Three cheers for crazy ideas

This world really does need more of these wonderful hereticsEvery real change, every revolutionary idea, every heartfelt gesture, whether it transforms one life or a thousand, was once seen as eccentric. Leaders are few and followers many for a reason: Change requires bucking the status quo, and bucking the status quo requires a willingness to be perceived as crazy, dangerous or ridiculous. Revolutionaries, activists and change-makers of every stripe—just like entrepreneurs—lead because they cannot follow something with which they do not agree or which limits their imaginations. They change the world because their passion and conviction won't allow them not to.

Not all revolutionaries set out to change the world per se; some set out to change their own worlds. And in so doing, they often change the way one person, or a few people, or whole communities, or entire nations or the world thinks and operates in some significant way. “The world” doesn’t have to be literal; real change can be small-scale and still be powerful. All it takes is an ability to see other possibilities and the willingness to help others see them too. As someone once said, “We are only limited by our imaginations.” I for one didn’t set out to change the way business operates when I founded The Body Shop. I just wanted a means to support myself and my two daughters. When I applied for a loan to start a small shop in Brighton, England, in 1976, the man behind the desk looked as if I’d asked him to shave his head. A woman? Running a business? How preposterous, he obviously thought. Weeks later, I went back to the same bank with my husband in tow. We had the loan in minutes. That banker could not see beyond his own nose. My company went on to show how business can be done differently worldwide, proving that women can indeed run successful companies, and that these companies can have compassion—and just plain passion—at heart instead of pure profit motive. Many people had said it was not possible. Time and again I was told it couldn’t be done, that it would not work, that I was insane. But I refused to limit my thinking to financial matters; I felt business was about bringing your heart to the workplace.

In my travels over the past 30 years, I have met thousands of activists, entertainers, theologians, women’s groups, business people, anti-globalization campaigners, native tribes and vagabonds. I have met the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. I have spent days deep in the Amazonian rainforest and on the streets of London among the homeless. After all of this, I can spot a revolutionary from 100 paces. First clue: Everyone else thinks they’re crazy, dangerous or ridiculous.

I understand now that some of my personal heroes fit this description: Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, Gandhi … the list goes on. They were tenacious and driven in the extreme. They refused to say, “This is how it’s done; this is how it is” or especially “I can’t.”

Not everyone who changes the world is an iconic figure, much less a martyr, but they too can and do change the world. I think of 12-year-old Craig Kielburger in Canada who read an article in his local newspaper about child labour used in rug manufacturing in Pakistan, and started Kids Can Free the Children. As a result, the Canadian government changed its policy on child labour. I think of Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee who has focused international attention on the issue of sweatshop labour and kept it there.

I think of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni people in Nicaragua who stood up to Shell Oil, which was occupying and polluting their native tribal lands. Their bravery cost many of them, including Ken, their lives. But it focused international outrage on exploitation of poor people by multinational corporations, especially those that are backed by corrupt military regimes. I think of the Zapatistas in Chiapas who refused to accept the status quo in Mexico with its corrupt government, its abuse of native communities and lands. I think of their language of revolution, which does not include the word “proletariat” or “bourgeoisie” or any of the words associated with Marx and Lenin. Instead of appealing to the “workers’ to rise up, they called for a rebirth of “civil society” and democracy. They delivered their manifestos not in books or long-winded speeches, but in poetry; they told stories and riddles and described the corrupt system of government in Chiapas as “an object of shame dressed in the colour of money.”

I think of the Angola Three, African-American activists who stood up against corruption and abuse inside in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and who were then framed for crimes they didn’t commit and thrown in solitary confinement for 31 years (See “Seeking truth in Louisiana,” Ode, April 2007). Two of them are still there, but their hope and determination does not fade with time.

