Ecozoic Cafe

Earth Day April 22, 2024

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Jonas

New England is known for its unpredictable weather, but thankfully it’s blue skies today here in Boston on Earth Day. Celebrations and activities are happening around the globe. Here’s an excerpt from today’s edition of historian Heather Cox Richardson‘s Substack newsletter Letters from an American which provides some of the background behind the creation of this particular day:

The spark for the first Earth Day was the 1962 publication of marine biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which showed the devastating effects of people on nature by documenting the effect of modern pesticides on the natural world. Her exposé of how the popular pesticide DDT was poisoning the food chain in American waters illuminated the dangerous overuse of chemicals and their effect on living organisms, and it caught readers’ attention. Carson’s book sold more than half a million copies in 24 countries.

Democratic president John F. Kennedy asked the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into Carson’s argument, and the committee vindicated her. Before she died of breast cancer in 1964, Carson noted: “Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”

As scientists organized the Environmental Defense Fund, Americans began to pay closer attention to human effects on the environment, especially after three crucial events. First, on December 24, 1968, astronaut William Anders took a color photograph of the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon from outer space during the Apollo 8 mission, powerfully illustrating the beauty and isolation of the globe on which we all live.

Then, over 10 days in January and February 1969, a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Public outrage ran so high that President Nixon went to Santa Barbara in March to see the cleanup efforts, telling the American public that “the Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

And then, in June 1969, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire. A dumping ground for local heavy industry, the river had actually burned more than ten times in the previous century, but with increased focus on environmental damage, this time the burning river garnered national attention.

In February 1970, President Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.”

“The tasks that need doing require money, resolve and ingenuity,” Nixon said, “and they are too big to be done by government alone. They call for fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and for new programs to ensure that government, industry and individuals all are called on to do their share of the job and to pay their share of the cost.”

Meanwhile, Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, visited the Santa Barbara oil spill and hoped to turn the same sort of enthusiasm people were bringing to protests against the Vietnam War toward efforts to protect the environment. He announced a teach-in on college campuses, which soon grew into a wider movement across the country. Their “Earth Day,” held on April 22, 1970, brought more than 20 million Americans—10% of the total population of the country at the time—to call for the nation to address the damage caused by 150 years of unregulated industrial development. The movement included members of all political parties, rich Americans and their poorer neighbors, people who lived in the city and those in the country, labor leaders and their employers. It is still one of the largest protests in American history.[2]

In the newsletter, Richardson begins her article by describing an event which illustrates the value a Native American can bring to the preservation of our nation’s natural resources if he or she has been empowered by the government (which has over the centuries has taken so much away from tribal lands). Under the leadership of the Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo), the Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Land Management conducted a lengthy and detailed process reviewing public land use regulations, and the result is a new Public Lands Rule which “provides tools for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to help improve the health and resilience of public lands in the face of a changing climate; conserve important wildlife habitat and intact landscapes; facilitate responsible development; and better recognize unique cultural and natural resources on public lands.” [3]

Nice timing: The new rule was announced last Thursday, April 18, four days before Earth Day. (Of course, opponents to the rule will be challenging it. Stay tuned.)

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Sources

[1] Photo by NASA/Bill Anders – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=306267

[2] https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-21-2024

[3] https://www.blm.gov/press-release/biden-harris-administration-finalizes-strategy-guide-balanced-management-conservation

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Ecospirituality

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Jonas

Throughout the history of religions, spiritual practices have been sources of compassion, empathy, and hope for individuals and communities, especially in turbulent times. In this time of climate crisis, people are turning to new forms of spirituality or ecosprituality as responses to the degradation of ecological systems. It’s interesting to note that according to Google Books Ngram Viewer, the incidence of the term ecospirituality in English language books has grown sevenfold during 1985-2019. While the general term spirituality refers to many forms of spiritual practice, belief, and way of life, ecospirituality focuses on healing the rift between human and non-human life on our planet. Excellent books are available as introductions to the subject, for example Rachel Wheeler‘s Ecospirituality: An introduction. Here are couple of definitions I’ve found on the web:

Eco-spirituality is an approach to faith that celebrates humanity’s connection to the natural world. Eco-spirituality can manifest in any world religion, and usually seeks to link the tenets of a specific belief system to the sacredness of the earth. Those who practice eco-spirituality are compelled by their faith to care for other living things, respect the earth and its resources, consider their own role in the wider universe, and connect ecological issues to issues of faith. . . . Scholars who study the relationship between religion and the natural world propose that many ecological issues stem from the human notion that we are greater than nature, and that widespread acceptance of our role in nature will help us preserve our planet. [1]

Ecospirituality expresses the joining of spirituality with ecological perspectives. There are numerous types, traditions, expressions, and understandings of ecospirituality. It does not refer to any one set of beliefs, but to a range of ethical or moral, religious, spiritual, or agnostic beliefs, tendencies, or actions that relate to ecological concerns. Ecospirituality has evolved since the 1960s and is currently part of popular culture in North America. The connection between spirituality and the Earth has deep and historical roots in many religious traditions and in particular with those that have remained in tune with the rhythms and limits of the Earth, such as some indigenous traditions around the world. . . . Ecospirituality has many meanings, the first referring to a thirst for connection between spirituality and the Earth, given the extent of and the general lack of religious responses to the ecological crisis. There is a recognition that the ecological crisis threatens all life on Earth, and it is fundamentally a moral, spiritual, and religious problem. [2]

Ecospirituality connects the science of ecology with spirituality. It brings together religion and environmental activism. Ecospirituality has been defined as “a manifestation of the spiritual connection between human beings and the environment.” The new millennium and the modern ecological crisis has created a need for environmentally based religion and spirituality. Ecospirituality is understood by some practitioners and scholars as one result of people wanting to free themselves from a consumeristic and materialistic society. [3]

In her article for EarthBeat, A Project of National Catholic Reporter, Barbara Fraser wrote

The prefix “eco-” before “spirituality” comes from the Greek oikos, meaning home — a reminder that “this house is the only one we have, we’re all together, what happens in Kolkata affects New York, Santiago in Chile, and São Paulo,” Divine Word Fr. Fernando Díaz of Chile told EarthBeat.

“It really is a common home, and this common home is threatened,” Díaz added. “We’re all connected, and this is a way of understanding that home that demands that we look beyond the instrumental rationalism that has guided us in such a destructive way over the past century.”

Díaz, who has worked for years with Mapuche people in southern Chile, has found Indigenous people to have a more holistic view of the relationship between human and other-than-human beings that calls for “a different perspective … a way of understanding how we live and why we live in this home that is for everyone, and where everyone must have a place, which we must care for.”

He added, “That’s where ecospirituality comes in.”

