Hey, all:

I am primarily a Wildlife Biologist, with experience in endangered species and invasive species ecology, and have added over the years prescribed burn manager, sustainability practitioner and advocate, and I live off-the-grid out in the country, about an hour from Corpus Christi, Texas USA,  with Wind (wind turbine) and Sun (photovoltaic), solar domestic water heat, and roof-top water collection systems.   The wind turbine and photovoltaic equipment supply all my electrical energy needs, so I close all my Internet correspondence with "Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!".

I have free-range chickens (with a "chicken tractor") and I do some organic gardening.  I am interested in strawbale and rammed earth construction, habitat restoration, and reducing human impact globally, including human overpopulation.  A huge portion (if not all) of these goals require the participation of all peoples, cultures, and males and females with full equity and rights. 


Scientists, Researchers, and Writers as Advocates and Activists
I would like to appeal to biologists, scientists and researchers in other fields, and informed writers of high ethical standards who have concluded that there is a global emergency, and we are among the best qualified by our background, experience, passion, and observations to assist in real solutions.   We can provide the evidence and clear explanations of why and how humans have damaged the abiotic and biotic characteristics of the planet, and we can support rational, practical, non-greed-driven actions to halt and reverse the damage.

However, we must understand and accept that we must act with humility and recognize that sometimes there are issues beyond scientific solutions.  There is a an excellent paper by Garrett Hardin:  Hardin, G. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science Vol. 162.  6 pp., in which he correctly asserts there are some human-caused problems for which "...there is no technical solution...."  Hardin defines a "...technical solution... as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality."  For these problems, and there are many, morality combined with social action must instead be used to affect improvement.  We can do both, as recognized and as needed: advocate for techological and scientific improvements in life, and socially and morality based improvements as well.   To do so, we must be able to discern the correct approach.


I claim the first "Father/Daughter" signup on WiserEarth!   I sent my daughter the link and she signed up 24 Sep 2007.   Teresa Potter is my daughter's name and she graduated in May 2008 from Texas A&M University at Galveston, Texas, with her Bachelor's degree in Marine Biology.   Say Hi! to her!

In the past 20 years I have become a stronger and stronger supporter of populism and progressivism, and opponent of the corporate oligarchy and gobbleization--steering further to the left as time goes by.   My primary focus in practically all arenas has become sustainability, since that is the universal guide for surviving and ultimately thriving in concert with the abiotic environment and the biotic community.  Sustainability also extends to social issues, since unjust policies and social structures ultimately cannot be morally sustained.   Social justice and sustainability are mutually essential, and achieving social justice requires full human rights.   Finally, sustainability applies to energy production and distribution, for electricity and transportation, and the need to immediately and completely end the use of both Carbon and nuclear energy as energy sources. 

There is not a single stage in the extraction and use of Carbon-based energy that is sustainable, and in fact, most steps are environmentally destructive and they exacerbate economic disparity worldwide.  Even terrestrial Carbon, as biomass energy, only creates and falsely extends the excuse for continued Carbon extraction and therefore destruction.  Biomass Carbon introduces its own conficts, between land for food, land for human habitation, land for energy, and land for habitat for all the others in the biotic community.    The last category listed here always gets the least consideration.

The conclusion from all this is the stark reality that we have to Kill Carbon as an energy source.  The writer Mark McElroy has said we need to"...kill our worst ideas when they occur before they kill us."  Number One on this list of 'ideas to kill' has to be to Kill Carbon as an energy source. 

 

A very similar situation exists in nuclear energy.  So many buy the line that it is 'cheap and clean', even progressive environmental groups, but it is in fact neither, and is instead extremely costly, both near- and long-term, and extremely hazardous.  Everyone also focuses on the disposal of wastes, but as above with the Carbon industry, there is not one single step in the nuclear process that is sustainable.  It consists of two parallel tracks: the material used (Uranium) and the facilities (power plants), and both must be considered.  From  exploration, extraction, transportation, purification, all the way to ultimate disposal, the Uranium material has destructive, hazardous steps throughout.  Power plants impose their own tremendous damages, in vast volumes  of construction materials used, vast land use, to air and water pollution, thermal impacts, all the way to the final decommissioning and dismantling of power plants at the end of their useful 30-50 year life.  Not one step is sustainable, and in fact all are terrribly destructive.  The Nuke and Carbon industries also share the same structure of vast externalized costs, both financial and environmental, which are borne by billions of people powerless to prevent them. let alone the entire non-human biotic world.

 

The lovely yellow flowers I display here with my user name are those of a cactus, Thelocactus setispinus "Twisted Rib", native to my part of Texas, and the pictured plant was found 83 feet (yeah, I measured) from my front door, where I live among the South Texas brush.  It is quite inconspicuous when not in bloom, and illustrates the subtle beauty and diversity of wilderness which we can discover when we can take the time to appreciate it.  Unfortunately, billions of us in the world do not have the slightest opportunity for such appreciation, rather it is a matter that if a meal or other use is possible for something we observe, little else matters.   As a result, the vast global biodiversity is disappearing utterly and eternally.   This returns us to sustainability in all our actions as the most important, essential focus. 



Question Authority

Challenge the Status Quo

Be Critical of Convention

 

 

Below are some quotes which I love or live by (or both!):


Faust, having made a bad bargain by not reading the fine print and so brought disaster on the innocent bystanders (Gretchen's family), was eventually redeemed and accepted in heaven because he changed his career, redevoting his talents to bringing soft technologies to the villagers.   We need, like Faust, to refashion hubris into humility; to learn and accept our own limits as a fragile and tenuous experiment in an unhospitable universe; and to grow content to live as a people, not as gods.  Our choice of the "road less traveled" can truly make all the difference.  But if we wish to have the chance to tell of our choice, "somewhere ages and ages hence." then we must chose soon, and choose wisely, for all the ages. 

                               --  Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, 1977


This is the only place on Earth blue bonnets grow
And once a year they come and go
At this old house here by the road

And when we die we say we'll catch some blackbird's wing
And we will fly away to heaven, come some sweet blue bonnet spring.

                              --  Nancy Griffith, James Hooker, Danny Flowers,  "Gulf Coast Highway"

 
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself.  That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.  Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink. 

                                --  George Orwell, "doublethink", from 1984


Things do not change; we change.  --  Henry David Thoreau

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.   --  Leo Tolstoy

Be the change that you want to see in the world.   --  Mohandas Gandhi

Lead by example.  --  Anon.

Practice what you preach.  --  Anon.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.  --  Henry David Thoreau

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.   --  Anon.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.  --  Anon.


David
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!