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32 TIMELINE November/December 2005

Every nation or empire which wouldsubjugate others will ultimately fail ifthey attempt to base their dominationon military force. There are two reasonsfor this. First, the people of the hegemonwill finally refuse to make the sacrificesin blood and treasury necessary tomaintain military control over others.Second, the subjugated will ultimatelyrise in opposition to reject the sovereign.Nevertheless, in the face of both historyand common sense, the U.S. Congressand the Executive seem determined thatthey can deny both by making militarypower the primary instrument of U.S.foreign policy.

The future security and well-being of allAmericans rests on far more than tanks,

aircraft carriers, and strategic bombers.In truth, there is no military solutionto the ethnic, religious, political, andhistoric disputes which underlie theviolence there. Our security, and thesolutions to such problems in the future,will be promoted far more effectivelythrough wise U.S. foreign policiesthat lead away from confrontationand make America the leader in a morepeaceful, cooperative world order inthe 21st Century.

Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, U.S.N, formercommander of the aircraft carrier U.S. Midway;first naval officer to serve as director of Americanmilitary forces in Europe, where he wasresponsible for 7,000 nuclear weapons; formerdeputy director of The Center for DefenseInformation

Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll

One truth stands out in history:

Note: “Social Security & Medicare” refers to administrative costs associated with these programs, and not to actual benefits.Source: OMB’s “The Budget for FY 2006 Historical Tables,” table 8.9Additional Note: The $438.8 billion shown for Defense does not include funding for actual combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,which for this year (FY’05) are roughly $76 billion.

FY’06 Discretionary Spending Request($ in Billions)

DefenseEducation

HealthJustice

International AffairsVeterans Benefits

Housing AssistanceNatural Resources & Environment

Science & SpaceTransportation

Training, Employment & Social ServicesOther Income Security

General GovernmentEconomic Development

Social Security & MedicareAgriculture

Energy

TTIMELINE November/December 2005 33

The U.S. has a history of reconciliationwith its enemies: Germany, Japan, China,and Vietnam to name a few. It is time wedo the same with Cuba. There is nodragon here, no evil empire; this is a placeof incessant sunshine, music, and laughter;it is a place of earnest dedication andformidable resilience. In short, Cubais not going to capitulate. Instead ofcontinuing to punish a people becauseof its government, I urge that we followCanada’s example, which is to workin partnership, create relationships,and in the process encourage a more openpolitical system. It is trite to say, butbridges have always been more effectivethan walls in bringing about change.

I have been warned that to speak toopositively about Cuba will weaken mycredibility and that people will discountme as a naive tool of Fidel Castro. I wouldno more defend Castro to the peopleof the United States than I would extolthe virtues of the U.S. Congress tothe Cubans. I am speaking about thehuman beings who are the true pawnsof an untenable political situation. I havefriends in Cuba now, and when I closemy eyes I see their faces, and I hear theirvoices. I am touched by their kindnessand their ability to separate me from mygovernment, and I wonder why we NorthAmericans have such difficulty doingthe same. How does it serve us to holdthis grudge? Are we so in need of an enemy?What do we really fear? The hostilitythe United States bears toward Cubademeans the citizens of both countries,and needs to be put to rest, so that,at last, the healing can begin.

Janie Starr, long-time volunteer withthe Foundation for Global Communityin Tacoma, Washington

Janie Starr

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Every nation has its war party. It is notthe party of democracy. It is the party ofautocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless.It tolerates no opposition.

In times of peace, the war party insistson making preparation for war. As soonas it is prepared for war, it insists onmaking war. If there is no sufficientreason for war, the party will makewar on one pretext, then invent another,possibly more effective pretext afterwar is on.

Before war is ended, the war partyassumes the divine right to denounceand silence all opposition to war asunpatriotic and cowardly.

Senator Robert M. La Follette (R-Wisconsin),85 years ago in a speech called “The Rightof the Citizen to Oppose War and the Rightof Congress to Shape the War Policy”

Senator Robert M. La Follette

Does nuclear disarmament imperil oursecurity? No, it enhances it.