The Mapuche way of life suggests that we have much to learn from Indigenous people and their traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), but we will also need the knowledge provided by modern science, particularly the ecological and environmental sciences. However, our success in letting these forms of knowledge shape our everyday lives will in large part depend on how deeply committed we are to change our social and economic systems. The challenges to realizing such inner and outer transformation are enormous. According to Yale Divinity School Dean Gregory E. Sterling,

Among the many challenges we face, one of them threatens every human on our planet: the unsustainability of our current ecological course. Some think this is a scientific and technological problem. It is true that it cannot be addressed without science and technology, yet science alone will not solve the crisis. Gus Speth, former dean of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale, has been widely attributed to say: “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy.” Speth went on to say that “to deal with those issues we need a spiritual and cultural transformation – and we scientists do not know how to do that.” Speth was right. [5]

One aspect about ecospirituality which I find quite interesting is its appearance within and outside of traditional religions. According to one study:

This theme of connection between living beings and the environment was the major uniting point between those who identified as spiritual but not religious. While participants explained this interconnection with nature, the Earth, other humans and self in different terms and with different language, there was a consistent and pervasive emphasis and certainty in their belief in the interconnection of living things and nature. For instance, regarding nature and the environment, participants stated, “We are full-stop connected to nature,” “We’re connected to a tree, a rock, a bird, sand, so I think. I think that everything is connected,” ’’When I’m in nature, I feel an energy, a joy, a richness,” “Earth is one organism, we are part of the organism” or “I think there is some sort of energy out there. I don’t have a name for it. It could be nature.”[6]

Within traditional religions, theologians are reinforcing or revising their tradition’s beliefs in the goodness of the natural world. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim of the Yale Forum on Religion and Environment write

How to adapt religious teachings to this task of revaluing nature so as to prevent its destruction marks a significant new phase in religious thought. . . . Indeed, the formulation of a new ecological theology and environmental ethics is already emerging from within several of the world’s religions. Clearly each of the world’s religious traditions has something to contribute to these discussions.[7]

Within Christianity, new theologies are being written and taught which argue that Christian beliefs and practices need to include a greater reverence for the earth.[8] Inspired by such theologies, Christians are joining others outside their tradition in the work of combatting climate change. The radical change needed to establish a flourishing relationship between human and more-than-human worlds will require a massive effort, and for many people some form of ecospirituality will play a essential role.

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Sources

https://onlinedegrees.sandiego.edu/what-is-ecospirituality/
“Ecospirituality .” Contemporary American Religion. Encyclopedia.com. 21 Feb. 2024 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecospirituality
https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/ecospirituality-more-ecology-and-theology-it-calls-us-reconnect
Gregory E. Sterling, “From the Dean’s Desk.” Reflections. Accessed March 2, 2024. https://reflections.yale.edu/article/crucified-creation-green-faith-rising/dean-s-desk
Jessica Eise, Meghana Rawat, “Spiritual but not religious seek unrestricted connection to selves, others, and earth: Formative research on the explosive growth of an ‘inactive public’ beyond the organization, Public Relations Review, 49, no. 1 (March 2023): 4.
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, “World Religions,” Yale Forum of Religion and Ecology. https://fore.yale.edu/World-Religions. Accessed March 5, 2024.
We can see this development, for example, in the work of Elizabeth Johnson in her more recent books. See my post “You save animals and humans alike, O YHWH.” (Psalm 36:6).

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The Oak Tree

Posted on September 22, 2023 by Jonas

By Johann Jaritz – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28964978

Paul Harvey begins Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography, his biography of the African American philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, with the following description:

As a boy growing up in a small black community situated by Dayton Beach, Florida, Howard Thurman loved nature. He learned from it lessons that shaped his life. . . . Thurman loved to sit near the ocean at night; it gave him a sense of “timelessness, of existing beyond the reach of the ebb and flow of circumstances.” The periodic storms that lashed the coastline thrilled him . . . His experience with the storms gave him . . . an “overriding immunity against most of the pain with which I would have to deal in the years ahead when the ocean was only a memory.” (HT, 1)

One of Thurman’s deepest experiences of personal pain came early in life when as a seven year old attending the funeral of his father Saul Thurman, an agnostic and free thinker, he heard the minister declare that the dead man’s soul was beyond salvation. ‘”I listened with wonderment, then anger, and finally mounting rage,” Thurman said, as his father was “preached into hell.”‘(HT, 12)

Seeking comfort and support to help him deal with his rage at the minister (and the increasing racism he experienced growing up), Thurman found them in nature. Harvey writes:

As a boy, he had encountered “many violences,” but the one he kept returning to was the violation of his father’s soul conducted at his funeral. . . . And thus even as a boy, he had to find some “inner resource that could give me enough immunity to the violence of my environment to enable me to have a sense of normalcy and worthwhileness in being a human being.” . . . That’s what the oak tree [in his backyard] provided him; it was his “windbreak against existence.” He could also return there and “talk things over. It was the one thing in our yard that did not give when the seasonal hurricanes came.” (HT, 192)

As Thurman grew up in his home town of Daytona Beach, Florida, the white population changed and became more racist with northern snowbirds being replaced by southern whites. Harvey’s biography describes Thurman’s call to ministry (“I feel the needs of my people” – HT, 18), and his spiritual journey from attending seminary to pastoring churches, studying mysticism with the Quaker scholar Rufus Jones, meeting with Gandhi in India, serving as spiritual mentor to civil rights leaders, and becoming the dean of chapels at Howard and Boston Universities. Thurman’s conversations with Gandhi deepened his commitment to nonviolence as the best response to the violence of racism, a commitment he shared with the more activist leaders of the civil rights movement. From Harvey’s biography:

Thurman related a story from the civil rights movement about a woman who had been pinned to the ground by a policeman but at the moment felt a sense of peace within herself. For him, it was an example of how “nonviolence is the tapping and the releasing of the resources of vitality and energy in the human spirit that make it possible to relax and overcome the spirit of retaliation.” (HT, 207)

This woman’s practice of nonviolence as the “releasing of the resources of vitality and energy” echoes Thurman’s boyhood experience of an oak tree (and other natural phenomena) providing him with an “inner resource that could give me enough immunity to the violence of my environment to enable me to have a sense of . . . worthwhileness in being a human being.”

Thurman’s love of nature was an integral part of a spiritual vision that embraced both environmental and social justice. Like the brutal exploitation of Blacks in slavery, he recognized that nature, too, has been degraded by human exploitation. In his words,

Man is a child of nature; he is rooted and grounded in the earth. He belongs to it, and it belongs to him…Man cannot long separate himself from nature without withering as a cut rose in a vase. One of the deceptive aspects of mind in man is to give him the illusion of being distinct from and over against but not a part of nature. It is but a single leap thus to regard nature as being so completely other than himself the he may exploit it, plunder it, and rape it with impunity. . . . This we see all around us in the modern world. Our atmosphere is polluted, or streams are poisoned, our hills are denuded, wildlife is increasingly exterminated, while more and more man becomes alien on the earth and fouler of his own nest. [1]

According to Beth Norcross,

In Thurman’s works, particularly his later ones, there’s another aspect of nature he returned to often—unity. There was, he believed, “an original harmony” and wholeness within creation. This original harmony included relationships between humans . . . and between humans and the non-human world. This original harmony, however, has been disrupted by the actions and inaction of humans. This broken harmony, he says, is particularly painful and evident to African Americans. For Thurman, our human vocation is, therefore, to rediscover and reclaim the original harmony of creation. To do that, he says, we must first confront the disharmony we have wrought. [2]

Nature can be a source of strength and renewal, like it was for Thurman: “I needed the strength of that tree, and, like it, I wanted to hold my ground. . . . I could talk aloud to the oak tree and know that I was understood.” Thomas Berry had a “magic moment” when as a youth he first viewed a certain “meadow across the creek,” The experience eventually became the lodestar of his intellectual and spiritual life:

This early experience, it seems, has become normative for me throughout the range of my thinking. Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; what is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good. My life orientation is that simple. It is also that pervasive. It applies in economics and political orientation as well as in education and religion and whatever.[3]

If I were to pick an example of a presence in the natural world that has come to have a special meaning for me, I would pick the one outside a cottage my wife and I live in several months a year: Hardwick Pond in central Massachusetts. The occasions when I’ve sat on our porch quietly looking at the pond and its setting (I call it “pond-gazing”) have given me me glimpses of what Thurman and Berry experienced. The scene before me is, to use a Navajo term, Hózhó, peace, balance, beauty and harmony.

