Edging Ahead…

…my hat is off to John Liu, for both the fundamental pragmatism of his ecological vision, and for the potential generalized applicability to the global crises facing us today. John’s the driving force behind Earth’s Hope, an organization committed to disseminating the ideas that fundamental ecosystem balance ultimately determines the survival or failure of whole civilizations, but that it is possible to rehabilitate large scale ecosystems we have allowed to degrade through societal “development”.

Reduced to a few basic concepts as I’ve wrapped my head around them, and with apologies to John if I’ve misunderstood or misinterpreted his message, he has convinced me to seriously consider that;

• In addition to initiatives on carbon conservation and reduction and efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewables, we need to add a “third leg” to the global environmental recovery strategy, and that is to restore every degraded environment on the planet to its natural balance.
• This is not an insurmountable challenge. John’s documentation of the changes to 35,000 square kilometers of the Loess Plateau in China over just 10 years is an amazing affirmation of what can be done when political will is turned to practical implementation of real-world projects.
• The 21st century preoccupation with atmospheric CO2 reduction is a misplaced and overly complex approach to simple systemic global problem. The overarching problem is rooted in human activity planetwide which replaces natural ecosystems with subsistence agriculture.
• Replacing natural ecosystems with subsistence agriculture has one logical natural conclusion, which is the ultimate degradation of the environment resulting in barren, unproductive deserts.

Furthermore, John proposes, and makes a strong case that;

• ALL of the environmental issues we’ve been bombarded with over the past ten years can be addressed at some level with a simple fix involving rebuilding the land’s ability to retain available rainfall and so to recover its natural propensity toward biological diversity and equilibrium.
• Physical reclamation of biodiversity on a local level can have  global climatic impacts – and virutally all of these impacts are positive.
• integrated poverty eradication and large-scale ecosystem rehabilitation go together. Local biodiversity recovery projects lead to the reduction of poverty and overal raising of the standard of living, which in turn can lead to the reduction of negative ecological behaviors, which reinforces ecological recovery, which leads to regional weather modification, which ultimately can have global impact.

Further, in order to become globally effective;

• the movement has to be “organic” – “grass-roots”, if you will. It has to be furthered by the actions of committed individuals involved in local action with regional or global consequences.

The source material for the notes above are available in more detail at a post somewhat down the homepage on the Earth’s Hope blog but the very essence of what John presented can be seen in the before and after images at the Earth’s Hope website. If you find these images striking, be sure to download the “Lessons from the Loess Plateau” video and watch the entire amazing story unfold.

I’ve spent several hours with John over the past three days, listening to his vision, revelling in the imagry he has presented, and mulling over where to go from here. Although John argues vociferously against adopting a “ready, fire, aim” approach, cautioning that the first step is to seek to understand how the current state has been reached, and then to adopt sound ecological interventions around water retention and biodiversity reestablishment, at the simplest level, it seems to me, I need to do something…and so do you... You can start by reading John’s story, viewing some of the footage posted at the Earth’s Hope website, and then reviewing (and perhaps contributing to) the issues raised on the Earth’s Hope blog.

My personal memmonic for the second half of Buddhism’s Eight-Fold Path (Right “Livelihood” through Right “Effort, Mindfullness and Concentration”) is -”Live Every Moment Carefully”

“Earth’s Hope” is that each of us will do exactly that. It’s never too late to start.

Focus Question: Is there such a thing as privacy online?  Readings: Beware: the Internet could own your future & Don’t overestimate privacy of online information

The simple answer? No. The very nature of the web, in which information is broken in to discrete packets and virtually broadcast to the four winds of the web ensures that any information released in this environment will be basically available to anyone who is intent on tracking it down.

A quick perusal of these articles basically bemoans the fact that people tend to be naive about the security of information posted online, and in the first, Husna Najand suggests that “A line must be drawn between what is acceptable and what is not”.  Rephrasing this as a question, the issue perhaps then is;

“Can a line be drawn between what is acceptable and what is not online?”

Again, the simple answer, for the same reason noted above, is “No.” Since the web, by its nature, has no centralized editorial control, and, to a large degree, literally no actual human evaluation of the contents, drawing such a line would require an algorithm to automatically analyze every web posting and to determine if it has crossed this line.  The possibility of designing such an algorithm seems wildly improbable. Thus, there can be no effective line drawn online between what is acceptable and what is not. The web, like life itself, is self-perpetuating but shaped by whatever becomes an integral part of the whole.

This week’s assignment for our Technology course is to blog on our experience and learnings at the EARCOS Teachers’ Conference (ETC) in Kota Kinabalu this week. Assumedly, we should look for linkages between our course reflections and the week’s topic of discussion.

On the face of it, there has been little in the sessions I’ve attended this week which I can link back directly to online privacy. The three keynote speakers this year have all been environmentalists at one level or another, their messages uniformly messages of hope and potentiality.

The conference began with Alan AtKisson, who presented the concept of “exponential growth” (driven home with an interactive ditty in which the audience sang, on cue, the refrain “exponential growth”) – and the idea that countering the exponential growth of events such as atmospheric carbon loading, habitat destruction and species extinction, there are positive incidences of exponential growth in areas such as renewable energy. If we can manage a confluence of these positive and negative trends, AtKisson proposes, we can reach a balance and avoid the many crises facing us.

The second day’s keynoter was William Lishman, a philosopher, inventor and innovator who’s address was titled “If we are not part of the solution, we’re part of the problem.” Lishman went on with a second session to show examples of his research and experience in the areas of alternative energy architecture including an overview of the design and development of his unique underground home in Ontario, Canada. As a sidebar, he showed the audience the most amazing video sequence of a calving iceberg I have ever seen

Tomorrow’s Keynoter will be John D. Liu, an American film-maker and ecologist, who has worked in China and abroad for years “on ecological film making and has written, produced and directed films on Grasslands, Deserts, Wetlands, Oceans, Rivers, Urban Development, Atmosphere, Forests, Endangered Animals, Poverty Reduction primarily for EARTH REPORT and LIFE series on the BBC World.

As I think more about this, though, it seems to me that perhaps there is a link between the concept of privacy and the issues that these three men raise. The link is in their very public presence on the web. A specific Google search of any of these three turns up 3-digit lists of hits. With this kind of online presence, even where there is duplication of some of the key stories involving or featuring them, how can personal privacy be even an issue. A little digging turns up everything from a trickle to a stream of personal data, professional accomplishments and public adulation.

Why is this relevant? It’s relevant because in the future we are facing, we need all the positive, future-oriented thinkers and do’ers that we can dig up – and it’s inevitable that the power of the web is going to be indiscriminate in the presentation and dissemination of a mix of the above. These people are doing important work – and by their very actions, they have demonstrated that the issue of personal privacy is, for them subordinate to the issues of the public good.

Thank you Alan AtKisson, William Lisham and John Liu, for showing the way!