Admiral Noel Gayler, former Commanderin Chief, Pacific Command

Admiral Noel Gayler

I would characterize current U.S. nuclearweapons policy as immoral, illegal,militarily unnecessary, and dreadfullydangerous.

Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defenseunder presidents Kennedy and Johnson

Robert S. McNamara

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professionals who are masters atpresenting selected information to thepeople. Every administration does it.

So, in a way, it’s hard to blame theBush administration. They did what theyneeded to do to build a case for war thatfit with their view of the world—a warthat records show those in control inWashington had wanted for some time,long before the terrorist attacks of 9/11.These folks see the world and America’srole in it in a certain way. With a strongenough military, they say, the U.S. canmaintain itself as the world’s sole super-power, and keep our nation safe. Thereare bad guys out there who threaten us.We have to be strong enough to takecare of all of them, with diplomacy ifwe can, with force if we need to.

History has shown that posture neverworks. Other than the death anddestruction it causes, it’s bad psychology:people don’t react well to threats. It worksmuch better to make friends out of every-one, including enemies. Cooperation worksbetter than confrontation. Do unto others.You catch more flies with honey. A little bitof sugar makes the medicine go down.

from Timeline, September 2003

Mac Lawrence

I’ve spent time. . ....with a number of people recentlywho either live in Europe, or who havejust come back from extended staysthere. They all report the same thing:Europeans think the U.S. is out ofits mind. Not the American people—the current administration.

How can so much of the world viewwhat the U.S. is doing as crazy, while mostAmericans—at least according to thepolls—think we’re doing the right thing?

Perhaps it boils down to fear. The attacksof 9/11 brought a new level of it to the U.S.Our president acted boldly to assure usthat he would make us safe. We wantedto believe him. But, at least in the caseof the war on Iraq, more and more ofwhat he told us turns out to be eitherquestionable or outright fabrications.

By now we ought to realize thatpoliticians don’t always say what theybelieve, or believe what they say. Thosein power have an agenda they want tocarry out. What they tell us has a spinto it. It always does. They say things fora reason. They believe their reason isright and that the spin is necessary.They hire top-notch public relations

The European Union can’t match the United States in military power—but it doesn’twant to. This is partly because the point of a unified Europe is to move beyond war.Beyond that, Europeans would rather spend their tax money on the continent’s lavishwelfare state. Instead of buying missile shields or aircraft carriers, the Europeanshave built a cozy social network. In most European countries, college education is free,doctors make house calls (and never send a bill), and new parents are paid a salaryby the state to stay home and raise the baby.

T.R. Reid, San José Mercury News, February 20, 2005

T.R. Reid


�A Native American grandfather was talking to his

grandson about how he felt. He said, “I feel

as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart.

One wolf is the vengeful, angry,

violent one. The other wolf is the loving,

compassionate one.” The grandson asked him

“Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?”

The grandfather answered, “The one I feed.”

What would one would say to the generalof an army who is planning to attackanother country? The Buddha dealt withthis very situation. His family was fightingover water to build a rice field. He wentto them and told them, “If you make war,there will be no end to it. Those who claimvictory will be met with hatred by thosewho lost. Those who won will also feelhatred toward those who lost. Hatreditself will kill you. There is no need foranother enemy. Hatred will kill you.”

Maha Ghosananda, Cambodian Buddhist monk

All of our wars and attacks kill, wound,and impoverish people, and the politicaltalk about peace and democracy is justso much manure.

Charley Reese, King Syndicated Features writer

If those in power really want a war,it’s easy to stir up the emotions of fearand hatred, to create and demonizeenemies. The techniques are well known:threats to our way of life, accusations,hurts and injustices of the past repeatedendlessly, half-truths, outright lies,fabricated events. The realities of war—death and destruction—are not mentioned.No other solution than war is considered.The talk is only of the reasons for the warand how it will be won—with massiveforce, brilliant planning, surgical strikes,night-vision goggles, laser-guided bombswith incredible accuracy delivered fromunimaginable heights, cruise missiles,bunker-buster nukes. Politicians of allparties fall in line. There is flag-waving,and a national rallying in support ofthe men and women in uniform.

from Timeline, March 2003

�Charley Reese

Maha Ghosananda Mac Lawrence


...look into the eyes of our young soldiers.You will surely conclude that we havegone mad.