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[1] Quoted in a sermon delivered at St. Paul AME Church on 3/19/16 by Demarius J. Walker. https://gipl.org/blog/thurman-the-disinherited-and-environmental-justice[2]

[2] https://www.centerforspiritualityinnature.org/post/one-beat-of-the-same-pulse-a-reflection-on-the-teachings-of-howard-thurman

[3] https://thomasberry.org/the-meadow-across-the-creek/

Posted in Books, Reflections | Tagged Howard Thurman | Leave a comment

“Whether wings and feathers or hands and fingers”

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Jonas

It’s Earth Day today and I’m thinking about J. Drew Lanham, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, the subject of a post I wrote a couple of years ago. I was happy to see that he received a MacArthur Fellowship genius grant last year for “creating a new model of conservation that combines conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature.” In its appreciation of his work, the MacArthur Foundation pointed to Lanham’s particular focus in his teaching and writing: “Lanham believes that the combination of scientific facts and emotional connections to nature can more effectively encourage conservation action.” As a natural scientist, Lanham conducted research and published in his field, but as an African American who grew up on a family-owned farm with a history of slavery and Jim Crow era oppression, the Foundation noted he “also writes and speaks powerfully on the implicit and overt racism people of color often face when engaging with their natural surroundings.” This aspect of his work is powerfully expressed in his creative non-fiction and poetry.

In one of his creative pieces, Lanham imagines a correspondence between Rachel Carson and Martin Luther King, Jr. in which King invites Carson to the Penn Center on St. Helena Island in South Carolina’s Low Country. The invitation comes at a time when both the civil rights and environmental movements were gaining strength and King believes that

we might congenially discuss what I trust will be our shared mission to make this world better for all beings—for every living thing. Our singing birds. Our fight for civil rights. I know that you may have had your fill of all things political. I’m asking not that you commit to marches or more congressional hearings but, rather, to brainstorm with me on how to expand this movement and enlarge the one that I believe you’ve set fire to. Thinking on it, I find it hard to see how one can love the earth but not fellow human beings. And also, it seems incongruous that one could love humanity and exact sins of degradation against nature. I think we’d be closer to getting this act passed with more pressure and some political will, which might happen if we could stretch the concept of civil rights to the very air we breathe—the air we share with your beloved birds.

Describing the Low Country as “the center of so much pain and misery for the Gullah people—those closest in heritage and blood to West Africa,” King concludes his letter by writing

I’ve not visited [St. Helena Island] yet, but I have it on good word that spring is wonderfully not silent* on St. Helena and no alarm clocks are required for awakening, as the birdsong will do the work of rousing us. I believe a bit of a time-out might do us both some good. In bearing witness to freedom as it exhibits itself in wildness, there are lessons, perhaps, to be gained. Whether wings and feathers or hands and fingers, we share the same air, same water, same soil, same earth. We share, regardless of color or condition of skin or plumage, the same fate. I believe a gathering might empower the moment in mighty ways.

*A playful reference to Carson’s Silent Spring

After imagining Carson’s positive response to King’s gracious invitation, Lanham reflects on the possibility of the two movements’ convergence:

The two movements would’ve seemed disjunct at first glance: Black people demanding equity, justice, and enfranchisement as full citizens in peaceful protest; white people demanding wilderness recognition, clean air, and protection for dwindling species in hearings and op-eds. But looking deeper, both movements, then and now, contain a prevailing desire for a better world built on sustaining good for all. Social justice and the movement to steward and protect nature rise from a similar foundation: a belief in building a better future by being selfless, by sharing and supporting the greater good through sacrifice, by planting the seeds of trees under whose shade you may never sit. These movements share common ground—a clear moral code that (if uncorrupted by ego, profiteering, and power plays) offers a path forward that stretches toward a common cause. King’s “long arc bending toward justice” points to the radical need to sustain moral consciousness at all levels of human integration. This means, by default, care for every living thing: both humans and the environment on which they depend.

I am grateful to Drew Lanham for pointing out that there is a fundamental unity underlying antiracist and environmental concerns in his wonderfully imagined letter. Convergence of the two movements makes so much sense given the similar obstacles presented by systemic and individual resistance to doing justice in both human and natural realms. Perhaps this imagined letter has stimulated some conversations that may have not happened otherwise.

An example where the two movements have come together is the environmental justice movement which has been defined as “a social movement to address the exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not receive benefits.” [source] Air, land, and water pollution, the targets of the environmental justice movement, are of course part of climate change as the report “Racial Disparities and Climate Change” by Princeton undergrad and grad students makes clear. I think opportunities for progress in addressing racism and climate change can only be enhanced if people currently struggling under different banners join forces. If particular situations call for a combined effort, let’s hope that happens. Just imagine what that conversation between Rachel Carson and Martin Luther King, Jr. might have been like, what ideas and strategies for effective change they might have come up with!

Posted in Reflections | Tagged antiracism, environmental justice, J. Drew Lanham | Leave a comment

Personhood, Intelligence, and Happy the Elephant

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Jonas

The November 16, 2021 issue of The Atlantic contained an article by the journalist and Harvard University American History professor Jill Lepore titled “The Elephant Who Could Be a Person.” According to the article’s lede, “The most important animal-rights case of the 21st century revolves around an unlikely subject.” The case involved an animal rights organization arguing that a female Asian elephant named Happy was being illegally detained by the Bronx Zoo. Because Happy lived most of her life in solitary confinement, an unfortunate situation for a species that is extremely social, the Nonhuman Rights Group claimed she had a right to habeas corpus. If Happy were to be freed from the zoo, she would be taken to a sanctuary to live with other elephants.

The NRG’s concern was discounted by the Wildlife Conservation Society which operates the zoo and has insisted that the elephant is well taken care of. Central to the case was the question of whether Happy should be considered a person. The NRG argued for her personhood because in 2005 she passed the mirror recognition test (a method for attempting to determine the presence of physiological and cognitive self-awareness) where she touched an X painted on her forehead. This touching action was considered to be evidence of self awareness and therefore a sense of personhood.

