Written by OCA board member Bob Vreeland: I pledge allegiance to the trees, which help give me the oxygen I breathe, And to the roots that hold the soil, so salmon streams do not get spoiled. Biodiversity under their shade, with clean water and a stable climate for all.
Pledge: Fight On
So I invite you to join me in this pledge: I will fight on, even as the waters rise and the deserts advance. I will never give up, never be passive or defeatist, even as the beauty of this living world of ours is eroded and degraded. I reject survivalism and other self-centered approaches, and …
Not Too Late
We know the difference between the best and worst case scenarios matters. We know that the future is being decided in the present. We know that a lot of people are overwhelmed by doom and gloom. It is not too late. At the same time, we are not here to avoid the worst news. We …
Clallam County’s District 1 Commissioner Mark Ozias’s heartfelt speech for Earth Day 2022
Reading part of Amanda Gorman's poem, "Earthrise," Commissioner Ozias shared his vision for our county by recognizing our common cause and emphatically explaining how the people's government must be part of the solution. Many changes are happening already to shrink our county's carbon footprint and prepare for climate change, Ozias noted at the Earth Day …
Balancing Diversity with Globalization
Inscription carved into the Student Union Building at Gonzaga University.
Reconnect, be present, be of service
Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World
Warmth is a new kind of book about climate change: not what it is or how we solve it, but how it feels to imagine a future--and a family--under its weight. At once a memoir, a love letter, and an electric work of criticism. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2021 BY THE NEW YORKER AND …
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“I Have Decided to Stick with Love”
Martin Luther King Jr. When my anger, frustration, and fear begin to cross over into hate, MLK’s words help bring me back"Christine Hanna — Yes! Magazine executive director Dear Reader, Today, I am thinking about love. A fraught, confusing, full-of-potential kind of love. It’s like this: I’m writing to you on the birthday of Martin …
Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation Your foundation for strength and resilience Author of Drawdown, and his new book Regeneration Regeneration with Paul Hawken (Free 5-Day Pass) Commusings: with Paul Hawken In this course, you’ll discover + learn about: Global warming myths and mistakesWhat regeneration means and why it’s key to ending the …
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Who Knew?
VERY INTERESTING STUFF In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have 'the rule Of thumb' Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented. It was ruled 'Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden'...and thus, …
First Grade Wisdom
An elementary school teacher had twenty-six students in her class. She presented each child in her classroom the first half of a well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. It's hard to believe these were actually done by first graders. Their insight may surprise you. While reading, keep …
Amanda Gorman recites her poems
Earthrise: A Poem About Climate Change by Amanda Gorman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOvBv8RLmo&feature=youtu.be Amanda Gorman recites her poem at inauguration Amanda Gorman -- Wikipedia Like Mr. Biden, Gorman has struggled with a speech impediment throughout her life, making poetry a "lifeline" for her. Also like Mr. Biden, she has a long-term goal of running for president.-- CBS Amanda …
23 Amazing Comparison Maps
Click to enlarge -- Back to Return Size Comparison Between Australia And The United States Click to enlarge -- Back to Return Tracking Of An Eagle Over A 20 Year Period Click to enlarge -- Back to Return Blue States Have A Smaller Population Than Los Angeles County Click to enlarge -- Back to Return …
How can we make our economy work for everyone?
