The life cycle of most trees is way beyond the human life cycle. We do not have a sustainable population on this planet, by most counts: the number of humans vastly outnumbers the regenerative capacity of nature to support them (unless most of the world turns to permaculture and similar solutions). There are areas of the world that are barren today that were once lushly forested–our ancestors of thousands of years past cut the trees and then the soil blew away and then . . .

Even now, the corporations and speculators are buying up South American biofuel capacity–that translates to people cutting rain forests to plant corn and other biofuel crops. Something greatly wrong with that picture. Why would anyone feel that if the planet largely turns to wood burning for fuel that our children will know what a mature tree and mature forests will look like? We’ll end up with mono-cultured tree farms that are called woods.

Will that support life?

By the way, have you noticed more trees down in your area? I have. More and more people are planning to heat their homes with wood this year and I see more and more lots either clear-cut or thinned of large trees. That doesn’t make me happy.

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What is balance? When we look at the world as 2-sided, bilateral, one-way-or-the-other-way (like right or wrong, good or bad, black or white, conservative or liberal) you might picture a scale with each side coming to balance in a static and stable way. Equal and balanced. You might picture a tug of war where two sides pull and create tension to keep each side in check. But the world doesn’t work that way. Options, ways of thinking, personalities, political systems, economic structures are as diverse and plentiful as the species in the Amazon Rainforest. All options are in constant motion. The world is in constant motion. Balance becomes a complex dance.

If there are many options, there are also many ways to balance a system. Earth is a system. And there are many systems on Earth–political, economic, cultural, natural–each entwined with the other. What does it mean to live in balance on the Earth? What would a world in balance look and feel like? Certainly not what we have now!

A balanced, sustainable, replenishing and healthy system is not one where all parts constantly thrive with ease. While a healthy amount of challenge or grit is imperative for a system to thrive, the parts of the system ultimately need to cooperate and co-create in order to be sustaining. This is nature. This is also the way of balance. Wouldn’t it be lovely for the systems of Earth, including the political-economic systems, to work well in this way?

Hazel Henderson wrote in a 2006 article 21st Century Strategies for Sustainability that global market economics is based nearly exclusively on the notion that competition and self-interest are rooted in human nature. Yet, she says:
research by scientists from many fields . . . have invalidated the core assumptions underlying economic models – which dominate public and private decision-making in most countries, multi-lateral agencies, including the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization . . . Yet today, as privatization and technological evolution speeds change and globalization, economists and their general equilibrium models still drive these processes. While competition remains a key driver in evolution and all human affairs, cooperation and co-evolutionary processes are equally important.

I leave you with the thought that balance is not, at it’s greatest, a 2-sided equation of equal and static parts. Balance is complex and it is through much cooperation that systems continually come to balance. More than a system constantly in balance: a system constantly rebalancing.

Dance the dance of balance with me on this 2008 Equinox.

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Val Sigstedt’s column Greenbacks and Equity Script in my regional paper got me thinking. He proposes the creation of a different type of money: equity script:

What if there were two kinds of money, but only equity script could be used to buy and sell the necessities of life? It would be a very simple money agreement, made worldwide and voluntarily to prevent the futures hucksters and the hedge fund hustlers from scooping up the things people depend on like food, shelter, transportation, and petroleum, and releasing them only when they can turn over a huge profit, even if people starve or if they can’t drive their cars because gasoline is unaffordable.

Might this be one part of a solution towards a green and sustainable world? Might this equalize power? Might this assure a higher quality of life for all? Might this move us away from war and slavery? How might we create this and any other needed–radical–change very quickly? (And that’s the big question!)
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I continually read and hear news with the filter: what effect will this have on wild and natural lands? Think: arctic drilling, no more protection of endangered species, oil and gas exploration on public and private lands. As I see the larger and largest consequences to current policy, I get sad, angry, frustrated. I wonder what to do, knowing that I have to do something.

A letter attributed to author Vicki Noble is circulating that calls for women to be as the Maenads and go wild. She recalls the time of the second women’s liberation movement of the late 60’s and into the 70’s:

Sisters, don’t you remember? We went wild. Like the ancient Greek Maenads (or the Indian Yoginis and Tibetan Dakinis, for that matter), we cut loose. We left our husbands, threw off our repressive jobs, our bogus traditional values and conditioned knee-jerk responses. We left the churches and synagogues in droves, we left behind the corporate tracking system and the academic elitism that supported it. We opted out in favor of freedom, liberation, and authenticity. It was a magical, thrilling, and transformative revolution in which, collectively, we took back the night, owned our own bodies, and awakened to our unique human potential.

Recall the play Lysistrata, where women barricade the public funds building and withhold sex from their husbands to end the Peloponnesian War and secure peace. By doing this, Lysistrata engages the support of women from other city-states, including those at odds with the Athens. They are successful. This play by Aristophanes has such a universal appeal that it appears over and over in modern form in theatres around the globe.

While these examples are of women taking power, stories about Maenads and Lysistrata call forth those who have historically been the underclass to make a big noise. It is time for women and men who are not part of the dominant power structure to step up in a big way.