Eighteen, 20, 25—they are childrenlugging in their backpacks the ponderousbaggage of their elders’ failed diplomacy.

Some are so young that you are temptedto take your crying towel and drybehind their ears.

It breaks my heart.

There is no acceptable answer for whywe do this to our young—why decadeafter decade, century after centurythe world has gone to war.

Each day the portraits of this war arethe brave, young, helmeted men andwomen, having to stiffen their chinsin the face of a death that is prematureand surely preventable.

What enormous transitions they havebeen forced to make. One day a high-school graduate merrily kicking a soccerball and thinking about a job in the localauto-body shop or a seat in a distantcollege classroom.

And then the sudden transition frommamas’ comfortable kitchens to a placewhere people are trying to kill them.

One day the transition from droppingoff a tiny daughter at her gentle

Loretta Green

If you ever want to see how insane war is,

kindergarten to a violent place wherethey must aim artillery. A place where,without meaning to, they mangle aninnocent girl just like their own.

In the name of liberation for anoppressed people, they make the oddtransition from nurturing to killing.

True, this is a volunteer military teamthat speaks of proudly serving ourcountry, but most of them signed upfor the defense. Being assigned to theoffense was a trick play—a reverse—an audible by their commander-in-chief.

Their great-grandfathers have doneit before them and their sons anddaughters will do it after them, but itis a lot for a young spirit to reconcile.

After all, killing is at the top of a horribledeed list. Killing is in a territory ofits own—roped off from their personalguidelines of good and evil, acceptableand taboo, possible and unthinkable.

So war squares and hardens the roundfaces of the young who become itscomponents and its casualties.

They are there because somewherethe youthless heads of states and the oldgenerals sputter, threaten, challenge,and dare across the seas.

With stiffening arms, they pull theirrusting swords from their scabbards.


They throw down a gauntlet and incitetheir progeny to carry it into battlesnot of youths’ making and often notof their understanding.

And for a time in the smoke of battleand choking desert storms, soccer balls,Old Navy fashions, and Hootie & theBlowfish seem childish and frivolous.Oh, to return to frivolity.

Because somewhere a military officerarrives at a home and locks eyes withthe fearful, knowing parents of a downedMarine. Afterward, everyone speaksof his courage and sacrifice.

Could he have been the one with theround, boyish eyes who looked as ifhe were wearing his father ’s helmet?

Somewhere an unknown private becomesan extraordinary hero because shegets wounded and taken prisoner.When in reality, as her very ordinaryfather puts it, all his little girlwanted to do was come back home“to school-teach.”

This is not how we wanted to make ourgirls women.

This is not how we wanted to make ourboys men.

It’s enough to break your heart.

editorial by Loretta Green in the San JoseMercury News


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A time comes when silence is betrayal.Even when pressed by the demands ofinner truth, men do not easily assumethe task of opposing their government’spolicy, especially in time of war. Nor doesthe human spirit move without greatdifficulty against all the apathy ofconformist thought within one’s ownbosom and in the surrounding world.

Some of us who have already begunto break the silence of the night havefound that the calling to speak is oftena vocation of agony, but we must speak.We must speak with all the humilitythat is appropriate to our limited vision,but we must speak. For we are deeplyin need of a new way beyond the darknessthat seems so close around us.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The people of England have been ledin Mesopotamia into a trap from whichit will be hard to escape with dignityand honor. They have been trickedinto it by a steady withholding ofinformation....Things have been farworse than we have been told, ouradministration more bloody andinefficient than the public knows….We are today not far from a disaster.

