PUT PEOPLE FIRST PROTEST IN LONDON

More than 35,000 marched through London.

OUR LIBERATION IS THE EARTH'S LIBERATION

GREEN LEFT INFOASIS:- There are plenty of good reasons we should be doing away with capitalism: its brutal class oppression, its undemocraticness, its enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, its constant drive toward war and empire, just to name a few. But one extremely urgent reason, which is related to all those other reasons, is its inherent tendency toward environmental degradation. With animals, plant life, oceans, forests, and the very ecological basis of human survival threatened, we have to act now to reverse the course we're on.

What we need to be doing, as a society, is halting growth, reigning in production and redirecting it toward meeting need and ecological sustainability. But look at our current predicament. The exact opposite is occurring. Politicians and corporate elites are scrambling to find a way to actually stimulate more growth to 'save the economy'. That's the wall we're up against. Capitalism must grow or die. Slowing of growth and slumps make the system unhealthy and could mean a crisis of global proportions like the one we're currently experiencing. Obviously, infinite growth on a planet of finite resources is completely unsustainable.

Through our labor, we interact with and transform nature. But under capitalism, our labor is controlled and directed by a capitalist. The things we produce are the property of the capitalist to be sent to market. The goal of the capitalist is to create profit and every capitalist has to constantly be striving to expand markets and profits. If they cannot or will not, they'll go under and be replaced by a capitalist who will. By eliminating the capitalist and the dictatorship of profit from the equation, it will be possible to take our economic lives into our own hands and re-orient the way we interact with nature. By liberating ourselves from wage slavery, we'll be in a position to also liberate the Earth from the grip of capital.

We desperately have to make need, quality of life, and ecology the priorities of society. But capitalism looks at human labor and nature and sees how much money they can be converted into. It will not guarantee success, but only by doing away with capitalism and moving to a classless economic democracy controlled by the associated producers do we have a chance of dealing with ecological crises in a humane and sustainable way.

GLI is one of my favourites in the blogsphere. It's been on my sidebar nearly as long as I've been blogging. Please do yourself a favour and check it out!

VELCO IS NOT AN "ENVIRONMENTAL LEADER"

Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) has made a request the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources for an "Environmental Leadership" designation. It is unclear how ANR deals with such requests, what the criteria are for such a designation, but we’ll find out when Vermonters for a Clean Environment and its allies meet next week with agency secretary, Jonathan Wood. Secretary Wood is new on the job and doesn't know VELCO's record.

VELCO's work in the last 5 years does not merit such an award.

If the State grants this designation to VELCO, it will demonstrate the emptiness of such a designation from the State of Vermont and complicity of State with corporations in Vermont's environmental degradation. (Examples of the troubling experience of the State with VELCO is indeed damning.)
It will reward unsustainable environmental practices, heavy-handed behavior by corporations bent on having their way, permit violations, disregard for the State's own stated policies of environmental protection, disregard for public participation in the permit process, and perpetuate the exploitative posture that is damaging Earth and her inhabitants.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Mere compliance with watered-down permit conditions does not constitute environmental leadership and does not merit an award. This is not about NIMBY; this is about caring for God's Creation and moving the State towards true stewardship of our natural resources.


Sylvia Wright, fellow parishioner at Burlington’s Cathedral Church of St Paul, a member of its Earth Care Ministry and a long-time environmental researcher/advocate has written me:

It is important and instructive for us in the faith community to understand how closely our state works with corporations to allow and even bless environmental damage and degradation. For this process, I ask for your prayers and indications of any support you can provide, such as letters to ANR, letters to the BFP, prayers, petitions, phone calls to me, phone calls to Secretary Jonathan Wood (241-3600: leave message with secretary). If you call, please relay the message that VELCO's environmental record does not merit the Environmental Leadership designation they are seeking.

The civil rights movement was a powerful community effort and movement to confront principalities and powers aligned to deny African-Americans their full humanity and their god-given civil rights. Dr. King spoke not only about civil rights but also about environmental degradation during his lifetime. As the larger faith community awakens to the need for a different model of living on Earth, we need to find ways to move beyond our different comfort levels and find ways to collectively advocate for Earth, God's Creation and our home, especially in the face of State and corporate complicity in environmental degradation. Such power structures have been supported by long-established public policy and attitudes treating Earth as a commodity for use and exploitation, but have gained the upper hand in Vermont during the last 20 years, and more egregiously in the last decade. Please join me in sending a strong message to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources that we expect them not only to enforce laws and permit conditions, but to actually teach environmental care and stewardship to those who work and do business in Vermont.

(See bottom line in bold above, or formulate your own wording when you contact ANR or write LTE’s.)

CONSERVATION CAN'T WAIT

"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics." - Aldo Leopold, 1948

Note: The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board was last fully funded in 1987!

GREEN MOUNTAIN DAILY:- Here we go again... last week the Governor proposed a budget eliminating permanently affordable housing development efforts and completely eliminating conservation investments that boost our working land economy.

The Governor proposes a 70% reduction to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Budget on top of a series of cuts over the past seven years that had already meant a more than $30 million loss.

Let's not kid ourselves. This is a direct attack on the programs that house Vermont's workforce, provide the means to save family farms, protect recreation and sensitive natural areas and stimulate the economy.

The governor warned against the drastic wholesale elimination of programs and then proceeded to do just that. He said that it was obvious that we should eliminate our conservation program during difficult economic times.

Every day it seems we are hearing about additional losses of good jobs for Vermonters. In these times we need to look what helps Vermont's economy grow!

USURY IS A SIN

Ann Pettifor, a political economist, writes in the Guardian about usury:

'And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

"And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." - Matthew 21:12-13.