For Lepore, the case has huge implications for fighting climate change and preserving biodiversity:

But can an elephant be a person? No case like this has ever reached so high a court, anywhere in the English-speaking world. The elephant suit might be an edge case, but it is by no means a frivolous case. In an age of mass extinction and climate catastrophe, the questions it raises, about the relationship between humans, animals, and the natural world, concern the future of life on Earth, questions that much existing law is catastrophically ill-equipped to address.

Lepore believes that in the US the legal roots of these questions go very deep indeed: “The U.S. Constitution, written in Philadelphia in 1787, rests on a chain-of-being conception of personhood. The men who wrote the Constitution not only made no provision for animals or lakes or any part of the natural world . . . ” She continues

In the wild, the elephant is a keystone species; if it falls, its entire ecosystem can collapse. In the courts, elephant personhood is a keystone argument, the argument on which all other animal-rights and even environmental arguments could conceivably depend. Elephants, the largest land mammal, are among the most intelligent, long lived, and sentient of nonhuman animals, and, arguable, they’re the most sympathetic.

Last June, Happy’s legal team lost their case in a 5-2 decision. Writing for the majority, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said that “While no one disputes that elephants are intelligent beings deserving of proper care and compassion . . . we reject petitioner’s arguments that it is entitled to seek the remedy of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf. Habeas corpus is a procedural vehicle intended to secure the liberty rights of human beings who are unlawfully restrained, not nonhuman animals.” But both dissenting opinions found much merit in NRG’s position, with one of the dissenting judges, Judge Rowan Wilson, writing “When the majority answers, ‘No, animals cannot have rights,’ I worry for that animal, but I worry even more greatly about how that answer denies and denigrates the human capacity for understanding, empathy and compassion.” Even one of the judges who concurred with the majority wrote that the case presented “a deep dilemma of ethics and policy that demands our attention. The issue of whether a nonhuman animal has a fundamental right to liberty protected by the writ of habeas corpus is profound and far-reaching. Ultimately we will not be able to ignore it.”

If we want to consider an elephant, or any other animal for that matter, as a person, we need to begin with some definition of personhood. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy offers a list of the “central phenomena of personhood; rationality, command of language, self-consciousness, control or agency, and moral worth or title to respect, . . .” In Happy’s court case, the majority agreed that the elephant was self-aware and intelligent, but as a nonhuman it was not regarded to be in the same legal category as human persons. In so doing, the court’s majority followed in what appears to be a generally accepted legal definition personhood. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Law, a legal person “‘is typically defined as a being, entity, or unit which can bear legal rights and duties . . . ” This definition goes on to describe different types of “beings, entities, or units” which are considered legal persons, but also mentions one major exception: “By contrast animals, it is generally said, are unable to assume any legal rights: they have neither the capacity for rights nor the competence to enter personally into legal relations (which can only be had by persons).”

Another term appearing in the Happy court case was intelligence, primarily because Happy’s legal advocates, the NRG, used the mirror recognition test to provide evidence of Happy’s sense of self-consciousness. But the mirror recognition test is not without its critics. As a test used to show that humans were almost universally able to pass a mirror-based self-recognition test by 24 months of age, recent research has shown that the test is successful with children from Western nations, but not so much with children from non-Western nations. Similarly, the test has been successful with some elephants but not others, and a total failure with other species. Reporting his research findings using the mirror test with elephants, Joshua Plotnik believes that “the mark test can be difficult to apply across species because it assumes that a particular animal will be interested in something weird on their body.”

Science is only beginning to explore the possibility that nonhuman species are capable of possessing intelligence and personhood. Any effort to identify the presence of cognitive activity in animals needs to avoid using measures that are appropriate for humans but not necessarily for other species. In his article “Animal Intelligence” appearing in the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence, Thomas Zentall, Professor of Psychology at the University of Kentucky, describes what scientists need to avoid and what to keep in mind in this area of research.

The ability to assess the intelligence of other species has been constrained because it is not always easy to communicate to other species what we require of them. Furthermore, we tend to define the tasks with procedures designed for us rather than for the species in question. The appropriate assessment of animal intelligence is important, however, because it has demonstrated that although the human capacity for intelligent behavior quantitatively surpasses that of other animals, qualitatively it is not as different as we generally believe. Furthermore, the intelligent behavior of other species demonstrates that although language and culture contribute to human intelligence, they are clearly not necessary.

If Lepore is correct in saying that Happy’s case is the first to have “ever reached so high a court, anywhere in the English-speaking world,” then we have a long way to go in our court systems regarding the legal status of personhood for animals. If we are to develop a definition of legal person which includes nonhuman animals, we need to move beyond the American legal realm and explore what definitions and applications of the term person can be found in other contexts. One approach would be to become more familiar with Indigenous peoples’ more inclusive understanding of personhood that goes beyond the human. For example, in New Zealand, for a Maori tribe, a river or mountain might be an ancestor. This worldview was a significant factor in a court’s decision to grant personhood to the Whanganui River and the forest Te Urewera. Closer to home, Edward Valandra, a Sicangu Lakota (enrolled) from the Rosebud Sioux Reservation and a professor at Native and non-Native colleges and universities, provides a Native American view:

. . . Phil Wambli Nunpa, the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council’s executive director, . . . explains that “water is alive: we call it mni wiconi, water is life.” That water is alive—and therefore possesses personality or personhood—defines our cultural response to the DAPL [Dakota Access Pipeline]. Our definition challenges the West’s anthropocentrism, which accords person/peoplehood only to humans. Hence, the Western way of life would both deny and defy water as having personhood. Yet the United States can arbitrarily recognize fictional entities like corporations as legal persons, while denying personhood to humans who become subject to the Thirteenth Amendment’s slavery exception.

I’m hoping that this is a time where attitudes toward our fellow nonhuman beings are profoundly changing. Many people like myself are listening closely to what Indigenous wisdom has to teach. Scientists are exploring ways to understand how nonhumans experience the world and are beginning to interpret outward behaviors as indications of inner states of consciousness and intelligence. Two books about these efforts are Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal and An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong. (Dog lovers might enjoy Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz.) Western Christians are beginning to see helpful developments within Christian theology. See for example, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the Love of God, by Elizabeth Johnson. In an article titled “We humans need to open our minds to the personhood of nonhuman animals,” Franciscan Fr. Daniel P. Horan, director of the Center for Spirituality and professor of philosophy, religious studies and theology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, writes

For so much of our modern human history, we have presumed our absolute uniqueness as a species, denying the possibility of intelligence, emotion, moral reasoning, relationship building, and even kinds of religious experience for nonhuman animals. We simply assume that other creatures are, as René Descartes argued in the early 17th century, mere fleshy machines that only simulate feelings.

It doesn’t take much effort to see how such a rigid anthropocentrism, what the British moral theologian David Clough has called “human separatism,” has contributed to our abominable treatment of nonhuman animals over the years — from hunting to extinction and factory farming, to scientific experimentation, to circuses and zoos.

Regardless of whether the United States courts grant some nonhuman animals legal rights . . ., I believe we humans need to adjust our sense of the more-than-human world.