I think about spiritual activists like Daniel and Philip Berrigan, American priests who burned draft files with homemade napalm in 1967 to protest the Vietnam War and the Catholic Church’s complicity in it. Or Kevin Buzzacott, an aboriginal elder in Australia who rallied his tribe to reoccupy its homeland and resist the presence of a massive mine poisoning a sacred lake. Closer to home, I think of the 20 employees of The Body Shop who went to Romania to help repair and re-equip the orphanages there, especially the two who ended up staying to launch Children on the Edge, a non-profit organization that is systematically finding homes for the institutionalized children of Romania and helping youth at risk in many other nations. You feel the impact of thousands more every day, of course, even if you have never heard their names. You’ll know them by that slightly crazy gleam in their eyes. And then you will see that this world really does need more of these wonderful heretics.

Anita Roddick, an author and long-time activist, is co-founder of The Body Shop.
More information: www.anitaroddick.com

A revolution in design

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.” —Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

Designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs from all over the globe are devising cost-effective ways to increase access to food and water, energy, education, healthcare, revenue-generating activities, and affordable transportation for those who most need them. And an increasing number of initiatives are providing solutions for underserved populations in developed countries such as the United States.

Encompassing a broad set of modern social and economic concerns, these design innovations often support responsible, sustainable economic policy. They help, rather than exploit, poorer economies; minimize environmental impact; increase social inclusion; improve healthcare at all levels; and advance the quality and accessibility of education. These designers’ voices are passionate, and their points of view range widely on how best to address these important issues. Each object on display tells a story, and provides a window through which we can observe this expanding field. Design for the Other 90% demonstrates how design can be a dynamic force in saving and transforming lives, at home and around the world.

Solar Power Set to Shine Brightly

The solar industry is poised for a rapid decline in costs that will make it a mainstream power option in the next few years,according to a new assessment by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Prometheus Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells, which turn sunlight directly into electricity, has risen sixfold since 2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone. Although grid-connected solar capacity still provides less than 1 percent of the world's electricity, it increased nearly 50 percent in 2006, to 5,000 megawatts, propelled by booming markets in Germany and Japan. Spain is likely to join the big leagues in 2007, and the United States soon thereafter.

Having large families ‘is an eco-crime’

A radical form of “offsetting” carbon dioxide emissions to prevent climate change is proposed today – having fewer children.

Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York*, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report.

Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne**, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion. ***

A 35-pence condom, which could avert that £30,000 cost from a single use, thus represents a “spectacular” potential return on investment – around nine million per cent.

Optimum Population Trust (OPT)

Global warming: Four possible scenarios

I REFER to the article, 'Why I am not a climate change sceptic' by Warren Fernandez (Stait Times, May 12, 2007).

For sceptics, is it possible to not believe in global warming but still take action? What if we do not presume that global warming is happening? Can we look at different scenarios and choose what to do?

Let us imagine four simple scenarios.
Scenario One is called 'Happily Ever After', where there is no global warming and no early action taken. The sceptics were right. No money was spent to implement useless plans to tackle climate change. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Scenario Two is called 'Pat On The Back', where there is global warming and early action was taken. Global warming is happening but with less impact because we took preventive actions. Money was spent but it turned out to be a good investment. We gave ourselves a pat on the back for doing what was necessary and right.

Scenario Three is called 'No Regrets' where there is no global warming and early action was taken. The scientists were wrong and money was wasted. Sceptics lambasted that the money could have been used instead to help developing countries.

But the scientists retorted that the sceptics were right with hindsight. The money spent was not wasted, it was used to make buildings and transport energy-efficient; develop alternative energy and reduce reliance on oil; and conserve trees and natural habitats.

We are not short of money, we are short of political will power and foresight. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that stabilising greenhouse gases at 535 to 590 parts per million will reduce the global economy in 2050 by 1.3 per cent. In 2005, global advertising expenditure alone was 1.3 per cent of world GDP and is sufficient to help developing countries meet United Nations millennium development goals.

Scenario Four is called 'Reap And Sow', where there is global warming and no action was taken. We see the impact of climate change, and now everyone believes. But it is too late. We reap what we sow.

Which scenario will happen?
If we take action, we either have no regrets or can pat ourselves on the back in the future. Nothing much to lose and everything to gain.


If we do not take action, we either live happily ever after or reap what we sow. Everything to gain or everything to lose.

