now wondering about connections between right wing denialism and religious fundamentalism.
As this suggests, becoming a denialist does not follow from carefully weighing up the evidence (that is, true scepticism) but from associating oneself with a cultural outlook, taking on an identity defined in opposition to a caricature of those who support action on climate change. It is the energy in this wider movement that has seen climate denialism morphing into a new form of political extremism.
Some active climate deniers possess a distinct "mindset" comprised of a certain worldview, including a narrative centered on secretive forces - variously encompassing elected leaders, scientists, scientific organisations, environmental groups and the United Nations - that are using climate science and climate policies as a cover to accumulate power with the objective of creating a world government that overrides national sovereignty and deprives citizens of their rights.
Those who hold to this worldview often feel marginalised and persecuted. It attracts the unstable and fanatical as well as those with more legitimate political grievances. For political leaders so inclined, the energy being mobilised by climate denial is a golden opportunity. Although it remains necessary for these leaders to evince a concern for the environment, and even to pretend to accept climate science, they can speak to the denialist minority using dog-whistling techniques to signal that they are really on their side.
I guess I will just have to accept the reality that Fred and I drink lattes (and chardonnay!), and we should be spending our money on a nice car rather than photo voltaics! But of course now we can actually expect to be making money from the panels. Does that make us "filthy capitalists?"
An article about the tunnels from Egypt to Gaza in the Electronic Intifada site. The worker interviewed, Abu Hanin had this comment:
I don't have a future. As it is, there is no future in Gaza. I go across the entire width of Gaza on my motorcycle in 20 minutes. How can you see a future from within a box of matches?
A Presidential address from the bishop of Liverpool to his synod has a gentle treatment of ethical disagreements within the Anglican church. It is an important way to start to think about such things!
My experience of disagreement is usually that I or the other person (both) retreat back into our attitudes and don't examine them. But Lifeline counselling taught me to look for ambiguity. If you can expose an ambiguous statement and examine it then a deeper level of truth might be exposed. In a recent episode of Compass on ABC TV (http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2820702.htm) Howard Jacobsen examined "Jesus the Jew". He taught me a lot about how young Jews are affected by my own religion.
But the big statement he made for me was that each religion has a truth about God that they hide behind and don't look to see the truth in the other. We all have some knowledge of god, but we don't acknowledge what others find of god.
If I disagree with another person, then finding out where they are coming from and why they think as they do is an important learning for me. But that also needs to be accompanied with me finding out why I think as I do. Then we might start to be able to hear one another. Then we might be able to go to another level of truth, or at least live with our differences.
"On 6th June there will be a special concert in the National Concert Hall to celebrate the 65th Birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi who remains under house arrest in Burma, held by the military junta. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She is a leader of democratic opposition to the military dictatorship; she has dedicated her life to the achievement of democracy in Burma through peaceful means. She has suffered assassination attempts, mental torture and now endless incarceration. This event is the concept of Keith Donald with whom I worked in Moving Hearts. He has gathered together a group who share the same birth year as Aung San Suu Kyi and we all plan to honour her birthday with a night of music, poetry and song."
Interesting how a birth year can unite! We share so much that has shaped a generation. May the 1945ers find it a special year!