As we saw in Happy’s case, Judge Rowan Wilson was concerned that the court’s denial of habeas corpus for Happy denigrated “the human capacity for understanding, empathy and compassion.” Apparently, arguing in US courts for the legal personhood of animals is not going to succeed in the foreseeable future. But we can individually and as a society continue to develop our intellectual, moral, and spiritual comprehension of animals’ inner lives. Of course, artists and writers have long recognized animals as vital presences. See for example James Wright’s extraordinary poem “A Blessing.”

PS: Highly recommended: The Elephant Whisperers which recently won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film, currently streaming on Netflix.

Sources

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/happy-elephant-bronx-zoo-nhrp-lawsuit/620672/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/happy-elephant-is-denied-personhood-stay-bronx-zoo-2022-06-14/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/nyregion/happy-elephant-animal-rights.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/kids-and-animals-who-fail-classic-mirror/
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/environmental-personhood-a-radical-approach-to-climate-justice/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/ganges-and-yamuna-rivers-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-beings
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/we-humans-need-open-our-minds-personhood-nonhuman-animals

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The Rights of Nature

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Jonas

“Enough about Human Rights!
What about Whale Rights? What about Snail Rights?
What about Seal Rights? What about Eel Rights?
What about Coon Rights? What about Loon Rights?
What about Wolf Rights? What about, what about, what about
What about Moose Rights? What about Goose Rights?
What about Lark Rights? What about Shark Rights?
What about Fox Rights? What about Ox Rights?
What about Mole Rights? What about, what about, what about
What about Goat Rights? What about Stoat Rights?
What about Pike Rights? What about Shrike Rights?
What about Hare Rights? What about Bear Rights?
What about Plant Rights?”
~ Moondog

Most environmental laws today are meant to protect the well-being of humans. Their purpose is to prevent the degradation of ecological systems and resulting threats to the public health of nearby communities. But according to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), environmental laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and similar state laws “legalize environmental harms. They regulate how much pollution or destruction of nature can occur under law. Rather than preventing pollution and environmental destruction, our environmental laws allow and permit it.” What is needed, therefore, are new kinds of laws that do a better job at recognizing the interconnectedness between humans and nature. Thomas Berry and others have called for an “earth jurisprudence” or “earth law” where nature is granted legal standing equal to humans. According to the CELDF, “When we talk about the Rights of Nature, it means recognizing that ecosystems and natural communities are not merely property that can be owned. Rather, they are entities that have an independent and inalienable right to exist and flourish.” In the US, Tamaqua Borough, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, was the first community to enact a rights of nature law in 2006; its action was followed by dozens of other communities. In 2010, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, became the first US city to to grant legal status to the rights of nature. However, the rights of nature law movement hasn’t always met with success.

In 2018, a rights of nature law was enacted by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, of the Chippewa Nation. The law was meant to protect a species of wild rice growing in the Great Lakes region. The Anishinaabeg (also known as Ojibwe or Chippewa) regard this wild rice or manoomin (the “good berry”) as a spiritual and cultural staple as well as a culinary one. But since its enactment, the law has been entangled in a series of court cases involving the White Earth Tribal Court and the federal Eighth Circuit of Appeals. The plaintiff was the manoonim and it was represented in court by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe; the defendant was Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources. In 2021, the DNR had issued a permit for the Enbridge corporation to construct the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. While laying the pipeline, Enbridge crews punctured an underground aquifer in Clearwater County, causing uncontrolled flows of groundwater which posed a threat to the healthy growth of manoonim. Complicating the case was the issue of tribal versus state jurisdiction. The break occurred outside the White Earth Indian Reservation but it clearly had repercussions for manoomin. The DNR appealed to the Eighth Circuit as part of the agency’s ongoing fight to keep a tribal court from considering whether the state’s issuance of the water permit to Enbridge violated the legal rights of manoomin and the treaty rights of White Earth tribal members. In September 2021 the Eighth Circuit ruled that the White Earth Band of Ojibwe Court of Appeals had jurisdiction, but in March 2022 the Ojibwe court, citing federal case law, decided against the plaintiff because the break had happened outside the reservation.

In November 2020, a rights of nature law in the US was overwhelmingly adopted by voters in Orange County, Florida. In April 2021, the law was put to the test in a legal action. The plaintiffs were five waterways that were threatened by a developer’s proposal for commercial and residential development. Representing the waterways were two organizations, Florida Rights of Nature Network and Speak Up Wekiva (a Muskogee word meaning “spring of water”). In July 2022, a judge struck down Orange County’s rights of nature law citing Florida’s 2020 Clean Waters Act and its provision that bans “local governments from recognizing or granting certain legal rights to the natural environment or granting such rights relating to the natural environment to a person or political subdivision.” Clearly in Florida (as in many other states and localities in the US), developers enjoy more government support than environmentalists.

The status of rights of nature laws will continue to be a contentious issue in the courtrooms and state and local governments of our country. At the same time, we will continue to see Native Americans (in addition to numerous environmental protection organizations) advocating for the rights of nature. The CELDF believes that indigenous people need to be involved.

Aboriginal nations and communities retain sovereignty and knowledge over the natural ecosystems they have evolved with. To recognize and follow the natural laws of nature necessitates the elevation particularly of the Traditional Knowledge of local indigenous communities.

While this is a new area of law, it’s a growing global movement. According to Cary L. Biron of Reuters, “Lawmakers have been implementing rights of nature, which are rooted in indigenous thought, through laws, judicial decisions, constitutional amendments, and U.N. resolutions in countries including Ecuador, Bangladesh, Uganda, and Australia.”

To understand the importance of this movement is to recognize that the rights of nature can play a significant part in our efforts to deal with the climate crisis. In a 1972 law review article titled “Should Trees Have Standing? – Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects”, Christopher Stone, a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, argued that “nature should have its own voice” and should be considered as a plaintiff in any court case against parties threatening its well being. By placing nature and humanity on an equal legal footing, the human-nature relationship would be less one of subject – object, owner – owned, and more of a relationship of equals within an earth community. In the concluding section of his article, Stone wrote:

Scientists have been warning of the crises the earth and all humans on it face if we do not change our ways – radically . . .

A radical new conception of man’s relationship to the rest of nature would not only be a step towards solving the material planetary problems; there are strong reasons for such a changed consciousness from the point of making us far better humans. . . . To be able to get away from the view that Nature is a collection of useful senseless objects is . . . deeply involved in the development of our abilities to love – or, if that is putting it too strongly, to be able to reach a heightened awareness of our own, and others’ capacities in their mutual interplay. To do so, we have to give up some psychic investment in our sense of separateness and specialness in the universe.

Written fifty years ago, the article still remains highly relevant, even more so given the dramatic increase, in Stone’s words, of “material planetary problems.”