What is your choice?

Eugene Tay Tse Chuan

The more we take, the less we become...

World On Fire - Sarah McLachlan

Giving Up On Two Degrees

Have we already abandoned our attempts to prevent dangerous climate change?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 1st May 2007

The rich nations seeking to cut climate change have this in common: they lie. You won’t find this statement in the draft of the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was leaked to the Guardian last week. But as soon as you understand the numbers, the words form before your eyes. The governments making genuine efforts to tackle global warming are using figures they know to be false.

The British government, the European Union and the United Nations all claim to be trying to prevent “dangerous” climate change. Any level of climate change is dangerous for someone, but there is a broad consensus about what this word means: two degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. It is dangerous because of its direct impacts on people and places (it could, for example, trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet(1)and the collapse of the Amazon rainforest(2)) and because it is likely to stimulate further warming, as it encourages the world’s natural systems to start releasing greenhouse gases.

SURVIVING THE CENTURY

Moving beyond the ‘age of fire’.

MAY 2007 sees the launch of the World Future Council, and our first major book, Surviving the Century: Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges. The book outlines a road map to a sustainable future in an age increasingly threatened by climate chaos. The eight chapters deal with the politics of climate change, renewable energy, agriculture, rainforests, cities, industrial production systems, trade and democracy. Each chapter offers an impressive vision of a sustainable future. But all of the authors make it clear that we need to make profound, systemic changes to the very basis of our culture, and to the very relationship between humans and nature, if we are to survive this and future centuries.

Click on title to continue reading...

Daring to dream

Dinyar Godrej finds dreamers hard at work, living the change they want to see.

The Challenge of Peak Oil - Richard Heinberg

Richard Heinberg is a core faculty member of New College of California, and the author of eight books, including The Oil Depletion Protocol, The Party's Over, and Powerdown.

The world is entering a period of change unlike any in history. This will be an inherently perilous time, because it will involve a forced and rapid transformation in the energy system on which our societies, and our very lives, depend. The transformation will involve the invention of new technologies and the exploitation of new resources — as was the case with earlier great economic watersheds. But this time change will be propelled not merely by new opportunities. Instead, it will be thrust upon us as a result of the depletion of the energy resources that enabled the creation of industrial economies throughout the past two centuries: namely coal, oil, and natural gas — though first and foremost, oil.

Click on title to read more...

BAN THE BULB

Worldwide Shift from Incandescents to Compact Fluorescents Could Close 270 Coal-Fired Power Plants.

Lester R. Brown

On February 20, 2007, Australia announced it would phase out the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2010, replacing them with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs that use one fourth as much electricity. If the rest of the world joins Australia in this simple step to sharply cut carbon emissions, the worldwide drop in electricity use would permit the closing of more than 270 coal-fired (500 megawatt) power plants. For the United States, this bulb switch would facilitate shutting down 80 coal-fired plants.

Polymers Are Forever

Plastic barely existed prior to 1945, but it may now be the most ubiquitous man-made substance on Earth.

"EXCEPT FOR A SMALL AMOUNT that's been incinerated," says Tony Andrady the oracle, "every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last fifty years or so still remains. It's somewhere in the environment."

A very inconvenient truth

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

The meat industry is one of the most destructive ecological industries on the planet. The raising and slaughtering of pigs, cows, sheep, turkeys and chickens not only utilizes vast areas of land and vast quantities of water, but it is a greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry.

The seafood industry is literally plundering the ocean of life and some fifty percent of fish caught from the oceans is fed to cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc in the form of fish meal. It also takes about fifty fish caught from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.

We have turned the domestic cow into the largest marine predator on the planet. The hundreds of millions of cows grazing the land and farting methane consume more tonnage of fish than all the world’s sharks, dolphins and seals combined. Domestic housecats consume more fish, especially tuna, than all the world’s seals.

So why is it that all the world’s large environmental and conservation groups are not campaigning against the meat industry? Why did Al Gore’s film Inconvenient Truth not mention the inconvenient truth that the slaughter industry creates more greenhouse gases than the automobile industry?

