December 2011 Commentary: Life of Pie: Exobiology lessons for us here on Mother Earth

Exobiology, the study of life beyond our home planet, may be extraterrestrial “pie in the sky” to many people. In light of the current economic downturn, mounting population pressures, global climate change and environmental degradation, and other problems we face, space exploration could be considered as frivolous excursion, if not wasteful adventure with taxpayers money. What does it matter that subsurface ice occurs on Mars, that Jupiter’s moon Europa has clouds and frozen seas, or that interstellar organic molecules ride upon meteors, comets and asteroids seeding new worlds with building blocks of life in unknown worlds? I find these discoveries wondrously intriguing.

November 2011 Commentary: Citizen Science and Environmental Activism: “Democracy in action”

Participatory data collection and access to resulting information is a hallmark of citizen science.  Lake owners associations, river friends, amateur astronomers, ham radio operators, Audubon’s Christmas bird count, know your local farmer networks, adopt-a-road monitors, neighborhood improvement groups such as Transition Towns and the Natural Step, and many others involving all sorts of grassroots organizations exemplify democracy in action using science. Empowering technologies such as the Internet and inclusive approaches that enable grassroots activism and bottom up community participation are emerging as powerful alternatives to business-as-usual decision-making. A citizen science initiative and environmental activism campaign in the news this month are Safecast and Tar Sands Action, respectively.

October 2011 Commentary: Seventh Fire is Lit: Help Light the Eighth Fire

In 2009 one of world’s leading climatologists, James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science at Columbia University in New York City, published Storms of Our Grandchildren:  The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.  In the same year, Daniel Wildcat (Yuchi member of Muscogee Nation) of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas and convener of the American Indian Alaskan Native Climate Change Working Group, published Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge.  These two books are important reading (think of upcoming birthdays and other gift-giving holiday opportunities) to help enlighten and transform each of us.  These books can expand our sharing circles echoing and connecting us all in a call to action on Climate Change, the most urgent environmental/social/economic issue of our time (of all time?).  Here are some memorable quotes from prominent Climate Change messengers Hansen and Wildcat:

• “Ten thousand years of good weather is over.” –James Hansen (blog posting 5 May 2009 at: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090505_TempleOfDoom.pdf)
• “Instead governments are retreating to feckless ‘cap-and-trade’, a minor tweak to business as usual.” –James Hansen (blog posting 5 May 2009)
• “Cap-and-trade is the temple of doom.” –James Hansen (blog posting 5 May 2009)
• “What the world needs today is a good dose of Indigenous realism.” –Daniel Wildcat (Red Alert! 2009)
• “We are going to have to have major changes in human cultures, especially the political and economic climates we live in.  We must reconnect our human lifeways or cultures to the places, landscapes and seascapes, where we live. I think Indigenous Peoples can offer good insights on how to develop societies that promote and develop systems of life-enhancement. The good news is the political and economic climates are changing ever so slightly in favor of allowing experiments in Indigenous ingenuity – ‘indigenuity’.” –Daniel Wildcat (Present Magazine, 20 April 2010 at: http://presentmagazine.com/full_content.php?article_id=3011&full=yes&pbr=1)

September 2011 Commentary: Weed seeds of change: Rose by any other name?

Sometimes it is difficult to “bloom where you’re planted”.  Some seeds wither and die in inhospitable pockets where conditions for growth and expression are impossible.  Others may survive, but remain dormant until conditions change to allow them to germinate and flourish.  Seed dispersal via wind, water, animals, and human transport helps introduce diversity and extend home range as strategies of survival.  This geographic distribution or movement can be perceived as desirable (fewer pests, diseases, predators in new environments for enhanced growth and vitality of interesting newcomers) or undesirable (invasive disruptors of local ecosystem stability as alien weeds).

August 2011 Commentary: Business-as-usual economic Rx?

