Forest Man

Forest Man

Published on Jun 13, 2014

Since the 1970's Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a barren wasteland, into a lush oasis.

Celebrating Earth Day: Natural Wonders Show Us Why We Must Care For Creation

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/22/earth-day-gods-creation_n_5186613.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051

The Huffington Post
by Yasmine Hafiz
April 22, 2014

Caring for creation is something that all the residents of this beautiful, diverse, and breathtaking planet have a stake in. The environment we live in is inextricable from our daily lives, and our actions have a direct impact on it. Many faith traditions emphasize the importance of acting as a steward for the planet as well as giving thanks for its life-sustaining blessings.

These breathtaking natural wonders remind us of the importance of taking care of the environment. What have you done for the earth today?

Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil

"God created man and woman entrusting them with the task of filling the earth and subduing it, which does not mean exploiting it, but nurturing and protecting it, caring for it through their work." -Pope Francis

Aurora Borealis, Norway

"The Goddess religion asserts that the earth is alive, and that everything on the earth is part of a living being." -Starhawk

Bamboo Forest, Japan

"The world’s forests are a shared stolen treasure that we must put back for our children’s future."

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Grand Canyon, U.S.A.

"We must acquire a compassionate heart – what St. Isaac of Syria, a seventh century mystic once called a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation: for humans, for birds and beasts, for all God’s creatures." -Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

Uluru, Australia

"Morally speaking, we should be concerned for our whole environment." -The Dalai Lama

Mount Rainier, U.S.A.

"Air is the Guru, Water is the Father, and Earth is the Great Mother of all." -The Second Guru, Guru Angad

Antelope Canyon, U.S.A.

"We have inherited a great thing in this Earth and all its bounty. Why not leave it better than we found it for those who will come after us?" -Ibrahim Abdul-Matin

Pamukkale, Turkey

“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.” -Francis Bacon

Mount Fuji, Japan

"We are all connected and there is no escape; our common future depends on how we care for the rest of the natural world, not just the square feet of soil we may call 'our own." -Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

Tuscany, Italy

"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -Baha'u'llah

• Joshua Tree National Forest, U.S.A.

"Nothing that the Lord created in the world was superfluous or vain; hence, all must be sustained." -Rabbi Norman Lamm

Jiuzhaigou Park, China

“We find greater lightness & ease in our lives as we increasingly care for ourselves & other beings.” -Sharon Salzberg

Salinas Grandes, Argentina

"Strength is knowing what's happening to the world around us, and moreover, as a Christian, we can't claim to love the Creator and abuse the world in which we live." -Rev. Richard Cizik

Skaftafell, Iceland

“The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.” -Pope John Paul II

Cliffs of Mohr, Ireland

"We are not masters of this Earth; it does not belong to us to do what we wish." -Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef

K2, Himalayas

"Let there be peace in the heavens, the Earth, the atmosphere, the water, the herbs, the vegetation, among the divine beings and in Brahman, the absolute reality." -Atharva Veda

White Desert, Egypt

"May we never seek to mistreat the earth; may we live with reverence for you and all you have made. " -Lakota Prayer

Aldo Leopold - Caring for this Good Earth

Key Ideas of Conservation

Aldo Leopold (c.1887-1948) was a naturalist who was ahead of his time. He was an early advocate for conservation and naturalism in America. Having been taught at Yale's School of Forestry to manage land he left with the strong feeling that land should not be managed but left wild. That it was important to save the wild places as they are and to protect them from the encroachment of man. His overall rule was to connect people back to the land so that they may understand its value and importance.

He wrote a thin journal of his experiences A Sand County Almanac over a 12 year span documenting his thoughts, observations, and philosophy. From this study arose the following ideas:

What is the Land Ethic? - To retain and preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community in partnership and preservation of the land. It is positive concept that we must work towards at all times in planning and development, living and being, connecting and integrating.

What is Conservation? - Conservation is the state of harmony between men and the land.

What are the 3 key ideas behind a Land Ethic?

1. Land is a community of all living things.

2. Land is to be loved and respected.

3. Land creates an ongoing awareness of the connection between it and humans.

What should be our response to promoting a Land Ethic? - Public conservation efforts have little chance of success until private individuals, organizations, and corporations feel a strong personal relationship for the health of the land. Promotion of this relationship may take many forms.

Greenfire is a promotional film describing Aldo Leopold's conservation efforts. It may be found here.

Wikipedia Bio - Aldo Leopold

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

But when we see land as a community to which we belong,

we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

- Aldo Leopold



“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants,

and animals, or collectively: the land... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo Sapiens

from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect

for  this fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

- Aldo Leopold



“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. But when we see land

as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

- Aldo Leopold

“A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe]

he is writing his signature on the face of the land.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac



“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” 

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

“No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows,

one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River



“We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty

for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.”

- Aldo Leopold, Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold

“The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of 

whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have

become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac



“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.

One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery,

and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, the stability, and beauty of the

biotic  community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

- Aldo Leopold

Caring for Grasslands of the Earth

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.
Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural,

wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.”