Read more...

Security Council Discussion of Climate Change Raises Concerns About "Securitization" of Environment

Once the focus of considerable skepticism, both climate change and the concept of environmental security have moved squarely into the mainstream. Not only has public awareness of climate change seemingly reached a tipping point, but the likely security repercussions of the unsettling changes to our planet’s climate are now increasingly acknowledged and analyzed. Recent reports such as the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and last November’s Stern Review report on the economics of climate change have quickened the pace of the debate, as have events like the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan, made worse by drought and desertification.

There is perhaps no better sign of this new realization than the recent decision of the United Nations Security Council to discuss, for the first time, the impacts of climate change on peace and security. Though a number of governments—including China and Russia—raised doubts whether the Council was the right forum to take up this issue, the meeting, held on April 17, represented a major milestone, with representatives of 55 nations in attendance.

The End of Poverty - Jeffrey Sachs

News Release - March 1, 2005:
"Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time." Thus forecasts Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, whose twenty-five years of experience observing the world from many vantage points has helped him shed light on the most vital issues facing our planet: the causes of poverty, the role of rich-country policies, and the very real possibilities for a poverty-free future. Deemed "the most important economist in the world" by The New York Times Magazine and "the world's best-known economist" by Time magazine, Sachs brings his considerable expertise to bear in the landmark The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, his highly anticipated blueprint for world-wide economic success — a goal, he argues, we can reach in a mere twenty years. more...

Eating Sustainable Seafood - Three Tips to Steer Clear of Fisheries Collapse

The world’s fish populations are increasingly endangered from overfishing, pollution, and overconsumption. A study late last year reported that major fish species, including tuna, scallops, lobster, and flounder, could be effectively extinct by the middle of the century. But fishery collapses are not inevitable, says Brian Halweil, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute.

Here are Brian’s tips on how to continue enjoying the health benefits of seafood while avoiding fishery depletions and the toxins present in many fish:

Eat less of the big fish such as salmon, tuna, swordfish and sharks. These are among the most vulnerable populations, and also the fish that live the longest, have the most fat, and accumulate the most toxins over their lifespan.

Eat lower on the marine food chain, including smaller species such as clams, oysters, mollusks, anchovies, and sardines. Smaller species are less endangered because they are more abundant, reproduce faster, and feed lower on the food chain (so they don’t consume other fish themselves.) They also have less fat and don’t accumulate as many toxins as the larger, longer-lived fish species.

Keep in mind how fish are caught. Some trawling nets are so large they could pull a 747 jet off the ocean floor. Instead, choose fish caught by line, pot, or net (or other artisanal methods) and avoid trawl-caught fish.

World Governments Adopting Bright Idea

From Australia to Russia, energy-efficient light bulbs are gaining political traction around the globe. Introduced decades ago, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are now being promoted and even mandated by governments concerned about rising energy costs and climate change. According to a 2006 International Energy Agency (IEA) report, lighting absorbs nearly one-fifth of global electricity generation, more than is produced by hydro or nuclear stations and about the same amount produced from natural gas.

Australia will be the first country to ban the inefficient incandescent bulbs, with a complete phase out planned by 2009. “By that stage you simply won’t be able to buy incandescent lightbulbs, because they won’t meet the energy standard,” said environment minister Malcolm Turnbull. Australians are among the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters per capita, and the country has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. But severe drought in the country has led to rising environmental concern. According to Turnbull, the new law will reduce Australia’s current emissions by 800,000 tons by 2012 and will simultaneously cut household lighting costs 66 percent.

It's Not Just Climate Change

That is killing the Earth and your children's future

Climate change is the collapse of the global atmospheric system's processes and patterns and represents a massive environmental challenge to maintaining a habitable Earth. Yet climate is but one of several planetary scale ecological crises that threaten existence and are occurring now concurrently.

While climate change is so omnipresent that it interacts with and exacerbates virtually every other environmental crisis, it remains but one symptom of a much more malignant systematic breakdown in the global ecological system. Global heating could stop being a major issue tomorrow (it will not) and there are at least half a dozen ongoing ecological catastrophes that could still destroy the Earth and civilization such as it is.