T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), aftera visit to Baghdad reporting on conditionsafter the region was liberated from theTurks during World War I

Lawrence of Arabia

Women understood the cost of warand were genuinely interested in peace.They had had it with their warriorhusbands. They were a force willingto say enough is enough. The men weresitting around talking and chewing qatwhile the women were working away.They were such a positive force.You have to look at all the elementsin society and be ready to tap into thosethat will be constructive.

Admiral Jonathan Howe, reflecting onhis experience leading the UN missionin Somalia in the early 1990s

Admiral Jonathan Howe

The obstacles to peace lie in human mindsand hearts. They are psychological,human, and political. Peace will remainunattainable until we have a politicalstrategy for breaking down “the other walls”that block our path.

Harold Saunders, director of international affairsfor the Kettering Foundation; former secretaryof state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs;author of A Public Peace Process: SustainedDialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts

Harold Saunders

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We have not yet learned to think of peaceapart from war. We wait, still, until weface terrifying dangers and the necessityto choose among bad alternatives, andthen we think again of peace, and againwe fight a war to secure it.

At the end of the war, if we have won it,we declare peace; we congratulate our-selves on our victory; we marvel at thenewly-proved efficiency of our latestweapons; we ignore the cost in lives,materials, and property, in sufferingand disease, in damage to the naturalworld; we ignore the inevitable residueof resentment and hatred; and we goon as before, having, as we think,successfully defended our way of life.

Certainly, some extraordinary men havechanged the course of history with theirpeace-making. Yet women are often themost powerful voices for moderation intimes of conflict. While most men cometo the negotiating table directly from thewar room and battlefield, women usuallyarrive straight out of civil activism and—take a deep breath—family care.

from the cover story “Women Waging Peace”by Swanee Hunt and Christina Posa

Swanee Hunt and Christina Posa

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Wendell Berry

The Earth is a living, conscious being.In company with cultures of many differenttimes and places, we name these thingsas sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath,energy, blood, and body of the Mother,or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or assymbols of the interconnected systemsthat sustain life, we know that nothingcan live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say thatthey have a value beyond their usefulnessfor human ends, that they themselvesbecome the standards by which our acts,our economics, our laws, and our purposesmust be judged. No one has the rightto appropriate them or profit fromthem at the expense of others. Anygovernment that fails to protect themforfeits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are partof the earth life, and so are sacred.No one of us stands higher or lower thanany other. Only justice can assure balance:only ecological balance can sustainfreedom. Only in freedom can that fifthsacred thing we call spirit flourish inits full diversity.

To honor the sacred is to create conditionsin which nourishment, sustenance,habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beautycan thrive. To honor the sacred is to makelove possible.

Starhawk, from The Fifth Sacred Thing

Starhawk


We could be the kindest nation on Earth,inside and out. I look at the bigger pictureand see that many nations with fewerresources than ours have found solutionsto problems that seem to baffle us. I’d likean end to corporate welfare so we couldput that money into ending homelessness,as many other nations have done before us.I would like a humane health-care systemorganized along the lines of Canada’s.I’d like the efficient public-transit systemof Paris in my city, thank you. I’d like usto consume energy at the modest levelthat Europeans do, and then go themone better. I’d like a government that

Barbara Kingsolver

It is not naïve to propose alternatives to war.

This seems a reasnable time

...to search our souls for some cornerwhere humility resides. Our nationbehaves in some ways that bring joyto the world, and in others that makepeople angry. Not all of those peopleare heartless enough to kill us for it,or fanatical enough to die in the effort,but some inevitably will be more and more,as desperation spreads. Wars of endlessretaliation kill not only people but alsothe systems that grow food, deliver cleanwater and heal the sick; they destroybeauty, they extinguish species, theyincrease desperation.