This will look different for each of us. Here are some questions to help you shape your role and your voice (I include myself in this, of course). How often do you opt for being polite and accepting rather than strong and courageous? How often do you sit back down and say, “Oh, well, ok then” when you are thanked politely for speaking, but those in power do not act on your words? Does fear of being called pushy or worse hold you back? Fear of retribution from those who hold more power and money? Do you think you don’t have the answers or solutions? Do you really think our policymakers have better answers than you? Do you think you do not have the time to do much?

Now is the time to let loose your energy and your passion to create change. How many of us–men and women–hold back from jumping into the fray and really creating the change we want? Let us all wildly, freely demand in all venues that our voices be heard and respected and that we become equal players in creating policy that affects us. What will you do now–what action will you commit to? Let it be small or large, but let it begin now!

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In a preamble to the book, Starhawk talks of the sacredness of earth, water, air and fire (energy): these elements are essential to and are the building blocks of life. “They have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standard by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.”

What does this have to do with land conservation? Notice the extent to which free market economies make air, water and land commodities to be taken and used for the highest profit. Notice the extent to which you benefit from such a system. Notice the extent to which you are harmed by such a system. Can you picture another way? An alternate system? Might there be a more balanced system of government and economy? Are there some resources, commodities and services that would be best to be provided without profit?

I don’t have the answer. But when private companies buy up water rights (springs, watersheds, reservoirs) I get nervous. Please notice the extent to which this is happening: try googling water privatization. Water may well be the next oil. Something that will be scarce, yet essential. Something for which people will wage war. It has already happened.

I am a land owner. I benefit from private land ownership. Yet I am also drawn to a system where no one owns land outright. Rather, they become stewards of a parcel, using its resources in a balanced way. Might we have more wild and natural lands in such a system? Might we need fewer resources to make our livings if we did not need hundreds of thousands of dollars for the right of ownership–or the right of tenantship?

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You will also be helping to preserve agricultural space. And supporting existing businesses rather than traveling to the bigger “better” store that’s over the next hill. Food Coops and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects are appearing even in urban areas so that people pool their resources to bring in fresh regional food as much as possible. I was just reading an article in New York magazine about Star-mers (star farmers) who are becoming known like celebrity chefs as people are more interested in where their food comes from.

However, there are some times when it is important to not support local businesses. I would not like to see rising gas prices and buying local used as an excuse for continued and unnecessary suburban sprawl. There are times when it makes more sense to drive a little further for shopping. Creating more strip malls, supermarkets and big box stores where there are none wastes precious land and water resources. My home is in a rural area though relatively near to areas that are actively being developed. I will continue to drive 20 to 30 minutes to shop as need be and would not support markets moving closer. Sure, I like my vehicle to be fuel efficient, I try to cluster my shopping to make fewer trips, and I tend to buy only what’s really necessary. But I am willing to use more gasoline to support the established stores a bit further from my home than support any more commercial development.

Remember that any time there is development, we create more impervious surfaces that prevent ground water recharge. Often we cut trees and green area. We create hubs that pump a lot of ground water to support the commercial operations. We create more truck traffic to supply these stores.

When a new gas station opens across the street from an existing one, I would not support it. When the other brand of mega-pharmacy opens a block from their competitor who is already in the neighborhood, I would not support it. When the mega lumber store opens near a local one, I continue to support the locally-owned shop, even if it’s a bit more expensive. Two supermarkets within ten or fifteen minutes of one another are really not necessary. Within 5 minutes of one another–that’s ridiculous and a wasteful use of land resources.

Join me in being an anti-sprawl locavore.

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By the way, people have told me they are having trouble signing up for the Forum. Please email us via the Contact page if you have trouble. We’d like to know what’s not working well!
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So . . . ask! I picture setting up signs on area roads that say Developers: Leave The Trees! Might we make a dent if we did this all over? What if regions ripe for sprawl sprouted these signs? I urge you to write Letters to the Editor about this topic, to attend your local planning board meetings to speak for the trees, and to create signs for your region.

Wouldn’t you rather shop in stores that have mature trees and green around them than barren concrete? One argument I hear is that people won’t easily see the store. Well, have you ever been to Florida? In places like West Palm there is literally one strip mall after another and you can’t easily see what stores are in each place anyway. And they have few trees and much concrete.

Susatinable development is the ultimate goal: letting the land’s natural features and resources dictate allowable density and development. I’ll write more on that another time.
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These and more tidbits, as well as beautiful images will inform and entice and, hopefully, urge planetary eco-action. As author, narrator and scientist Iain Stewart mentions: the planet has recovered and continued to evolve from massive change over the billennia. It’s not the planet that will be destroyed, it is us humans when we dominate the planet in unsustainable ways.

The series Earth: The Biography has been running on National Geographic channel and I highly recommend you take a look. A book and DVDs are available as well. From the description of the series:

This landmark series tells the life story of our planet, how it works, and what makes it so special. Examining the great forces that shape the Earth - volcanoes, the ocean, the atmosphere and ice - the program explores their central roles in our planet’s story. How do these forces affect the Earth’s landscape, its climate, and its history? The final episode argues that Earth is an exceptionally rare kind of planet - giving us a special responsibility to look after our unique world. This is a series that shows the Earth in new and surprising ways. Extensive use of satellite imagery reveals new views of our planet, while timelapse filmed over many months brings the planet to life. Offering a balance between dramatic visuals and illuminating facts, this ground-breaking series makes global science truly compelling.

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So . . . is this speech all the buzz in the media? Should it be? Any reaction from Obama?
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