Saturday Links for the Week — September 1, 2007 — The Natural Places Edition

It seems to me that our only hope to inspire future generations to want to preserve and recreate natural spaces is to show them so they can experience it first-hand. We cannot expect people to care about things they only see on National Geographic. There is no ‘business case’ for renaturalization, for wild places (although some organizations have tried valiantly to make the case). Appreciation of the value of natural space is intrinsic — you either feel it or you don’t. And you can’t feel it if you haven’t experienced it.

Recreating natural places requires us to do two things: Top down, we need programs and regulations to conserve such places and recreate and reconnect those that have been lost. And bottom up, we need knowledge, local knowledge, of what was and is natural to the places where we live, and then we need to replant and recreate those natural places, a quarter acre at a time.

Take Southern Ontario as an example. The map above shows what might be saved. Ontario Nature has a plan, a Greenway Strategy, to save it. Biologist Natalie Helferty, whose work I wrote about before, is now working there to develop policies and lobby governments to make it happen. If she fails, with the ferocious pressure of population growth in the area from today’s 12 million to a projected 24 million by 2050, the green areas on the map above will all be gone by then. Each of us needs to find the programs like this for our own area, and support them.

For those of us ready to renaturalize our own places, you can pick up how-to books like Sara Stein’s. The North American Native Plant Society can help you identify and find native plants. You can create edible forest gardens. You can eat local better if you eat seasonally. You can encourage and support farms that practice humane, organic, bioregional, sustainable agriculture, and hear and read and read more about the challenges such farms face from the Big Agriculture oligopoly and its handmaiden, the government bureaucracy, and about the struggles of people to renaturalize their own land when their neighbours (and local bureaucrats) don’t understand. (Thanks to Dale Asberry, Ed Diril and Chris Brainard for the links.)

If you’re ready to work with others in a natural community you can read Diana Leafe Christian’s books on creating and finding intentional communities. (Thanks to Martha at Earthaven for the link.)

And artist Andrew Campbell puts our longing for natural places in the context of our search to establish and create human identity.

In Other News

• In our flying habits, there’s a big gap between what we know is right and what we do. (Thanks to prad for the link.)
• Yes! Magazine argues (vainly I think) for a movement for the public good to pressure corporations and governments to pay attention to the rights and needs of citizens. We can’t depend on this happening.
• Energy and Capital explains that the Alberta Tar Sands are not only an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions, but an extravagant and uneconomic megaproject experiment being bankrolled by Canadian taxpayers. (Thanks to Charles Hall for the link.)
• Andrew at Salon’s HTWW explains that the next domino in the US debt crisis is credit card defaults. Love to see the pimps pushing those things take it on the chin, but the government will probably bail them out too, while leaving their victims to suffer in bankruptcy.
• And in a similar vein James Surowiecki in the New Yorker explains that the US government’s bailout of subprime lenders will merely make them more reckless the next time greed propels them to take foolish risks.
• Mother Earth News says thin-film polymers are the future of solar energy panels. But do we really need another reason to produce Teflon? (Thanks to Ed Diril for the link.)
• And the NYT suggests Mother Teresa might have been an athiest.
• Looking for a Green High-Tech Job? Check out the opportunity with eco-blogger and eco-consultant Natural Logic.

Thought for the Week: On the theme of natural places, a poem by Richard (“what will become of those who cannot learn / the terrible knowledge of cities… / oh, mydesert / yours is the only death I cannot bear”) Shelton (thanks to Aleah for reminding me of his work):

Desert

Sometimes the sun is still trying
to get to the horizon
when a daylight moon comes up,
fragile and almost transparent,
the ghost of a white bird
with damaged wings,
blown from its course and lost
in the huge desert sky.
It is the least protected
of all unprotected things.
A little wind goes by
through the greasewood
heading home to its nest
among blue-veined stones
where it will circle three times
and curl up to sleep
before darkness falls
straight down
like a tile from the roof of a tall building.
There are families of stones
under the ground.
As the young stones grow
they rise slowly like moons.
When they reach the surface
they are old and holy
and when they break open
they give off a rich odor,
each blooming once in the light
after centuries of waiting.
Those who have lived here longest
and know best
are least conspicuous.
The oldest mountains are lowest
and the scorpion sleeps all day
beneath a broken stone.
If I stay here long enough
I will learn the art of silence.
When I have given up words
I will become what I have to say.