I wish our national anthem were notthe one about the bombs bursting in air,but the one about purple mountainmajesties and amber waves of grain.It’s easier to sing and closer to the heartof what we really have to sing about. A landas broad and green as ours demands of us

subsidizes renewable energy sourcesinstead of forcefully patrolling the globeto protect oil gluttony. Because, make nomistake, oil gluttony is what got usinto this holy war, and it’s a deep tar pit.I would like us to sign the Kyoto agreementtoday, and reduce our fossil-fuel emissionswith legislation that will ease us intosafer, less gluttonous, sensibly reorganizedlives. If this were the face we showedthe world, and the model we helped bringabout elsewhere, I expect we could get alongwith a military budget the size of Iceland’s.

from a 2001 editorial by Barbara Kingsolver�thanksgiving and a certain breadthof spirit. It invites us to invest our heartsmost deeply in invulnerable majestiesthat can never be brought down in astroke of anger. If we can agree on any-thing in difficult times, it must be thatwe have the resources to behave moregenerously than we do, and that we arebrave enough to rise from the ashes ofloss as better citizens of the world thanwe have ever been. We’ve inherited thegrace of the Grand Canyon, the mysteryof the Everglades, the fertility of an Iowaplain—we could crown this good withbrotherhood. What a vast inheritancefor our children that would be, if wewere to become a nation humble beforeour rich birthright, whose graciousnessmakes us beloved.

Barbara Kingsolver from her bookSmall Wonder


Instead, it houses photos and two stuffedand mounted birds, the last survivorsof their species. Martha the passengerpigeon and Incas the Carolina parakeetlived in this building and died here,Martha on September 1, 1914, and Incason February 21, 1918. At one time, Martha’sspecies was the most abundant of allland birds, flying over the eastern halfof an entire continent in flocks of billionsthat darkened the sky. The Carolinaparakeet was our only native psittacine;it ate the cockleburs that now plagueour south-eastern fields. Today, thecerulean warbler, a blue and white song-bird that was once easily spotted in deepeastern U.S. forests, has declined inpopulation by 70 percent since 1966due to forest degradation for loggingand development.

Several years ago, the American Museumof Natural History took a poll of biologists,asking if we are in the middle of a massspecies extinction. Seventy percent said yes.In numbers alone, that means fifty to onehundred species are vanishing every day,approximately 1,000 times faster thannatural extinction rates; faster than atany time in the last sixty-five millionyears. Recently a report from eight ofthe foremost nature organizationsindicates that one in eight plant speciesworldwide is imperiled; in the UnitedStates alone, one in three is endangered.Twenty-four percent of all mammalsare endangered. Their diminishment anddisappearance goes largely unnoticedby most of us. The magnitude of this

continued on next page

Could we have imagined flight

on a planet without birds?

Marya Grathwohl

In the Cincinnati Zoo is an exhibit that has no live animals.


loss of life is hard for me to grasp. I knowthat if current trends in species extinctioncontinue, we may lose half of all Earth’splant and animal species within thenext fifty years. But can I imagine thatworld, that threadbare communion oflife? The tiny cerulean warbler’s songmay fall silent forever within my lifetime.Will I notice?

We can try to absorb these facts or maybe,in our grief, quietly tuck them away asdistant tragedies. (When the Preuss’Red Colobus Monkey vanished severalyears ago, it seemed to make no realdifference in my daily life.) But can we geta sense of how our powers of imagination,creativity, and love are diminished bytheir leaving? Can we feel how lonelywe’re becoming without them? RachelCarson called the loneliness a “silentspring.” And hearing her, our hearts feltthe chill. We can imagine that silence,now. No raptors lifting on thermals overmy home and I may forget how to darea dream into reality. No prairie grassseeds flung against an autumn full moonand I will feel a loss of hope in my soul.Could we have imagined flight on a planetwithout birds? What is lost in the soulof a child who never sees a meadowof wildflowers?

All Earth’s species emerged in an immense,slow dance from common ancestors wholived in the seas over three billion yearsago. Over time, Earth’s climates andcontinental movements and predator-preyrelationships endowed seeds with powerto survive drought and ice, shapedgraceful bodies that could swim and fly,and cherished consciousness that kept

wolf pups fed and created finely tunedmusical instruments. Thanks to theachievements of modern science we inindustrial societies now know whatindigenous peoples have always known,that we inhabit one planetary home andall of us, all beings, are held as kin withinthe powers of deep relatedness. Darwingave us revelation from Earth thatgifts us with a most profound spiritualinsight: We are all a communion.