Let us make no bones about it. This financial crisis is a major spiritual crisis. It is the crisis of a society that worships at the temples of consumption, and that has isolated and often abandoned millions of consumers now trapped on a treadmill of debt. It is the crisis of a society that values the capital gains of the rentier more highly than the rights of people to a home, or an education or health. It is the crisis of a society that idolises money above love, community, wellbeing and the sustainability of our planet. And it is a crisis, in my view, for faith organisations that have effectively colluded in this idolatry, by tolerating the sin of usury.

I define usury as the exalting of money values over human and environmental values; of creating money at no cost and lending at rates of interest intended to accumulate reserves of unearned income. Of reaping that which one did not sow.

Read all of it here.

THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT & CARING FOR CREATION

From the Presiding Bishop's Message for Easter 2008, particularly about our responsibility to care for the Earth and all of Creation

The Judaeo-Christian tradition has been famously blamed for much of the current environmental crisis, particularly for our misreading of Genesis 1:28 as a charge to "fill the earth and subdue it." Our forebears were so eager to distinguish their faith from the surrounding Canaanite religion and its concern for fertility that some of them worked overtime to separate us from an awareness of "the hand of God in the world about us," especially in a reverence for creation. How can we love God if we do not love what God has made?

We base much of our approach to loving God and our neighbors in this world on our baptismal covenant. Yet our latest prayer book was written just a bit too early to include caring for creation among those explicit baptismal promises. I would invite you to explore those promises a bit more deeply -- where and how do they imply caring for the rest of creation?

We are beginning to be aware of the ways in which our lack of concern for the rest of creation results in death and destruction for our neighbors. We cannot love our neighbors unless we care for the creation that supports all our earthly lives. We are not respecting the dignity of our fellow creatures if our sewage or garbage fouls their living space. When atmospheric warming, due in part to the methane output of the millions of cows we raise each year to produce hamburger, begins to slowly drown the island homes of our neighbors in the South Pacific, are we truly sharing good news?

You may read the full text here.

A SUSTAINABLE CONVERSATION WITH IRENE VAN LIPPE-BIESTERFELD

Irene van Lippe-Biesterfeld was on Dutch (satellite) tv tonight: on Het Gesprek (The conversation, a new Dutch tv channel focusing on the spoken word about one issue only instead of shallow talkshows about many issues): Een duurzaam gesprek/A sustainable conversation about ecosystems with Ilona Hofstra.

Irene is a social reformer and founder of Nature College. She manages a nature reserve in South Africa and is the author of several books, including Dialogue with Nature and Science, Soul, and the Spirit of Nature.

She is a very consistent woman who believes in what she says (in beautiful Dutch!) and who uses arguments for it. Irene is so convincing, well-read and knows what she talks about. She also understands people who have different opinions but doesn't stay in that status quo and wants to go on discussing, assessing, finding new ways. She sees everything in a bigger context. She is an Idealist, a fighter, a pioneer, in the true sense of the word. Al Gore is just a trendhopper... Irene talked about these issues 20 years ago already. She's quite critical about real measures with regard to sustainability (instead of the wordy promises).



I love when she sees

- People as part of a whole: Nature and Mankind.

- Nature is, Nature doesn't lie, doens't pretend to be.

- Sustainability is our biggest spiritual gift.

- Different sorts people are part of One Nature

- Who am I to judge?

- From behind the palace walls (seclusion), Irene wants to be close to people.

- When the Man and the CEO merge, the world would be a better place.

- When Economy and Ecology merge the main problem would be solved.

- Using my Title etc.: if it helps .... [Irene is titled Princess of Oranje-Nassau and is the second child of Princess Juliana of the Netherlands (later Queen Juliana) and Prince Bernhard, a prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld. She is the sister of the current Queen of the Netherlands, Beatrix.]

- Nature is without Pomp (franje in Dutch). I removed the Pomp.

- Respect to others gives inner rest.

- This Sustainable Conversation was meant to be a conversation, not an Interview, so the Princess asked some questions too...

GUNS BEAT GREEN: THE MARKET HAS SPOKEN

By Naomi Klein, The Nation, November 29, 2007

Anyone tired of lousy news from the markets should talk to Douglas Lloyd, director of Venture Business Research, a company that tracks trends in venture capitalism. "I expect investment activity in this sector to remain buoyant," he said recently. His bouncy mood was inspired by the money gushing into private security and defense companies. He added, "I also see this as a more attractive sector, as many do, than clean energy."
Got that? If you are looking for a sure bet in a new growth market, sell solar, buy surveillance; forget wind, buy weapons.
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The idea that capitalism can save us from climate catastrophe has powerful appeal. It gives politicians an excuse to subsidize corporations rather than regulate them, and it neatly avoids a discussion about how the core market logic of endless growth landed us here in the first place.
The market, however, appears to have other ideas about how to meet the challenges of an increasingly disaster-prone world.
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Bush wants to leave our climate crisis to the ingenuity of the market. Well, the market has spoken: it will not take us off this disastrous course. In fact, the smart money is betting that we will stay on it.

Read all of 'Guns Beat Guns: The Market Has Spoken'...


Many thanks to Green Left Infoasis.

Green Left Infoasis Interview with Derek Wall

Worth your attention - Tim at Green Left Infoasis has an extensive interview with Derek Wall, green activist, writer, economist, and currently the Principal Male Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales. Thanks Derek & Tim!

Reflections on Poverty and Climate Change

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, recently wrote an Op-Ed that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled "Reflections on poverty and climate change." Bishop Schori, who was a professor of oceanography before she became a priest, understands the interconnectedness of all of creation. Her Op-Ed shows how extreme poverty and climate change reinforce one another, but how humanity can meet the challenge head on and solve both. Click here to read the Op-Ed.