What would a sustainable, universally beneficial economy look like? Like a doughnut says Oxford economist Kate Raworth https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow?language=en This talk was presented at an official TED conference,and was featured by our editors on the home page. In a stellar, eye-opening talk, she explains how we can move countries out of the hole -- where people …
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Ancestral Waters (2019) a Water Protector Documentary
Ancestral Waters is a Documentary of the Puyallup Tribes fight for their treaty, their water and their way of life. For 164 years, since the signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty, they have had to fight for the guarantees implicit in it. We have stood and continue to stand at the side of tribal members …
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Yarns From the Farm — A Climate Basics Series
Nan Bray is an oceanographer and climate scientistwho has farmed superfine merinos near Oatlands, Tasmania since 2000 This is a series on climate change that I’ve written for our local monthly newsletter, the Southern Midlands Regional News. I wanted to go back to the basics of the science behind climate change.Cheers, Nan A Climate Basics …
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We love Orcas
The Teaching of the Dams
It took nearly a century for people in Clallam County to decide that damming the Elwha River was a mistake, although the tribal people had opposed the notion all along. But finally the day arrived for the big ceremony to begin the process of the largest damn removal project in the history of our country. …
Transmutation of Mind and Heart
Meanderings from a Beach Walk By Jodi Riverstone | September 2020 There’s something about spending time present near the ocean that slows the body down to be closer in rhythm with the tide. A welcome and overdue respite from what has been a trying season. I relished long walks on the beach the two days …
Breanna Draxler interviews author Eric Holtaus
Breanna Draxler is the climate editor at YES! How do we get where we need to go, from where we are today? Excerpts from the interview: “The old world has fallen away, and there’s not yet a clear vision of what the new world is going to be,” “There needs to be a picture of …
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Climate Girl knows too much!
Comix by OCA member Cathy Lear, recent Climate Reality training grad: Stranded in Paradise: http://Pixton.com/ic:jlwcpvfm Pesky visitors: http://Pixton.com/ic:1f0dz96k
Greta Thunberg: Humanity has not yet failed
Sommar & Vinter i P1 | Jun 20 - 75 min. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7E2Wz3C5XwtEw3Pi96tLQA?si=gOHyk4gOSMGxKcgdaoc4lg Spotify URL - https://open.spotify.com/episode/7E2Wz3C5XwtEw3Pi96tLQA?si=gOHyk4gOSMGxKcgdaoc4lg Episode Description Climate activist Greta Thunberg urges world leaders to do more. Doing our best is no longer good enough. We must now do the seemingly impossible, Thunberg says in the Swedish Radio show Summer on P1 where she …
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Large-size Cardboard Resource
I have two boxes once used to ship aluminum fencing. Four or more large pieces, as large as 4 feet x 6 feet are available for: SignsPostersTable-top backgroundsScore them to accordion-fold Paint them for impact, cut them into shapes. Use your imagination Thursday, June 11, 2020 I will update availability as the cardboard is dispensed. …
OMG! look at that honeybee swarm!
Quick, call Noelle! 360-280-4594 | noellenordstrom.oly@gmail.com | #beeallaboutit Hello neighbors, my name is Noelle and I am a hobbyist beekeeper who moved here last fall. I live on 9th street in Port Angeles. Alas, my bee colonies did not survive the winter. Since I am renting, I decided not to purchase bees this year and …
“All Earth Life Matters”
Go to Earth Day Home Go to Inspire Art Projects Reaching out and fostering awareness in Earth care and concerns within the community has been what the supporting visual art projects have been about all along. Then along came covid-19 and everything was upended on its ear….so to speak...and we continue to move through the …
350.org Crowd-sourced Music Video Project
From: Ahlay Blakely (The People’s Echo, 350 Seattle), Austin Smith (Video, 350 Seattle), David Solnit (Art.350.org) Hello!Song is feeling extraordinarily elemental right now more than ever. What are some of the oldest songs you can remember? Song is history: slavery, abolition, civil rights, fair wages, the American Indian Movement just to name a few. Songs are like tiny …
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And People Stayed Home
“And people stayed homeand read books and listenedand rested and exercisedand made art and playedand learned new ways of beingand stoppedand listened deepersomeone meditatedsomeone prayedsomeone dancedsomeone met their shadowand people began to think differentlyand people healedand in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,dangerous, meaningless and heartless,even the earth began to healand when …
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith These are very difficult times for so many. I have been very touched by the messages that I have received from readers, many of whom are isolated now and are renewing their friendship with Mma Ramotswe and the others.I have written a poem especially for this moment, and the text is below. …