Within just the last century have welearned that the Milky Way is one of onehundred billion galaxies, all streamingaway from each other in a cosmic dancedriven by primordial energy we callexpansion. In all this grandeur we haveyet to find another cerulean warbler orColobus monkey. The warbler’s song beganin the middle of a star whose fierce heatforged complex chemical elements fromsimpler elements forged in yet an earlierstar. When the second-generation starexploded as a supernova, those elementswere blown into neighboring space whereanother power, gravity, gathered them upover millennia into a planet. That planetwould eventually shape from those elementsthe bones and lungs and muscles of a birdfiercely intent upon finding a mate. Thesesame elements also formed the tuna saladyou had for lunch, leaves yellowing andfalling in aspen groves, fingers typing thispaper, and the eyes and mind reading it.Our kinship line goes back, accordingto our most recent estimate, 13.7 billionyears. The whole Universe is one body.

Walt Whitman intuited this when he said,“A leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” “Why should I have

Marya Grathwohl continued


[soul] and not the camel?” asks anotherpoet, Mary Oliver. “Come to think of it,what about the maple trees? What aboutthe blue iris? What about all the littlestones, sitting alone in the moonlight?What about roses, and lemons, and theirshining leaves? What about the grass?”When did soul begin in the Universe?Revering a Creator as intimate to the lifeprocess as my DNA, I seek spirit every-where. In this Universe, hydrogen leftalone, responsive to the powers of gravity,electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces,eventually turns into a human, awaketo self, to soul. How can I have soul ifhydrogen doesn’t in some way, too?

Because of the reach of human powersinto all the planetary and life systems,our decisions today determine whichspecies will make it into the next century.In this century, we are planetary powercomparable to climate and continentalshift and the predator-prey relationship.This planetary power, which we havenever before had, demands of us a planet-sized soul, a planetary spirituality,something very new and challengingand promising for industrialized societies.

Humans, I am convinced, are born fromthis planet hungry, not only for milk andcomfort, but also for songs: songs ofwarblers, the alpha female wolf, watersplashing clean over stones.

Marya Grathwohl, Sister of Saint Francis,lives at Prayer Lodge, a center servingNative American women

The earlier children connect with thenatural world, the better for them and forsociety as a whole. Children have a basicneed to establish a deep emotionalconnection to the natural world. Untilour society recognizes and finds a way tohonor this need, the future of our culture—and indeed, the future of all life—isendangered. Children who are deniedthe opportunity to bond with the Earthare also denied the opportunity to developa moral compass.

It is this kind of profound bonding, firstwith the family and then with the Earth,that ensures that the child by age fourteenwill have established a foundation forcompassionate intelligence—an intelligencethat has the well-being of all life as itsguiding principle. It is our job as adults toensure that our children develop that bond.

Joann Lundgren, founding director ofthe Children in Nature program of theFoundation for Global Community

We’re the only species that doesn’t havea Zero Waste policy. Nature perfectedZero Waste over millions of years. It isonly in the last hundred years thathumanity has moved away from recyclingand begun to create benign products thatdon’t harm the environment. So we’rereally just getting back on the program.

Warren Snow, founder of New Zealand’sZero Waste New Zealand Trust

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Joann Lundgren

Warren Snow

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The United States has misallocated abouta trillion dollars of capital for 200 milliontons or so of air conditioning equipment,and about 200 gigawatts of power supplyto run it, all of which would not havebeen needed in the first place if we haddesigned the buildings to produce the bestcomfort at the least cost. Why didn’t wedo that? Well, for example, we pay ourarchitects and engineers according towhat they spend, not what they save.That’s pretty easy to fix—offer your designprofessional, say, three years worth ofmeasured energy savings on top of theirnormal fee, and you’ll really get theirattention. They can double or triple theirfee: it’s fair compensation for the extrawork, and actually, you’ll save moneyeven upfront, because you’ll typicallysave more on the capital cost.