An April 2011 (Earth Day) release of US postal stamps feature a variety of “Go Green” activities such as recycling, hanging wash to sun-dry, composting, bicycling and others.  This government campaign may have good intentions, but how about using e-mail and buying less stuff instead, rather than promoting the same, tired “business-as-usual” conservation measures that leave us trapped in a consumer society?

July 2011 Commentary: Hydrofracking

Hydrofracking, sounds obscene, and it is if you care for, honor and respect Mother Earth.  Short for high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, hydrofracking involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and toxic chemicals at high pressures to break up deep shale rock formations (see map below) and release the natural gas through a well to the surface. For a gluttonous energy-consuming country such as the USA, hydrofracking is the newest energy gold rush to meet an ever-growing demand, but at what environmental and human health expense?  If we rush to poison our remaining water supplies for short-term economic gain to exploit non-renewable energy resources such as shale gas, what we have left is a dry, barren wasteland.

June 2011 Commentary: Grandfathers Thunder Blessing at Wingspread

On May 9, 2011, tribal wisdom keepers gathered at Wingspread. As Oneida Cultural Heritage Officer Robert Brown offered the opening prayer in the Oneida language, thunder echoed ancestral grandfathers’ blessing upon the participants and their deliberations to do the right thing by Mother Earth. The GEM Mainstreaming Indigenous Knowledge for Sustainability Conference was thus started, with the purpose of charting a Red Path towards an Evergreen Society.

Wisdom keepers from across Indian Country gather at GEM Wingspread Conference in Racine, Wisconsin, May 9-11, 2011.

May 2011 Commentary: “ME” versus “WE” at a Crossroads

For centuries artists have used light and dark shading to create three-dimensional effect or shadowing to introduce contrast creatively in a technique called “chiaroscuro” (Italian oxymoron combining “light” and “dark”). Beyond fine art applications, pop art embraced a technological oxymoron in the 1960s—“black light” (UV bulbs)—used to illuminate fluorescent painted posters and make-up cosmetics. Of course, there are many common examples of oxymorons, terms that combine two usually contradictory terms in a compressed paradox, e.g. “bittersweet”, “jumbo shrimp”, “less is more”, “virtual reality”, “holy war”. Throughout history philosophers and thinkers recognizing the duality and paradox of our world and existence found meaning in uniting opposites for balance and harmony: “male/female”, “young/old”, “sickness/health”, “rich/poor”, “rural/urban”, “public/private”, “global/local”, “artificial/natural”, “simple/complex”, “wax/wane, “thick/thin”, “haves/have-nots”, “life/death”, etc. Sometimes they expressed these insights of finding balance and harmony in common examples of oxymora such as “yin/yang” (see several illustrations below).

April 2011 Commentary: Masanobu Fukuoka’s One-Straw Revolution—Ducks rather than “Duck and Cover” In Response to Japan’s Nuclear Tsunami

I grew up in the 1950s.  During my childhood in the post-World War II nuclear arms race between the world’s superpowers USA and USSR, at my elementary school we learned to “duck and cover” (see http://wn.com/Duck_And_Cover_1951_Bert_The_Turtle_Civil_Defense_Film) under our desks in our classrooms to safeguard us from a nuclear attack.  Families were advised to construct underground fallout shelters stocked with sufficient bottled water and canned food until the “all clear sirens” announced it was safe to emerge after a nuclear incident.

March 2011 Commentary: Proselytizing Permaculture

On Sunday March 13 at 2 a.m., Daylight Saving Time begins in the United States. We “Spring forward” an hour on our clocks to enjoy the sun lingering later in the afternoon. The Spring equinox occurs a week later on Sunday, March 20. We look forward to springtime return of emerging buds and greening landscapes of Nature and our mind, body, and spirit. This annual revitalization and renewal of life can remind us that existing trials and tribulations (like budget repair and income tax preparation) are fleeting and trivial in the larger scheme. Nature has the ability to heal us and turn our attention to what really matters.