Untitled
What if you thought of itas the Jews consider the Sabbath—the most sacred of times?Cease from travel.Cease from buying and selling.Give up, just for now,on trying to make the worlddifferent than it is.Sing. Pray. Touch only thoseto whom you commit your life.Center down. And when your body has become still,reach out with your heart.Know that …
An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans
Stop. Just stop. It is no longer a request. It is a mandate. We will help you. We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt. We will stop the planes the trains the schools the malls the meetings the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our …
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Interrupting the bad news with kindness
A Democrat and a Republican were on a plane It sounds like a set up to a political joke, doesn’t it? It’s actually real. On a recent four hour-flight to Chicago, my seatmate and I enjoyed something that has become rare in these times: a civil exchange of ideas and a surprising consensus. He was …
Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal
Grassroots Rising by Ronnie Cummins, founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association, will be available January 28. This is one of the most important books Chelsea Green has published, and we are offering activists and organizations the special discounts listed below. $17.95 paperback – 208 pages – ISBN 9781603589758 – Available January 28, 2020 …
Chicago Review of Books — Burning Worlds
The Man Who Coined ‘Cli-Fi’ Has Some Reading Suggestions For You by Amy Brady -- February 8, 2017 “Burning Worlds” is a new monthly column dedicated to examining important trends in climate change fiction, or “cli-fi.” It astonishes to think just how long humans have known that the Earth is getting warmer. The term “global warming” didn’t enter …
Nature is Speaking
Nature doesn't need people.People need Nature.Nature holds at least a third of the solution to climate change. What Force Of Nature Are You? Sky -- Joan ChenIce -- Liam NeesonMountain -- Lee PaceWater -- Penelope Cruz Flower -- Lupita Nyong'o The Soil -- Edward NortonForest -- Shailene WoodleyThe Ocean -- Harrison FordHome -- Reese WitherspoonCoral …
Here: Poems for the Planet
Here: Poems for the Planet is a lovesong to a planet in crisis. Summoning a chorus of over 125 diverse poetic voices—including Mary Oliver, Robert Hass, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ross Gay, W.S. Merwin, Natalie Diaz, Kimiko Hahn, and others—this anthology approaches the impending environmental crisis with a sense of urgency and hopefulness.
“The Road And The Sky”
While listening to Jackson Brown's album "Late for the Sky" for the ump-teenth time, the words of "The Road and the Sky" suddenly registered with my new climate activism. In 1974, he was singing about climate change and I hadn't noticed. Listening with "new ears", I realized he was telling the story of our time. …
Kierkegaard’s parable
A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world is going to end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, …
“Chopping down our fence for fuel”
In 1931, the year he died, Thomas Edison told Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, his retirement neighbors in Florida: "We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind, and tide. I’d put my money on the sun and …
September 20th
Leviathans in the Harbor
More and bigger cruise ships are crowding coastal destinations. When is enough, enough? Who gets to decide? by Brian Payton , August 27, 2019, Hakai Magazine 'Knoll Lowney, the lawyer representing the three plaintiffs who claimed they were victims of Carnival’s environmental violations, said, “Time and time again, Carnival has shown its contempt of environmental laws and the …
DNC votes down a Climate Debate
Today the DNC voted down holding a climate debate. Evan Weber of the Sunrise Movement was in the room and live tweeted the conversation. The link below is that thread. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1165334843221168128.html
Bill McKibben
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages …
Thomas Friedman
"Thank You for Being Late" An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers.Thomas Friedman shows that we have entered an age of dizzying acceleration–and explains how to live in it.
The Climate Museum’s poetry slam
Watch These Young Spoken-Word Poets Take On Climate Change The Climate Museum’s poetry slam at Harlem’s Apollo Theater was equal parts grief, anger, and hope.
August Meditation for Climate Emergency
August Meditation for Climate Emergency – Sun, Aug 11, 2019 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM PDT — The Climate Mobilization Join our webinar for this hour of meditation and conversation about the personal side of the climate crisis. We'll be debriefing our experience asking the question "how do you feel about the climate emergency?" and …
‘And a Child Shall Lead Them,’ or: How This Boomer Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Green New Deal
‘And a Child Shall Lead Them,’ or: How This Boomer Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Green New Deal Ross Macfarlane 'I am talking to my peeps: those of us who get the science, care deeply about the environment and the need for climate action, and are filled with both disgust and determination at …
I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle.