Low Life

For the past five years, the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu, which at no point on its nine atolls is higher than thirteen feet above sea level, has openly discussed plans to file a lawsuit against the United States and Australia at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Tuvalu has also tried to recruit other island nations to sue for damages from climate change, arguing that while these small countries contribute only 0.6 percent to global warming, they disproportionately suffer its effects.

Earth Day Cometh and Earth Day Goeth

And Where have all the Bees Gone?

Earth Day Report by Captain Paul Watson

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

- Albert Einstein

(1879 - 1955)

Earth Day is almost here. I don't believe in Earth Day myself. I think it's a little silly to devote one single day of the year to being concerned about the environment, but I suppose one day is better than no day at all.

Having been an environmental activist since 1968, I have seen the movement go up and down like a roller coaster in popularity. It was big in 1972 with the Environmental Conference in Stockholm which I attended and it became big again in 1992 with the U.N. Environmental Conference in Rio De Janeiro that I also attended. I remember that the priority issue in 1972 was the danger of escalating human populations but by 1992, that concern was not even on the agenda.

Well we are approaching the end of another 20 year period and it looks like ecology is in vogue again thanks to global warming and a few other scary things. Green is once again popular.

I can always tell when the environment is getting to be faddish again. My indicator is the number of lectures I am booked for around this time of year. It reached its peak in 1992, practically disappeared for awhile and now it's coming around again.

What worries me is that the movement is constantly being sidetracked by the issue of the day.

It's global warming now. When we were trying to warn people about global warming and climate change twenty years ago, no one was interested. Now it's become the "in" issue and the big organizations are tapping the public for donations to address the problem although no one has come up with anything that makes much sense. But global warming is good for business if you're one of the big bureaucratic organizations whose primary concern is really corporate self preservation.

Greenpeace is even telling people that they can slow down global warming by (and I kid you not) "singing in the shower". Yep, you see all you have to do is run the water, then get wet, shut the water off, and sing in the shower as you lather up and then open up the faucet and rinse off. Ah, so simple to save the world.

The problem is that these big organizations are too politically correct to address the ecologically correct solutions.

Instead they are baffling everyone with abstract concepts like carbon trading and carbon storage or trying to sell us a new hydrid Japanese car.

Even Al Gore with his Inconvenient Truth totally ignored the most inconvenient truth of all. I'll get to that in a moment.

But let's look at the number one cause of global greenhouse gas emissions.

First and foremost it is human over-population, the very same issue that was the priority concern at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Environment in Stockholm.

It's 6.5 billion people folks.

Remember in 1950, the world population was 3 billion. It's now more than doubled.

6.5 billion people produce one hell of an annual output of waste and utilize an unbelievable amount of resources and energy.

And this number is rising minute by minute, day, by day, year by year.

And most of the people having children have no idea why they are even having children other than that's what you do. Most of them don't really love their children because if they did they would be very much involved in trying to ensure that their children have a world to survive in.

Unless over-population is addressed, there is absolutely no way of slowing down global greenhouse gas emissions.

But how do you do that within the context of economic systems that require larger and larger numbers to perform the essential task of consuming products?

Corporations need workers and buyers. Governments need tax-payers, bureaucrats and soldiers. More people means more money.

I've said for decades that the solution to all of our problems is simple. We just need to live in accordance with the three basic laws of ecology.

First is the Law of Diversity. The strength of an eco-system lies in diversity of species within it. Weaken diversity and the entire system will be weakened and will ultimately collapse.

Second is the Law of Interdependence. All of the species within an eco-system are interdependent. We need each other.

And the third law of Ecology is the Law of Finite Resources. There is a limit to growth because there is a limit to carrying capacity.

Human populations are exceeding ecological carrying capacity.

Exceeding ecological carrying capacity is diminishing both resources and diversity of species.

The diminishment of diversity is causing serious problems with interdependence.

Albert Einstein once wrote that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

That is the Law of Interdependence.

