A Provocative Eco-Theologian
“Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and specialist in Asian religions who in his later life became a leading thinker on religion and the environment, has died. He was 94.”
The World’s Newest Super Food
“There’s a growing belief that the baobab may be the world’s newest super food.
The tree’s white, powdery fruit is rich in antioxidants, potassium and phosphorus, and has six times as much vitamin C as oranges and twice as much calcium as milk. The leaves are an excellent source of iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum and phosphorus, and the seeds are packed with protein.
Although local people would probably find jobs on such farms, their ability to harvest or purchase the baobab themselves would be limited. They wouldn’t be able to pay as much as London dealers could. This means that some Africans could lose a source of household wealth, an important part of their diet and an essential pharmaceutical resource.”
Beauty As Well As Bread
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give the strength to body and soul.”
John Muir
** Read on Science 101: Ecology, by Jennifer Freeman.
The Political Movement Of Our Time
“Some students say food is the political movement of their time. “I no longer wish I was born in the ’60s,” said Mr. Katz, 20, who discovered farming as an outgrowth of his interest in environmental issues.”
Three Liters To Produce One
“In the U.S., more than 30 billion plastic water bottles end up as garbage or litter each year. Most don’t get recycled. The bottles take up to 1,000 years to decompose and contribute to the vast vortex of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean, which is harming wildlife.
The withdrawal of large quantities of water from springs and aquifers for bottling has depleted household wells in rural areas, damaged wetlands, and degraded lakes. It takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water.”
Mountain Wandering
Steve Smith is the owner of Mountain Wanderer Map and Book Store and avid hiker for 30 years. Co-editor of AMC White Mountain Guide and author or co-author of several other White Mountain guidebooks, Smith keeps a high recommended blog called Mountain Wandering.
The Backyard Plot
“Because of my admiration for these people, I have pledged to be more systematic in my study of the natural world. No longer will I indulge in those daily hikes where I stride as quickly as possible to the top of something in order to gaze out enraptured on an Adirondack vista. Instead I will study my backyard plot. The time has come to develop the left –or is it the right?– side of my brain, whichever one it is that science lives in.”
The Bill McKibben Reader, Bill McKibben.
(1).
¿Quién?, ¿cuándo?
“El cambio climático es, con mucho, el problema de acción colectiva más complejo en la historia de la humanidad. Su solución exige una acción concertada entre participantes desiguales, por lo menos a lo largo de un siglo. Por tanto, lo correcto es intentarlo. Si no lo intentamos nosotros, ¿quién? Y si no lo hacemos ahora, ¿cuándo?”
Reverence
“Reverence is a profoundly important attitude. Not toward ourselves or our work, but toward the power that we see manifest in the natural world and that we feel moving within us. Reverence toward that shaping power seems to me the deepest and truest emotion the universe calls for. We need to recover a sense of the ultimate value and beauty of wildness, including the wildness that courses through us as human beings.”