I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle. Stop obsessing over your environmental “sins.” Fight the oil and gas industry instead. By Mary Annaise Heglar Updated Jun 4, 2019, 9:33am EDT 'When people come to me and confess their green sins, as if I were some sort of eco-nun, I want …
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Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment
Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’ Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington Fri 17 May 2019 05.39 EDT
THIS LAND IS NOT YOUR LAND. OR MINE.
FIRST PERSON THIS LAND IS NOT YOUR LAND. OR MINE. By Mary Annaïse Heglar "The iconic folk song has become an anthem for the predominantly white environmental movement. But can a colonized nation built on the backs of slaves ever really make that claim?" https://www.damemagazine.com/2019/04/16/this-land-is-not-your-land-or-mine/
Green Drinks
How Google, Microsoft, and Bit Tech are Automating the Climate Crisis
Author: Brian Merchant Source: Gizmodo 'These deals, many of which were made just last year, at what may be the height of public awareness of the threats posed by climate change, are explicitly aimed at streamlining, improving, and rendering oil and gas extraction operations more profitable.' Full Article: How Google, Microsoft, and Bit Tech are Automating …
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“What matters is am I doing the right thing?”
“It’s so easy to look at the big picture and get completely disheartened. … What we need to remember is what is my own personal moral obligation. When I wake up each day thinking about what I might do from that perspective … when I come at it from a deep sense of moral obligation, …
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Voice from time immemorial
This "letter from an orca" was published in today's Seattle Times, with a thought-provoking twist at the end: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/orcas-and-a-way-of-life/
Dr. Guenther Twitter Thread
On talking about climate change https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089899109509672965 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089900347433328647 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089901090898878464 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089902486159278080 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089903691795218432 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089904734339846144 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089906253793501186 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089907595652067328 https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1089908959631343618
Greta Thunberg’s full speech
Greta Thunberg in Davos
2007 Logos
by Scott T. Starbuck When I complain to the old man about rising gas prices, he says “I want $10 a gallon.” “Why?” is the obvious question. “Because I love birds,” he says. At the time, I thought him insane but now I think most everyone else is.
How We Stopped Corporate Psychopaths from Cooking Planet Earth
For Mary DeMocker By Scott T. Starbuck We planted trees everywhere at once.Facebook posted only the words “Go outside.” “Destroy Your Television Day” grew more popular than Xmas and the 4th of July. Children of execs saw themselves as global citizensand despite every temptation and distraction disowned their wayward parents.ExxonMobil became BlueOrbSolar. Each country committed to …
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Thoughts at the End of Empire
by Scott T. Starbuck It’s possible future generations will destroyour art, literature, music, film, and corporations, in bitternessfor allowing ecosystem collapse, and mistrust for how many leaderswere distracted, apathetic, selfishignorant, or insane with money and power. It’s possible future generations will redefinefamily, community, work, value, happiness,life, dirt, success. It’s possible education will change from locking …
Wind Spirit
by Scott T. Starbuck Wind Spirit said to the man, “I will ask a question, and each day you give the wrong answer, I will take a finger. The question is hard, requiring much reflection, and self-purification. I don’t know how many fingers you will lose. That is up to you. How will you save …
Science of a Meaningful Life: Top 10 Insights of 2018
These are the most provocative and influential findings published during this past year.
Best Books of 2018 for a Meaningful Life
The year’s must-reads help to weather hard times and make a difference in the lives of those around us.