Forget global warming folks. The disappearance of the honeybee could end our existence as human beings on this planet far sooner than we think.

And the honey bee is in fact now disappearing. Why? We don't know why. It could be genetically modified crops, I could be pesticides or it could be that our cell phones are interfering with their ability to navigate.

Whatever the cause the fact is that they are disappearing. All around the world bees are disappearing in a crisis called Colony Collapse Disorder.

And bees pollinate our plants. Everywhere on the planet, bees are hard at work making it possible for you to live and enjoy life.

We hold on to our place on this planet by only a toehold. If anything happens to the grass family, we are screwed. If the earthworms disappear, we are in big trouble. If the bees disappear, well according to Albert Einstein who was considered somewhat smarter than most of us, we will have only four years. Just enough time to get a college degree to discover that everything you learned is relatively useless when sitting on the doorstep of global ecological annihilation.

We are cutting down the forest and plundering the oceans of life. We are polluting the soil, the air and the water and we are rapidly running out of fresh water to drink.

Only corporations like Coke and Pepsi have figured out that water is more valuable than gold. That is why they are bottling it in plastic bottles and selling it. This week I saw a bottle of water in my hotel room that I could have drunk for only $4.

Unbelievable. That means that water is now being sold for more than the equivalent amount of gasoline. I hope that I'm not the only one who thinks this is insanity.

Now for Al Gore's really inconvenient truth. In his film he does not mention once that the meat and dairy industry that produces the bacon, the steaks, the chicken wings and the milk is a larger contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry. You see, Al may drive a Prius but he likes his burgers.

This is why the big organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club will not say a thing about the meat industry. Last year I saw Greenpeacers sitting down for a baked fish meal onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza while engaged in a campaign to oppose over-fishing.

When we pointed out that our Sea Shepherd ships serve only vegan meals, the
Greenpeace cook replied, "that's just silly."

We see what we want to see and we rationalize everything else.

The oceans have been plundered to the point that 90% of the fish have been removed from their eco-systems and at this very moment there is over 65,000 miles of long lines set in the Pacific Ocean alone and there are tens of thousands of fishing vessels scouring the seas in a rapacious quest to scoop up everything that swims or crawls.

This is ecological insanity.

The largest marine predator on the planet right now is the cow. More than half the fish taken from the sea is rendered into fish meal and fed to domestic livestock. Puffins are starving in the North sea to feed sand eels to chickens in Denmark. Sheep and pigs have replaced the shark and the sea lion as the dominant predators in the ocean and domestic house cats are eating more fish than all the world's seals combined. We are extracting some fifty to sixty fish from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.

This is ecological insanity.

Yet the demand for shark fin is rising in China. Ignorant people still want to wear fur coats. In America, we order fries, a cheeseburger and a "diet" coke.

Ecological insanity folks.

Last week a reporter called to ask me if I had really said that earth worms are more important than people. I answered that yes I had. He then asked how I could justify such a statement.

"Simple," I answered. "Earthworms can live on the planet without people. We cannot live on the planet without earthworms thus from an ecological point of view, earthworms are more important than people."

He said that I was insane for suggesting such a ridiculous idea when people were made in the image of God, and earthworms were not.

What we have here of course is a failure to communicate between two radically different world views. His which is anthropocentric and sees reality as human centred and mine which is biocentric and sees reality as including all species equally working in interdependence. He sees us as divine and better than all the other species and I see us as a bunch of arrogant primates out of control.

But that's my two cents worth for Earth Day 2007.

Consider the humble honey bee and remember that the little black and yellow insect you see flitting busily from flower to flower is all that stands between us and our demise as a species on this planet.

We better see to it that they don't disappear.

May be freely published and distributed.


Captain Paul Watson Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society (1977- Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972) Co-Founder -
Greenpeace International (1979) Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute Director - http://www.harpseals.org/

"Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I
with thee and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared
to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all." - Walt Whitman

http://www.seashepherd.org/ Tel: 360-370-5650 Fax: 360-370-5651
Address: P.O. Box 2616 Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA