freewill618’s Recent Comments

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  Environmentalism and Ethics and Spirituality

  For me being an environmentalist and believing in ethics and the spirituality in life are inevitably intertwined.

  However anyone else believes or looks at the environmental movement, that is where I am.  And I grew up an environmentalist with parents who were environmentalists.  My parents also believed in the "quality" of life and I am not talking about materialistic anything.  And my parents ended up Progressive Jews -- and that is where I am -- as a Jew and an environmentalist.

  Rabbi Michael Lerner says the following in his interview with David Roberts:

  "What we care about is that when you get down to making a decision, whether it's in the board room or in a school room or in conference committee, that your criteria are ecological sanity, love and kindness, generosity, and awe and wonder at the universe."

  For me, he is talking about ethics -- about life itself -- and what else is environmentalism about???

  Environmentalism is about keeping our planet alive for future generations to live decent lives -- to look beyond the short-term and to look at what is ethical for all life, because the reality is that we have a web of life and for us human beings to live, there is more than just what we want now - in any specific moment.

  I also believe that it is important that every being have the right to choose how they worship God -- or to live in their own spirituality.  

  But the bottom line is that we need to make decisions on how we live our lives -- so that we can all survive across all of life -- and that involves making ecologically sane decisions and spiritually sane decisions.

  It is not always easy -- it is very often hard, but very worthwhile.

  I look to The Land Ethic as written by Aldo Leopold on many environmental issues -- especially land issues -- because his concept of the land and the environment and us as human beings operating as one community is the reality of life, as I see it.

  I think what Rabbi Michael Lerner is doing is important.

  I think that those of the "left" or the "liberal" who would look down on spirituality is actually sad.  You can be liberal and believe in God and have it all work together.  I do.On Rabbi Michael Lerner calls on environmentalists to develop a spiritual vision posted 3 years, 8 months ago 6 Responses

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  Environmentalism and Ethics and Spirituality

  For me being an environmentalist and believing in ethics and the spirituality in life are inevitably intertwined.

  However anyone else believes or looks at the environmental movement, that is where I am.  And I grew up an environmentalist with parents who were environmentalists.  My parents also believed in the "quality" of life and I am not talking about materialistic anything.  And my parents ended up Progressive Jews -- and that is where I am -- as a Jew and an environmentalist.

  Rabbi Michael Lerner says the following in his interview with David Roberts:

  "What we care about is that when you get down to making a decision, whether it's in the board room or in a school room or in conference committee, that your criteria are ecological sanity, love and kindness, generosity, and awe and wonder at the universe."

  For me, he is talking about ethics -- about life itself -- and what else is environmentalism about???

  Environmentalism is about keeping our planet alive for future generations to live decent lives -- to look beyond the short-term and to look at what is ethical for all life, because the reality is that we have a web of life and for us human beings to live, there is more than just what we want now - in any specific moment.

  I also believe that it is important that every being have the right to choose how they worship God -- or to live in their own spirituality.  

  But the bottom line is that we need to make decisions on how we live our lives -- so that we can all survive across all of life -- and that involves making ecologically sane decisions and spiritually sane decisions.

  It is not always easy -- it is very often hard, but very worthwhile.

  I look to The Land Ethic as written by Aldo Leopold on many environmental issues -- especially land issues -- because his concept of the land and the environment and us as human beings operating as one community is the reality of life, as I see it.

  I think what Rabbi Michael Lerner is doing is important.

  I think that those of the "left" or the "liberal" who would look down on spirituality is actually sad.  You can be liberal and believe in God and have it all work together.  I do.

  freewill618

  On On spiritual environmentalism posted 3 years, 8 months ago 6 Responses

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  Truce Almighty

  After sitting through days and days over years of public meetings on the National Forests of the Sierra Nevada, Southern California and the Scientific Advisory Board Meetings for the development of the Giant Sequoia National Monument Management Plan -- and seeing what has resulted -- I can say that I am sure that Mitch Friedman is on the right track.

  The only way we are going to accomplish anything with our National Forests -- keeping them forests and protecting the ecological integrity that is left -- is through collaboration between everybody:

  1. USFS management staff
     
  2. USFS scientists
     
  3. other agency scientists
     
  4. private scientists
     
  5. conservationists of all types
     
  6. local people who live in or immediately around the National Forests
     
  7. forest users of all types.

  The main thing that we all have to deal with is that the National Forests are public land and it is currently mandated to be multiple use and there are different opinions across a whole range of uses.  And, if you want to have the forests, however you want to have them, you had better come forward and say what you want and be willing to deal with all the other opinions, which is not easy.

  If we are going to have National Forests left it will be up to individuals who are willing to do what we need to do to protect and restore these lands as forests -- and I mean individuals at all levels in and out of the USFS.

  Personally, I think parts of the National Forests need to be moved into the National Park Service because the mission of the National Park Service is basically ecological integrity and there are parts of the National Forests that are significant enough ecologically that they should no longer be multiple use.  But this is a Congressional issue.

  Of course, there is always the point of changing the mission of the USFS from multiple use to ecological integrity through Congress.  Is this realistic?? -- I don't know!

  But what worries me is that whatever the use, if we are going to have forests, ecolgical sustainability must be the most important thing -- this may involve the removal of some understory trees or trees in overcrowded replanted clearcuts, but, in my opinion, it also means no more clearcutting ever because clearcutting has such a negative impact on the biotic province of the land that we don't know if clearcut land can ever be restored to anything near what it was originally.  Clearcut land will not grow what was cut again.  I think there has been way too much clearcutting already and that all clearcutting should be stopped immediately.  We should only do single selection or small group selection removal of trees as part of reducing fire hazard and protecting biodiviersity.  It is possible to do planning to involve all of these things.

  I suggest reading  the book, WILD CALIFORNIA, VANISHING LANDS, VANISHING WILDLIFE by A. Starker Leopold -- especially chapter 7, THE NORTH WOODS.  To quote it:  "If forest managers are willing, there are many ways in which timber practice can be modified on the ground to provide wildlife habitat with moderate - but not excessive - sacrifice in board-feet production and economic yield."  A. Starker Leopold wrote this as far back as 1978.

  From my experience in California, there are some forest management people who are willing, but it is still a fight and all forest users need to get involved and make comments, sit through meetings, read the USFS documents so you really know what is going on.  And despite what others say, hold your position and make it known and communicate with others.  Hopefully, we can save the forests as forests.

  Right now we are dealing with the matter of selling off USFS and BLM lands.  Can we stop it through Congress?  Can we deal with it at the local level?  I want none of it sold off -- but being mostly concerned about biodiversity on a planet-wide level, I want to stress the importance of the areas that are significant to global and regional biodiversity -- keep them protected and do not have one piece of these sold into private hands.  This means none of the USFS and BLM lands in the California Florsitic Province should be sold.

  There are a lot of perspectives.  Fine -- just get involved.On It's time for conservationists to collaborate with an agency they've long demonized posted 3 years, 8 months ago 103 Responses