Native Skywatchers
Bringing Together Cultural and Scientific Knowledge of the Stars This workshop builds on combined decades of experience in what we come to call “duallearning” – the weaving together of cultural and scientific knowledge, stories, and hands-on activities in an environment where neither is dominant over the other and resonance between the two is easily found. …
“The 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life”
By Karen Armstrong The Compassion Campaign of Clallam County is co-sponsoring this 2019 Compassion Winter Read As a scholar of world religions, Armstrong extends an invitation to explore the particular place of compassion in religious and ethical teachings. She specifically focuses on the Golden Rule as expressed in each one, which served as common ground …
Conservation International Presents
Nature is Speaking Featuring short films personifying Nature, narrated by folks we know well. JOAN CHEN is SkyPENELOPE CRUZ is WaterHARRISON FORD is OceanLIAM NEESON is IceEDWARD NORTON is SoilLUPITA NYONG´O is FlowerLEE PACE is MountainROBERT REDFORD is RedwoodJULIA ROBERTS is Mother NatureIAN SOMERHALDER is Coral ReefREESE WITHERSPOON is HomeSHAILENE WOODLEY is Forest
Moving the Country Towards Emergency Climate Mobilization, Together
Dear Olympic Climate Action, thank you so much for supporting The Climate Mobilization! We are a small but fierce organization that advocates the strongest, fastest, sanest approach to the climate crisis. Because of your support, we are moving the country toward mobilization. A few highlights: April 16, 2016 Bernie Sanders calls for WWII scale climate …
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The Madhouse Effect
Publisher's Book Description The award winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have fought at the frontlines of climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the unconscionable play to partisanship on issues that affect …
Here’s a way to fight climate change: Empower women
This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. “Gender and climate are inextricably linked,” said environmentalist and author Katharine Wilkinson on stage at TEDWomen last week, a gathering of women thought leaders and activists in Palm Desert, California. Women, she says, are disproportionately affected by climate change. …
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Books We Love Best in 2018
Sightline staff shares their most memorable reads of the year, including fiction, sci-fi, poetry, and more. Author: Anne Christnovich (@anne_c_1234) on December 14, 2018 at 5:37 am If you or someone you know is the kind of person who calls winter “reading season,” this list is for you. If you or someone you know is …
Greta Thunberg’s speech
You should watch Greta Thunberg's speech to the UN plenary session at COP24 if you haven't seen it yet. Or if you have, watch it again. It is that powerful.
Shared sacrifices of the past show way forward on climate
Remembrance Day Shared sacrifices of the past show way forward on climate Remember the extraordinary resolve our society showed the last time it faced an existential threat Opinion by Robert Green RicochetNOVEMBER 10, 2018
Their future is in our hands
Please pay attention...please get involved in this most important decision-time for this nation...please get everyone you know to do the same. A plea from our kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Jhj3MX1WU And a plea from our brothers and sisters under the sea: http://forthewild.world/listen/kurt-russo-on-the-people-under-the-sea91 https://omtimes.com/2018/08/tahlequah-grief-animal-kingdom/
Rules of camp – from Standing Rock
Bill McKibben: To slow down climate change, we need to work together
Confessions of a Monkeywrencher
Leonard Higgins explains why he broke the law to protect the climate "My hope is that more and more of us, including this court, will see and feel the emergency and pull together to demand immediate changes to reduce our carbon emissions and the other responses needed to avoid the worst." Leonard Higgins gave the following …
A Plea for Initiative 1631
by volunteer Don Steinke, with the Washington State Sierra Club: Can We Save Civilization As We Know It? A Plea for Initiative 1631 We’ve waited thirty years for Congress to act on global warming. We’ve waited enough. Some scholars are saying it is too late to save civilization as we know it, but I believe …
Declaration of Independence from Fossil Fuels
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary to dissolve our dependence on fuels that have driven so much human development, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that we should declare the causes which impel us to the dissolution. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, …
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Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
Originally published in 2004, with a new foreword and afterword, Solnit’s influential book shines a light into the darkness of our time. Bill McKibben says: “Literary and progressive America is in a Solnit moment.” Using historical examples for perspective, Solnit weaves a sometimes metaphorical tale which reinforces the reader’s commitment to bring about change. Here …
It’s up to you
From Hi Times, Sequim High School Business English Class, Vol. II, No. 10, April 10, 1931, displayed at the Sequim Museum and Art Center. This class included Joe Rantz, who went on to win the Olympic 8-man rowing competition in Berlin in 1936, beating Hitler's Nazi team in spite of illness and underhanded officiating. The …
Declaration of Independence from Fossil Fuels
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary to dissolve our dependence on fuels that have driven so much human development, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that we should declare the causes which impel us to the dissolution. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, …
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On Climate Change, Interconnectedness, and Tolerating Risk
by Emily Johnston. Cross-posted from the Climate Defense Project. The Climate Defense Project is part of the legal team providing support to Emily and the other valve turners. ______ A certain kind of anxious question comes almost every time we give a talk as “the Valve Turners”: Why would you take such a risk? What brought you …
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On the Fifth Day, A poem about the presidency.