- Aldo Leopold

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.”

- Aldo Leopold

Caring for the Seas of the Earth

“Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that
that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology,
but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”

- Aldo Leopold



“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent

this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet;

one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may

say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

“Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we

had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”

- Aldo Leopold

Earth Care Interconnectivity

“To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants -
a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in
any collective sense.”

- Aldo Leopold, For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings

“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off
his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators... The land is one organism.”

- Aldo Leopold



“At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree

useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.”

- Aldo Leopold

“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... creation of new wilderness
in the full sense of the word is impossible.”

- Aldo Leopold




Join your local chapter or conservation group today

promoting earth care and regeneration

Aldo Leopold: The Land Ethic

Aldo Leopold: Conservation Movement

Wildlife - Conservation: The Life and Legacy of Aldo Leopold
The GreenFire Film Project

Earthday 2012 - Paul Gilding, A Modern Day Noah

Secular Scientists…the Present Day Noah!

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2012/04/17/secular-scientists-the-present-day-noah/

by Tripp Fuller

April 17, 2012

I am busy editing and reworking my keynote for the Sustainable Faith conference later this week in St. Petersburg Florida. I was going back and forth between making a biblical illusion to either Noah or Job when I read this post by Church historian Bill Leonard. Now that he used it oh so well in this post I guess I will link it and go for Job! If you are local come join us for a conversation on “ecology, incarnation and the interconnectedness.”

As for Noah, Bill Leonard asks a bunch of questions – good ones. Be wise. Listen to his awesome visit to the podcast & go check out his post on Noah.

When did the people of Noah’s day finally realize that what was happening to them was more than just a stationary front? Why do some religious folks take the Noah story literally but resist the possibility of a contemporary global catastrophe, one essentially of human creation?

Is biblical literalism clearer for the past than the present? How many glaciers must collapse and heat waves smolder before we literally read the “signs of the times?”

Wouldn’t it be weird if “secularists” turned out to be the ones who discerned earth’s impending judgment on our lives and lifestyles? What if global warming is true and we don’t have sense enough to see the planet itself as ark?

Like Noah, we still could labor together to find “grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Or just turn up the church air conditioning.

If you wondered exactly what our modern day Noah has to say check out Paul Gilding’s recent TED talk ‘the earth is full.’

Published on Feb 29, 2012 by TEDtalksDirector

http://www.ted.com Have we used up all our resources? Have we filled up all the livable space on Earth? Paul Gilding suggests we have, and the possibility of devastating consequences, in a talk that's equal parts terrifying and, oddly, hopeful.

Speakers Paul Gilding: Writer

http://www.ted.com/speakers/paul_gilding.html

Paul Gilding is an independent writer, activist and adviser on a sustainable economy. Click through to watch the onstage debate that followed this talk.

Why you should listen to him:

Watch the debate with Peter Diamandis that followed this talk >>

Paul Gilding has spent 35 years trying to change the world. He’s served in the Australian military, chased nuclear armed aircraft carriers in small inflatable boats, plugged up industrial waste discharge pipes, been global CEO of Greenpeace, taught at Cambridge University, started two successful businesses and advised the CEOs of some the world’s largest companies.

Despite his clear lack of progress, the unstoppable and flexible optimist is now a writer and advocate, travelling the world with his book The Great Disruption alerting people to the global economic and ecological crisis unfolding around us, as the world economy reaches and passes the limits to growth. He is confident we can get through what’s coming and says rather than the end of civilization, this could be the beginning! He argues we will rise to the occasion and see change at a scale and speed incomprehensible today, but need to urgently prepare for The Great Disruption and “the end of shopping”, as we reinvent the global economy and our model of social progress.

Read his reaction to attending TED2012: "Will the techno-optimists save the world?"

Quotes by Paul Gilding

• “It takes a good crisis to get us going. When we feel fear and we fear loss we are capable of quite extraordinary things.”Watch this talk »
• “We can choose this moment of crisis to ask and answer the big questions of society's evolution — like, what do we want to be when we grow up?”Watch this talk »
• “Our system — of debt-fueled economic growth, of ineffective democracy, of overloading planet Earth — is eating itself alive.”Watch this talk »
• “The Earth doesn't care what we need; Mother Nature doesn't negotiate.”Watch this talk »
• “Thanks to those pesky laws of physics, when things aren't sustainable, they stop.”Watch this talk »

The Industrial Eden

“For a long time now we have understood ourselves as traveling to some sort of industrial paradise, some new Eden conceived and constructed entirely by human ingenuity.

And we have thought ourselves free to use and abuse nature in any way that might further this enterprise.

Now we have overwhelming evidence that we are not smart enough to recover Eden by assault, and that nature does not tolerate or excuse our abuses.

If, in spite of the evidence against us, we are finding it hard to relinquish our old ambition, we are also seeing more clearly every day how that ambition has reduced and enslaved us.”

- Wendell Berry “Nature as Measure” in Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food