– so said Yves Arthus-Bertrand. He spotted this mangrove swamp in New Caledonia, Canada, from some flying machine and the naturally-occurring, heart-shaped clearing struck a chord. He had undertaken his project, ‘Earth from Above’, to express the beauty of the planet and raise awareness about environmental and social issues. The caption that came with this photo –
Swamps like the one here are crucial to protecting coastlines and cover almost a quarter of tropical coasts. But that’s just half of what it was, having shrunk due to development and pollution.
‘We have to love, to share… there is no way we can have sustainable development in the world if we cannot live together’.
His goal is to get people to change their lives, leaving smaller footprints and a more sustainable future.
‘We want everything faster. We cut the trees faster than the trees grow. We take the fish faster than they can reproduce. We send CO2 into the sky faster than the CO2 can be absorbed. If we don’t change nature is going to force us to change … We are part of the ecosystem. We have forgotten, it’s not nature on one side and man on the other side. Man is part of nature.’
This quote has been attributed, correctly or no, to Nelson Mandela –
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
For some, including for Time magazine’s Joe Klein, Obama’s rise and campaign management has been bewildering. Klein’s recent article captures beautifully the personal qualities and decisions made that have generated such momentum for the Obama campaign. For example, Obama’s policy of ‘no dramatics’ within his campaign team paid off in the primaries against Clinton. And his instinctive judgement calls as to when leadership could most effectively be deployed enabled him to reflect on the issue of race in America, and neutralise Jeremiah Wright, in a speech followed by a press conference; and, it enabled him to keep his cool during the banking bail-out fiasco.
If an Apollo project to create a new alternative-energy economy is his highest priority, as he told me, why hasn’t he given a major speech about it during the fall campaign? Why hasn’t he begun to mobilize the nation for this next big mission? In part, I suppose, because campaigns are about firefighting — and this campaign in particular has been about “the fierce urgency of now,” to use one of Obama’s favorite phrases by Martin Luther King Jr., because of the fears raised by the financial crisis and because of the desperate, ferocious attacks launched by his opponent.
If he wins, however, there will be a different challenge. He will have to return, full force, to the inspiration business. The public will have to be mobilized to face the fearsome new economic realities. He will also have to deliver bad news, to transform crises into “teachable moments.” He will have to effect a major change in our political life: to get the public and the media to think about long-term solutions rather than short-term balms. Obama has given some strong indications that he will be able to do this, having remained levelheaded through a season of political insanity. His has been a remarkable campaign, as smoothly run as any I’ve seen in nine presidential cycles. Even more remarkable, Obama has made race — that perennial, gaping American wound — an afterthought. He has done this by introducing a quality to American politics that we haven’t seen in quite some time: maturity. He is undoubtedly as ego-driven as everyone else seeking the highest office — perhaps more so, given his race, his name and his lack of experience. But he has not been childishly egomaniacal, in contrast to our recent baby-boomer Presidents — or petulant, in contrast to his opponent. He does not seem needy. He seems a grown-up, in a nation that badly needs some adult supervision.
Alastair McIntosh was contributing BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day yesterday. Here’s an excerpt –
Our conundrum is that we need more consumption to save the economy, but less to save the planet.
Spending our way out of a recession is therefore only a stop-gap measure. It’s methadone for our planetary heroin addiction.
We simply feed the habit if we think that today’s problems can be tackled at conventional political, technical or economic levels. If we’re redefining our “central mission”, we must press further.
Technical fixes are certainly part of the solution. But I’d put it to you that the deep work must be this: to learn to live more abundantly with less, to rekindle community, and to serve fundamental human need instead of worshiping at the altars of greed.
The crisis of these times is therefore spiritual. It calls for reconnecting our inner lives with the outer world – an expansion of consciousness. And that’s an opportunity that we neglect at our peril, for as I once heard an old Quaker woman say, “It is perilous, to neglect one’s spiritual life.
So Sarah Palin the Republican Vice-Presidential Cadidate likes to hunt and shoot bears. And Putin, premier of Russia, released photos today of him having just killed a tiger. What’s to say? Apart from all the usual ethical stuff, I see them as cowards and bullies. Intelligent primates with modern guns will always win against animals. Take away their weapons and give them spears or axes. And then, if they win, make sure that every scrap of meat is eaten and every sinew and patch of hide used productively. And give prayers of gratitude. – Naively, I want these people to be more empathic and, as leaders, lead us into a more harmonious future.
I watched this thanks to Ray Ison, and was mightily impressed with the quality of the animation and the sound effects.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
I found myself wanting more! I’d love to see the team that created this apply their talents to lots more stuff. It strikes me this medium can work incredibly well as a storytelling and educational vehicle. Very nice song at the end.
Now for my critique. On the whole, the narrative was cogent, but the intense relaying of scientific information seemed to cater more for a science-literate audience. I felt the scripting and narration left quite a lot to be desired. The narrator skipped quickly between concepts, leaving non-scientists like myself befuddled and breathless, and needing to rewind the animation to work out what was being discussed and to catch up. It seriously denigrated my experience of what could be a stunning project. I dearly wanted a simpler script and much, much clearer transitions between each science-spiel segment. And less jargon. (Interestingly, the animation’s creator conceived the animation as an old-fashioned piece of unilateral communication.)
I’m curious what you think and how you feel about it. Comments and insights welcome.
From an article by Nick Reeves in today’s Guardian –
At a global environment conference in London last year, my professional institution, the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, brought together representatives of all the major faiths. There was one matter on which they all agreed: the need to collaborate for action on the environment, and especially on climate change. The leadership of Archbishop Bartholomew was seen as a beacon.
But faith groups have been silent for too long on this crisis, and should do far more to remind us of our moral duty to restore and protect the fragile ecological balance of the planet. As the archbishop said: “We are all culpable. Each one of us has a smaller or greater contribution to the deliberate degradation of nature.”
Butt, in reporting the environmentalism of some religious leaders, suggests that an ecological coalition of faiths is possible: “There is hardly a religious leader in the world now who is not preoccupied by the problems of pollution and climate change.” And it’s true. In the last year or so we have seen faith leaders including the Dalai Lama, the Bishop of Liverpool and Pope Benedict step down from the pulpit and speak directly on environmental issues. This is good news and “God-bothering” of the sort we need for the 21st century.
Sumptuous World 