…just couldn’t resist…

An extraterrestrial visitor examining the difference among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars…We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work…and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins…star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth…Our loyalties are to the species and the to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.

We are one Species. We are star stuff harvesting starlight.     -Carl Sagan

Excerpt on symbiotic living systems from a controversial movie Zeitgeist: Addendum by Peter Joeseph.

Download full movie through the Zeitgeist Movie site, or watch on google video.
WARNING – Full movie may be offensive to some of certain established religious beliefs.

Flood of Sludge Breaks TVA Dike

This is “Clean Coal”: Massive Coal Sludge Spill Dwarfs Exxon Valdez Disaster

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste

Water Supplies Tested After Tennesee Spill

When You Ride Alone	Waste Helps the Enemy
Have You Really Tried to Save Gas by Getting Into a Car Club?	Save Waste Fats for Explosives

… or not… But, what I think we could learn is that, during times of shared peril and critical importance, it would behoove us to shed personal differences and become kindred spirits, thus joining full-heartedly in the imperative.

images from the US National Archives

As you may know, last year The Supreme Court ruled  that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, under existing law. Then last month, EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, ruled that the EPA should consider CO2 in limiting permits for new coal-fired power plants, forcing new and proposed plants to address their carbon dioxide emissions. Well, that ruling has now been overruled. John Walke, lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council said, “It’s a marvel to behold an E.P.A. action that so utterly disdains global warming responsibility and disdains the law at the same time.”

Coal plant opponents list several in late stages of the approval process that could be affected by the decision. Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, estimated that as much as 8,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants that could win swifter approval as a result of the ruling.

Lisa Jackson, whom Obama has nominated as Mr. Johnson’s successor, has the opportunity to go through a rule-making and see how to deal with the issue, but  the ruling could also tie the hands of President-elect Barack Obama, who has indicated that he wants heat-trapping gases to be regulated.

SOLAR TODAY‘s January/February issue launches the magazine’s first major redesign since its launch in 1987 with a free online digital edition.

Issue highlights include –

• WAR ON CLIMATE CHANGE coverage, featuring “Charting a Bold Course” by Denis Hayes, president of the Bullitt Foundation.
• ASES Policy Committee recommendations for the new administration.
• New sections such as What’s New at SolarToday.org, Howzit Work?, Advances and New Energy.

— American Solar Energy Society [ASES]

1. Get Free Email Updates >
2. Become a Member >
3. Donate to ASES >
4. Find a Solar Installer >
5. Find an ASES Chapter >

Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist, was one of the first to describe global warming as an emerging environmental crisis in his 1989 book The End of Nature. His latest book is called Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He is also co-founder of the environmental mobilization campaign called 350.org. The number 350 refers to calls for a new global target to reduce carbon dioxide levels to no more than 350 parts per million. Just returning from Poland where he attended the UN climate change conference in Poznan, he comments on the changing paradigm as the seriousness of the situation is setting in:

The politics of this, as opposed to the policy, is finally starting to change as more and more people begin to realize that we’re way deeper into the climate problem than we thought.
First thing that happened was that the small island nations and less-developed countries of the world, the first and most vulnerable victims to climate change, sharpened their rhetoric considerably. They started talking about survivability and asking other nations, many of which complied, to sign a pledge saying that whatever they did, they would try to build a climate policy that allowed all nations of the world to survive, not to sink beneath the rising seas or the expanding deserts. I mean, we’re seriously talking, in the not-too-distant future, about hauling flags down outside the UN, because those countries no longer exist. That began to sharpen, the rhetoric.

The other thing that happened—was a part of Gore’s speech, that got him by far the longest and lustiest round of applause—was when he said—and this was an [enormous] breakthrough—that we have to start aiming for 350 parts per million CO2. That sounds like a small technical change from 415 parts per million, the current goal, but in fact it changes every aspect of this debate. Since we’re already past 350—we’re at about 387 parts per million now; that’s why the Arctic is melting—it means that we have to treat this as the full-on emergency that it is, not one more problem on a long list, but the absolute central keystone problem that we have to go to work on in the most impassioned way right now.

Now, look, the momentum of the talks is such that they’ll kind of drag on in their current form for a while towards Copenhagen next December. But I think that the reality of the world’s—the reality of the physics and chemistry in the atmosphere is beginning to overtake the political reality that’s been the main feature of these talks. We’re going to see a much sharpened, much heightened debate with a lot more people getting a lot angrier and demanding actual change.

read more from Democracy Now.org
Al Gore endorses 350 for the planet – read the story…
pingback on 350 is now the most important number on the planet

Principles of Deep Ecology

1. All living beings have intrinsic value.
2. The richness and diversity of life has intrinsic value.
3. Except to satisfy vital needs, humankind does not have the right to reduce this diversity and this richness.
4. It would be better for human beings if there were fewer of them, and much better for other living creatures.
5. Today the extent and nature of human interference in the various ecosystems is not sustainable, and the lack of sustainability is rising.
6. Decisive improvement requires considerable change: social, economic, technological, and ideological.
7. An ideological change would essentially entail seeking a better quality of life rather than a raised standard of living.
8. Those who accept the aforementioned points are responsible for trying to contribute directly or indirectly to the realization of the necessary changes.

from The Trumpeter (.pdf)