Sources

Moondog Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moondog. During the 60’s, I occasionally came across a man dressed up in very strange garb standing on a street in midtown Manhattan. He was a remarkable presence, even for New York.
CELDF website: https://celdf.org/rights-of-nature/
Earth Jurisprudence Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_jurisprudence
CELDF rights of nature timeline: https://celdf.org/rights-of-nature/timeline/
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) – White Earth Tribal Law: Recognizing the Rights of Manoomin: https://www.centerforenvironmentalrights.org/rights-of-manoomin
CDER: https://www.centerforenvironmentalrights.org/news/press-release-federal-appeals-court-denies-state-of-minnesotas-bid-to-take-rights-of-nature-case-away-from-tribal-court
Turtle Talk – “The Leading Blog on Legal Issues in Indian Country”: White Earth Ojibwe Appellate Court Dismissed Manoomin Suit against Minnesota DNR: https://turtletalk.blog/2022/03/21/white-earth-ojibwe-appellate-court-dismissed-manoomin-suit-against-minnesota-dnr/
Bioneers website: Orange County, FL, “Voters Overwhelmingly Approve ‘Rights of Nature’ Initiative”: https://bioneers.org/orange-county-fl-voters-overwhelmingly-approve-rights-of-nature-initiative/
WUSF Public Media – “Judge strikes down ‘rights of nature’ charter amendment”: https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/environment/2022-07-12/judge-strikes-down-rights-of-nature-charter-amendment
Christian Science Monitor – “More nations pledge laws to protect the environment”: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2020/1002/More-nations-pledge-laws-to-protect-the-environment
Southern California Law review – “Should Trees Have Standing? – Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects”: https://iseethics.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/stone-christopher-d-should-trees-have-standing.pdf

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Are Modern Science and Indigenous People’s TEK Compatible?

Posted on September 26, 2022 by Jonas

A recent article in The Guardian * described efforts of scientists working with members of New Zealand’s indigenous people, the Māori, to save the kauri (Agathis australis). It’s a species of tree native to New Zealand which can grow to over 150 feet tall, with a trunk girth up to 52 feet, and live for over 2,000 years. Kauri forests have been decimated by a disease caused by a microscopic fungus-like organism (phytophthora agathidicida) living in the soil and infecting kauri roots, damaging the tissues that carry nutrients and water within the tree, effectively starving it to death. The disease is easily spread through soil movements, for example, when soil is carried on dirty footwear, animals, equipment and vehicles. The New York Times ran an article on the same story earlier this year. *

According to Māori tradition, the kauri are considered to be sacred, and this elevated status has turned out to be a great help to the conservation project. One kauri in particular, Tāne Mahuta, was named after the god of forests who created space between the sky father and the earth mother, thereby making life possible. When it became evident that kauri were dying from the fungus, Māori became the trees’ guardians by keeping visitors from inadvertently spreading the killer organism. They also were early advocates for the need for more attention from the New Zealand government which up to that time had not given the problem much priority. A change in government in 2017 brought change in environmental policies. As scientists began to spend more time working with the Māori to at least minimize the damage, they came to value mātauranga, the traditional knowledge of the Māori people. According to Tess McClure in the aforementioned Guardian article,

[Forest] rangers and some scientists say the battle has also contributed to a deeper and more widespread transformation of conservation work in New Zealand, which increasingly looks to matauranga – Māori knowledge systems – to reinforce and inform scientific approaches.

In consultation with Te Kawerau ā Maki [a Māori iwi or tribe], the rangers have begun an intricate process of re-engineering tracks through the reserve – suspending many of them above the ground, and avoiding deep foundation pillars that disrupt root systems.

This collaborative effort to save the kauri is not entirely foreign to New Zealanders. Some of that country’s scientists have been open to TEK or traditional (or indigenous) ecological knowledge and have proposed its inclusion in science education curricula * . However, there are those in the wider scientific community who do not consider TEK to be anything like a science. For example Richard Dawkins has been highly critical of what he sees as a type of misguided approach to teaching science.

I have read [about] the ludicrous move to incorporate Maori “ways of knowing” into science curricula in New Zealand, and the frankly appalling failure of the Royal Society of New Zealand to stand up for science – which is, after all, what your Society exists to do.

Dawkins is quite clear about what is and is not science.

. . . no indigenous myths from anywhere in the world, no matter how poetic or hauntingly beautiful, belong in science classes. Science classes are emphatically not the right place to teach scientific falsehoods alongside true science. . . . Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what “tradition” they may have been brought up in. True science is evidence-based not tradition-based; it incorporates safeguards such as peer review, repeated experimental testing of hypotheses, double-blind trials, instruments to supplement and validate fallible senses etc. True science works: lands spacecraft on comets, develops vaccines against plagues, predicts eclipses to the nearest second, reconstructs the lives of extinct species such as the tragically destroyed Moas.*

Dawkins concerns were shared by a number of New Zealand’s scientists who published a letter highly critical of the proposed inclusion of mātauranga in science teaching. The resulting heated crossfire between critics and defenders of mātauranga have led to statements like “New Zealand science is heading off the rails” while the defenders argue that the critics are making “racist assumptions.” In an article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, Waikaremoana Waitoki, President of the New Zealand Psychological Society and Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies, University of Waikato presented the defenders’ position:

The letter writers express their concern that science is being misunderstood at all levels of education and science funding. They further add that science itself does not colonise—while acknowledging that “it has been used to aid colonisation, as have literature and art”. This is similar to saying “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people”. Esteemed scholar, Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith (and others), established that science has indeed been used, under the pretence of its own legitimacy, to colonise and commit genocide towards Māori and other Indigenous peoples. . . . *

Professor Smith’s comment reminds me of the science that had been used in the US to relegate Blacks to a lower status in the hierarchy of human races, characterizing them as having an inferior intellect. * Waikato argues that white racism is behind Dawkin’s and others’ condemnation of mātauranga. Again, that makes me think of systemic racism here in the US where whites are often unable to perceive their implicit bias.

Research conducted over 40 plus years in psychology shows the impact of racism on Māori health outcomes, curriculum development, student numbers, research outputs, and staff recruitment, advancement and retention. More needs to be done, and the NCEA [New Zealand’s National Certificates of Educational Achievement] curriculum changes will go some way to achieving mātauranga parity. We welcome the changes on the horizon and embrace the potential for enhanced understandings of science, whatever their origins.

Waitoki is here arguing for a more inclusive understanding of science. When Dawkins and others declaim “true science works” and “science is helping us battle worldwide crises . . . COVID-19, global warming,” they are insisting on an exclusivist view of what methodologies must be used to determine information about the natural world. According to Waitoki and those who are defending Māori TEK,

Māori do have solutions to global warming, as do many other Indigenous epistemologies. These solutions centre on protecting the planet as an ancestor by using Indigenous science and addressing exploitative capitalism. It is unfair to claim that we should be concerned (and therefore panic) that science won’t be trusted if we teach the truth about the colonisation of peoples, or about racism that occurs in New Zealand society. We should instead be concerned that viable and sustainable solutions, derived from Indigenous worldviews, are systematically ignored and marginalised, or suppressed and criminalised by those who do not understand their role in epistemic injustice.

So are modern science and Indigenous peoples’ ecological knowledge compatible? It’s clear that the answer depends on whom you talk to. But those involved with saving the kauri have no problem seeing the compatibility – because apparently the collaborative approach is working.

According Guardian reporter Tess McClure,

In the case of kauri . . . rangers and conservationists say the advice of Māori has shaped and often predicted the scientific advice, as conservation efforts shift from a focus on kauri alone to a more holistic, interconnected one that looks at pressures on the forest as a whole.