Amory Lovins, co-author, Natural Capitalism—Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

You do not have to visit distant places, or even rise from your seat, to experiencethe luxuriance of biodiversity. You yourself are a rainforest of a kind. There is a goodchance that tiny spiderlike mites build nests at the base of your eyelashes. Fungalspores and hyphae on your toenails await the right conditions to sprout a Lilliputianforest. The vast majority of the cells in your body are not your own; they belong tobacterial and other microscopic species. More than four hundred such microbialspecies make their home in your mouth.

Such is the biospheric membrane that covers Earth, and you and me. It is the miraclewe have been given. And our tragedy, because a large part of it is being lost foreverbefore we learn what it is and the best means by which it can be savored and used.

In the end, however, success or failure will come down to an ethical decision. I believe we willchoose wisely. A civilization able to envision God and to embark on the colonization of spacewill surely find the way to save the integrity of this planet and the magnificent life it harbors.

from a review of the book The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist

It is tempting to believe that theproduction of ethanol is a relatively easyway to convert sunlight into corn, whichis then converted into ethanol, whichcan be used as an automotive fuel. However,corn and other crops such as sugar cane,which can be fermented to make alcohol,are energy-intensive to grow, and relyon fossil fuels. To produce a modern croprequires petroleum to plant and harvestthe crops, petroleum-based fertilizerto increase crop yields, and petroleum-based pesticides. After harvesting, morefossil fuels must be used to ferment anddistill the crop into ethanol. When allenergy has been accounted for, 1 gallonof ethanol will provide 77,000 BTUs, but131,00 BTUs of fossil fuel are needed toproduce the ethanol. Thus, ethanol consumesmore fossil fuel than it can replace.

Gregson Vaux of the National EnergyTechnology Laboratory

Edward O. Wilson

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Amory Lovins Gregson Vaux


They arise out of our culture—our viewof the world. The reason most solutionsoffered to solve the world’s crises areimpractical is because they are basedon the same worldview that caused theproblems. Nothing but changing our wayof seeing and understanding the worldcan produce real, meaningful, and lastingchange—and that change in perspectivewill then naturally lead us to begin tocontrol our population, save our forests,recreate community, and reduce ourwasteful consumption.

Older cultures believe that we are partof the world. We are made of the sameflesh as other animals. We eat the sameplants. We share the same air, water,soil, and food with every other life formon the planet. We are born into life bythe same means as other mammals, andwhen we die we, like they, become partof the soil which will nourish futuregenerations. They also hold that it isour destiny to cooperate with the restof creation. Every life-form has its specialpurpose in the grand eco-system, andall are to be respected. Each animaland plant has its own unique intelligenceand spirit. We are permitted to competewith other plants and animals, but wemay not wantonly destroy them. All lifeis absolutely as sacred as human life.Although hunting and killing for foodare part of nature’s order, when we doso it must be done with respect andthankfulness.

On the other hand, younger culturesbelieve that we are not an integral part

of the world. The Earth (and all of theplant and animal life on it) is somethingdifferent from us. We call that differentstuff “nature” and “wilderness;” we callourselves “mankind,” “humankind,”and “civilization.” We are very clear inour vision of the difference between usand the rest of life on the planet—weare separate from it, superior to it,and a law unto ourselves. When wewant something, it’s there for us to take,and we don’t have to answer to anyoneelse. We also believe it is our destiny tosubdue and rule the rest of creation.From the Bible’s command to establish“dominion” over the Earth and itsinhabitants, to the American government’sacted-out doctrine of Manifest Destiny,to our science-fiction stories about colonizingspace, we tell ourselves many storieswhich express that we deserve to be thedesignated rulers of everything we cansee, from the seas to the moon and beyond.Some people try to soften this by sayingthat when Man was given dominion of theEarth, it meant he was given responsibilityfor taking care of it, but few people in ourculture behave as if they believe this.

The cultural stories that have beenused to justify our current behavior fallinto two groups: “get yours before anyoneelse can,” and “the world is going to endanyway, so grab what you can now.”These are profoundly disconnectedstories; disconnected from others, fromnature, and from life itself.

from the review of the book The Last Hoursof Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann

Our problems derive not from our technology, our diet, violence in the

media, or any other one thing we do.