On the fifth day the scientists who studied the rivers were forbidden to speak or to study the rivers. The scientists who studied the air were told not to speak of the air, and the ones who worked for the farmers were silenced, and the ones who worked for the bees. Someone, from deep in …
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Four laws of ecology
One of Barry Commoner's lasting legacies is these four laws, written in The Closing Circle in 1971: 1. Everything is connected to everything else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all. 2. Everything must go somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to …
At the root
Earthjustice attorney Vawter "Buck" Parker, looking back over his 40-year career involving environmental battles on every subject, from wilderness to nuclear power to human health, realized that beneath the complexity was an underlying unity: "The root cause is so often the same: the desire of some to reap the benefits while imposing the costs on …
Hitchhiker’s Guide to Climate Change
An artistic tour-de-force by local family physician Ned Hammar (notes here):
We need a science of limits
"Human limitlessness is a fantasy. . . . Our great need now is for sciences and technologies of limits. . . . We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one." --Wendell Berry
Get the money out–yes on I-735
wamend.org/ facebook.com/WAmend.org twitter.com/WAmend_I735
“Greatest dereliction in the history of the Republic”
The United States' response to the climate crisis has been beyond pathetic. It is probably the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic. James Gustave ("Gus") Speth, former Chair of the President's Council on Environmental Quality , New York Times 2015-05-15.
Let’s not waste our time on deniers
"Science is real and verifiable, With the health of our families and our futures at stake, the American people expect us to act on the facts, not spend precious time and taxpayer money refuting manufactured uncertainties." EPA administrator Gina McCarthy speaking before the National Academies of Science, 4/28/14
First in, last out
“The art of communion with the earth we can relearn from the Indian. Thus a reverse dependence is established. Survival in the future will likely depend more on our learning from the Indian than the Indian’s learning from us. In some ultimate sense we need their mythic capacity for relating to this continent more than …
What price a grandchild?
What price a grandchild? And if not what price a grandchild, then what price a grandchild’s grandchild? --UK chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, commenting on the IPCC Working Group II chapter of the 5th Assessment Report, on global impacts of climate change.
Start with love
This essay by Bruce Bode, minister of the Quimper Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship in Port Townsend, explores the question, "How do I move forward when things look so bleak?"
“If we’re wrong…”
"The worst that can happen to everybody in the world if I'm wrong and Al Gore is wrong and scientists are wrong and the U.N. is wrong ... is that we make a decision to have cleaner air, better health, more jobs and new energy independence. That's what happens. But if the guys who say …
Let’s get down to work
From David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy: It is easy...to throw up one's hands and conclude with the Kentucky farmer that "you can't get there from here." That conclusion, however, breeds self-fulfilling prophecies, fatalism, and resignation--in the face of an overwhelming need to act. We also have the historical examples of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and …
If not us, then who?
James Adcock left these thoughts on the Sightline blog (paraphrased): http://daily.sightline.org/2013/05/07/harnessing-our-dark-optimism/ 1) Even tiny little partial successes represent saving millions of human beings from death or untold suffering, including watching their children die of starvation, heat stroke, or lack of water. 2) The morality of one’s actions is not dependent on the morality, or lack thereof, …
Wendell Berry: It starts with love
"The world and our life in it are conditional gifts. We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have …
Churchill on climate change
"In the face of the plainest warnings, we have now entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We are in it now…I see great reason for intense vigilance and …
Olympic Climate Action 