Senior kauri dieback ranger Stuart Leighton describes the kauri situation this way:

We’ve got all of these impacts colliding. It’s climate change, this newly discovered pathogen, the impacts of lots of footfalls … introduced species – all creating this enormous pressure. . . . I think we’ll look back at this point in time, and we’re starting to see, nationally, a change in how we approach some of our natural resources. . . . The western science, if you like, it’s starting to point more and more to that interconnectedness.”

* Sources

Salvation of New Zealand’s dying giant kauri trees may have roots in Māori wisdom | New Zealand | The Guardian(opens in a new tab) theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/14/salvation-of-new-zealands-dying-giant-kauri-trees-may-have-roots-in-maori-wisdom

How Maori Stepped In to Save a Towering Tree Crucial to Their Identity – The New York Times(opens in a new tab) nytimes.com/2022/03/08/world/australia/new-zealand-maori-tane-mahuta-kauri.html

Mātauranga Māori and science — Science Learning Hub(opens in a new tab) sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2545-matauranga-maori-and-science

Myths Do Not Belong in Science Classes: Letter to the Royal Society of New Zealand | Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science(opens in a new tab) richarddawkins.net/2021/12/myths-do-not-belong-in-science-classes-letter-to-the-royal-society-of-new-zealand/

In defence of mātauranga Māori: a response to the ‘seven academics’(opens in a new tab) journal.nzma.org.nz/journal-articles/in-defence-of-matauranga-maori-a-response-to-the-seven-academics

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Jane Goodall – A Messenger of Hope

Posted on June 20, 2022 by Jonas

Jane Goodall at a podium — Jane Goodall at TEDGlobal 2007
Erik (HASH) Hersman from Orlando, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Some days I find it hard to be positive about our planet’s future. A recent front page headline in the Boston Globe (5/21/27) read “Early heat a sign of what’s to come.” The forecast for that day was 92 degrees or 24 degrees above the historic average. A one-time phenomenon? Scientists think not. According to the National Centers for Envornmental Information (NCEI),

The April 2022 global surface temperature was 1.53°F (0.85°C) above the 20th-century average of 56.7°F (13.7°C) – tying with 2010 as the fifth-warmest April in the 143-year record. The 10 warmest April months have occurred since 2010, with the years 2014-2022 all ranking among the 10 warmest Aprils on record. April 2022 also marked the 46th consecutive April and the 448th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average. [1]

A constant stream of news from around the world about floods, wild fires, drought, extreme heat, melting ice caps, and failing crops can’t help but weigh more and more heavily on our minds and hearts. Compounding all the climate-related bad news are the ineffective responses from national governments and “greenwashing” [2] claims by the fossil fuel companies like Exxon. [3]

No surprise, then, that many of us have become more and more anxious if not hopeless about the future. According to a 2020 American Psychiatric Association poll,

More than two-thirds of Americans (67%) are somewhat or extremely anxious about the impact of climate change on the planet, and more than half (55%) are somewhat or extremely anxious about the impact of climate change on their own mental health. [4]

Recently the New York Times interviewed hundreds people in the US about their thoughts and feelings about climate change and global warming. [5] What the NYT reporters heard was a litany of loss, anger, and sadness, for example:

I lost a piece of my heart with the trees that I will never get back.(Isabela Walkin, 23. The forest her family planted was destroyed by Hurricane Laura, but protected her childhood home in Lake Charles, La.)
I’m mad, I’m powerless, I’m exhausted and I’m only 18. (Hayley Clausen, Hayden, Idaho)
We ruined the world and we feel bad for the young people that are going to have to deal with this. (Ira Russianoff, 72, Dania Beach, Fla.)

But some argue that this is not a time to give up. In my previous post, I quoted the conservation scientist Will Turner insisting that “inaction due to hopelessness is indefensible. We can still make a difference, but we must act now.” And there are many voices of hope and encouragement for continuing the effort to limit the effects of global warming. See for example the resources listed on the “Not Too Late” web page. [6]

One of the more prominent messengers of hope is Jane Goodall (1934- ). In her interview with Douglas Abrams in The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times [7] she showed herself to be a forceful advocate for doing something despite feeling despair: “It’s really important for us to confront our grief and get over our feelings of hopelessness . . . We must find ways to help people understand that each of us has a role to play, no matter how small.” [BoH, 78]

When asked for a definition of hope, Goodall responded that it “is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to make it so.” [BoH, 8] And Goodall’s strength for maintaining her hopefulness and communicating it to others is rooted in a spiritual connection to nature.

When I was spending hours alone in the forest at Gombe [a national park in Tanzania where Goodall did her research on chimpanzee behavior], I felt part of the natural world, closely connected with a Great Spiritual Power. And that power is with me at all times, a force I can turn to for courage and strength. And sharing that power with others helps me give people hope. [BoH, 80]

When asked for reasons for hope, Goodall provided four: the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of young people, and the indomitable human spirit. Abrams asked Goodall to elaborate on each of the reasons, and the resulting conversations gave them plenty to talk about. Here are some of the points she made:

The amazing human intellect: The intellect can be used for good or bad, and certainly for ecologically destructive purposes when driven by kinds of greed and desire for power that cause environmental degradation. But now that we’re becoming more aware of the harm we’ve done, our ability to innovate has helped us come up with ways of living more in harmony with nature such as renewable energy and regenerative farming.

The resilience of nature: The miraculous endurance of several trees provides Goodall with memorable examples of nature’s resilience. A month after the 9/11 twin tower collapse, a Callery pear tree was found to be still alive amidst the ruins of Ground Zero. Renamed the Survivor Tree, it was rescued and then replanted on the grounds of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. The other examples are two 500 year old camphor trees that survived the atomic bomb blast in Nagasaki. Goodall gave numerous other example and explains “There’s a kind of built-in resilience – as when springs brings forth leaves after a bitter winter of snow and ice, or the desert blooms after even a tiny amount of rain falls.” [BoH, 80]

The power of young people: Young people all over the world are challenging older generations to do something about the climate crisis. Goodall quoted Greta Thunberg addressing her elders at a world conference: “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day, and then I want you to act.” [BoH, 127] An example of Goodall’s activism is Roots & Shoots [8], a global community action program, founded by her in 1991 for for youth to become engaged in environmental, conservation, and humanitarian issues.

Jane Goodall at Roost & Shoots Hungary Csigabi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The indomitable human spirit: Goodall defined this spirit as “an ability to deliberately tackle what may seem to be an impossible task. And not give up even though we know there is a chance we may not succeed. Even when we know it may lead to death.” [BoH, 147] She and Abrams exchanged examples of people whose severe injuries disabled them but who regained a fully active life through “sheer will power.” Examples of groups or communities exhibiting this spirit included the British people’s courage during WWII during the Battle of Britain, and the people at Standing Rock enduring pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and being hosed in freezing weather while protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

In a concluding “Message of Hope from Jane,” she begins by underscoring what other scientists have said about the pandemic, “By destroying habitats we force animals into closer contact with human beings, thus creating situations for pathogens to form new human diseases.” [BoH, 226] [9] But despite new challenges posed by COVID and all the obstacles faced by climate change activists that she and Abrams talked about, she ends with an urgent appeal to the reader: “Please, please rise to the challenge, inspire and help those around you, play your part. Find your reasons for hope and let them guide you onward.” [BoH, 234]

Goodall’s love of nature inspires her to become an advocate for active engagement in the climate change movement. At the same time, she sees a need for spirituality to be an essential part of the work that needs to be done.