One way to feel that at least somethingis going right in the world is to checkin with the Bioneers. These “biologicalpioneers” from all over the world gathereach autumn at a sold out conferencein northern California to talk abouttheir latest work.

The Bioneers realize that for us humansto survive over the long haul, we mustlearn to live within the limits of thenatural world. A key to achieving thisbalance, they believe, is studying hownature works and applying this knowledgeto the problems and challenges societyfaces. The solutions they look for arethose that can be replicated and spreadaround the globe.

The Bioneers Conference abounds withpresentations on community-sponsoredagriculture; organic farms that makea profit; mushrooms that render deadlybacteria harmless; prairie land restoredto pristine condition; Superfund sitescleaned up by organisms in the soilitself with no need for chemicals orincineration. Not only are these nature-based projects successful, the Bioneerssay they can save money over typicalhigh-tech methods, and are frugal intheir use of Earth’s resources.

Bioneers

Aldo Leopold said there are two spiritualdangers that come from not growing upon a farm. One is the belief that heat comesfrom a stove and the other is the beliefthat food comes from a grocery store.

When I was a kid growing up on a farmhere in Kansas, in the Kansas River valleynear Topeka, I’d be asked to go out andcatch a chicken that would be fried upfor lunch or noon meal. There would bepotatoes, perhaps, that would have beendug out of the garden. There would havebeen, perhaps, some peas. Now what cameout of all of that? I would say I learnedmore in the first 18 years of life on thatfarm than I learned getting an under-graduate degree and a Ph.D. in a landgrant institution. I mean, I may be ageneticist, I may be a botanist, but thatsort of formal education versus whatthe land taught me and a culture taughtme was minuscule.

Wes Jackson, environmental historian,president of the Land Institute, author ofRooted in the Land: Essays on Communityand Place

Since the Earth is finite, and we willhave to stop expanding sometime, shouldwe do it before or after nature’s diversityis gone?

Could there be a connection betweenthe obesity epidemic, dirty air, globalwarming—and the number of mothers I seeeach morning chauffeuring their 1.7 childrento neighborhood schools in nine-seaterChevrolet Suburbans? D’ya think?

Jeremy Sinek, editor of World of Wheelsmagazine

Jeremy Sinek

Donella Meadows

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Wes Jackson


Every day on his farm in Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa, Dass

Sangare collects the urine of his seven cows. “It’s not exactly

a pleasant job,” he says, sitting in the shade beside his hut

surrounded by cotton. “They usually go in the morning just

before they’re milked. If you don’t get a bucket under them

in time, you miss most of it.”

Sangare then leaves the urine to ferment for a few days,

dilutes it with water, and sprays it over his cotton plants.

“It’s one of the best insecticides there is,” he says. “It’s also

a herbicide and fertilizer, and it’s free.”

Most farmers spray their cotton with chemicals. None have

worked. “If they would just spray cow urine once a week,”

says Sangare, “their whiteflies would go away.”

Dass Sangare

Disputes over the environment are likemonkey chatter in the leaves of a dyingtree, when the need is to focus on restoringthe trunk and the branches.

Karl-Henrik Robért, head of Sweden’s leadingcancer research institute, founder of TheNatural Step movement

Karl-Henrik Robért

The Earth systems and Earth resourcesare ultimately the overriding issue forall cultures and for the policies of everycountry in the world.

Tom Van Sant, artist, sculptor, founder ofThe GeoSphere Project

Tom Van Sant

The Atlantic bluefin tuna is so popular andbecoming so rare that a single 900-poundfish can bring $44,000 to the fisherman,sell for $80,000 in the market, and cost theJapanese diner $75 for two small slices.

Sylvia E. Earle, author, marine biologist, formerchief scientist for the National Oceanographicand Atmospheric Association (NOAA)

Once we expand our sense of self toinclude the planet, we can call on theimmense wisdom and power inherentin the natural world.

Thomas Berry

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Sylvia E. Earle

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