When you talk about spirituality, many people are uneasy or absolutely put off. . . . Yet more and more people are now realizing that we have become increasingly materialistic and that we have connect spirituality with the natural world. I agree – I think there is a yearning for something beyond thoughtless consumerism. In a way, our disconnect with nature is very dangerous. We feel we can control nature – we forget that, in the end, nature controls us. [BoH, 210]

People who are beginning to recognize the value of spirituality in this time of climate crisis are, in her words, experiencing a spiritual evolution which, when compared to moral development, is

. . . more about meditating on the mystery of creation and the Creator, asking who we are and why are we here and understanding how we are part of the amazing natural world – again Shakespeare says it beautifully when he talks of seeing “books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” I get a sense of all this when I stand transfixed, filled with wonder and awe at some glorious sunset, or the sun shining through the forest canopy while a bird sings, or when I lie on my back in some quiet place and look up and up and up in to the heavens as the stars gradually emerge from the fading of the day’s light. [BoH, 211]

I think that if Abrams had asked Jane if she agreed with Emily Dickinson that “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – .” she would smile and perhaps even add “And sings the tune without the words – / And never stops – at all – / And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – / And sore must be the storm – / That could abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm – .”

[1 ] National Centers for Environmental Information. “Assessing the Global Climate in April 2022.” https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202204

[2] “Greenwashing is when an organization spends more time and money on marketing itself as environmentally friendly than on actually minimizing its environmental impact.” Edwards, Carylann. “What Is Greenwashing.” Business News Daily, Feb. 24, 2022. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10946-greenwashing.html

[3] Hernandez, Joe. “Accusations of ‘greenwashing’ by big oil companies are well-founded, a new study finds.” NPR, Feb. 16, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/16/1081119920/greenwashing-oil-companies

[4] “New APA Poll Reveals That Americans are Increasingly Anxious About Climate Change’s Impact on Planet, Mental Health.” American Psychiatric Association. October, 21, 2020. Updated on 2/23/21 to reflect the correct percentage. https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/climate-poll-2020

[5] Kerr, Sarah, Noah Throop, Jack Healy, Aidan Gardiner, and Rebecca Lieberman. “The Unseen Toll of a Warming World.” New York Times, March 9, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/09/us/mental-health-climate-change.html

[6] Not Too Late. “Not Too Late isn’t an organization. Our goal is to provide useful perspectives and information and guide people from despair to possibilities. This is a project led by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua.” https://www.nottoolateclimate.com/ 

[7] Goodall, Jane, Douglas Carlton Abrams, and Gail Hudson. The Book of Hope : A Survival Guide for Trying Times. The Global Icons Series. New York, NY: Celadon Books, 2021. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250784094/thebookofhope 
All quotes from this book will be referenced as BoH, page #.

[8] Roots & Shoots website: https://rootsandshoots.global/

[9] See Ecozoic Cafe post “A Great Pause” – https://ecozoic.net/2020/04/09/a-great-pause/.

Posted in Notes | Tagged Jane Goodall, youth and climate change | Leave a comment

“This is a fossil fuel war”

Posted on April 2, 2022 by Jonas

“No SWIFT. No gas. I gladly freeze for democracy.” (Protesters in Germany demonstrating against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.) Photo credit: Noah Eleazar, Unsplash.

On February 28th, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth assessment. According to Conservation International CEO M. Sanjayan, “This IPCC report marks a turning point in the fight against climate change. It forces us to reckon with a stark reality. The crisis is here, and it is all around us.” Four days earlier, Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, beginning a conflict killing thousands of soldiers and civilians, destroying Ukrainian cities and towns, and causimg millions to flee to neighboring countries. For those of us trying to maintain a focus on what we believe is the greatest challenge to human lives and the welfare of the planet, will this war have any impact on our efforts to combat the climate crisis?

The IPCC report led Svitlana Krakovska, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist, to see the connection between war and climate change.

I started to think about the parallels between climate change and this war and it’s clear that the roots of both these threats to humanity are found in fossil fuels. Burning oil, gas and coal is causing warming and impacts we need to adapt to. And Russia sells these resources and uses the money to buy weapons. Other countries are dependent upon these fossil fuels, they don’t make themselves free of them. This is a fossil fuel war. It’s clear we cannot continue to live this way, it will destroy our civilization. [1]

The West has imposed a high level of sanctions designed to disrupt Putin’s plans for a complete takeover of Ukraine. Europe and the US are using measures like freezing Russian oligarchs’ foreign bank accounts and cutting Russia off from SWIFT (“the global provider of secure financial messaging services”) to stop the war. There can be no doubt, however, that Putin is counting on Europe’s heavy dependence on Russia’s oil and natural gas to help keep paying for the war. On March 11th at a meeting of European leaders in France, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said “We are supporting and actually financing Russia’s war by purchasing oil, gas and other fossil fuels.” [2]

President Biden has proposed an increase in shipments of America’s gas and oil to Europe to help wean it off Russian fossil fuels. There are considerable logistical hurdles to overcome before that effort could hope to succeed (e.g., insufficient fossil fuel delivery infrastructure). For climate change activists Biden’s proposal, if enacted, would be a major setback in the effort to reduce global warming. According to Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, “I’m very worried our climate goals may be another victim of Russia’s aggression.” [3]

Has this war, then, significantly lowered our chances to make real gains in decarbonizing our energy usage? Conservation International news writer Will McCarry asked conservation scientist Will Turner if, given the grimness of the assessment’s report, the situation has become hopeless. Turner responded “We must take the warnings in this new report just as seriously (as we have with previous IPCC reports). At this point, inaction due to uncertainty is scientifically unjustifiable, and inaction due to hopelessness is indefensible. We can still make a difference, but we must act now.” [4] And action against global warming can’t take a break because of the war. Biden shouldn’t be advocating for more oil to be pumped. To this point, Thomas Friedman writes

Western nations fund NATO and aid Ukraine’s military with our tax dollars, and — since Russia’s energy exports finance 40 percent of its state budget — we fund Vladimir Putin’s army with our purchases of Russian oil and gas. . . . Our civilization simply cannot afford this anymore. Climate change has not taken a timeout for the war in Ukraine. [5]

Yes, there is no question that the victims of the war in Ukraine and the accompanying massive flow of refugees need our most compassionate response. But climate change is also a moral crisis [6] that continues to concern us deeply and requires an equally compassionate response. Both the war and global warming are and will continue destroying infrastructure needed for providing food, shelter, and public health care. But over time the destruction from climate change will be even greater than that resulting from this war. This is a critical moment for us to continue to do as much as we can for the well being of the Earth community. At the same time, an end to dependence on fossil fuels would mean an end to the power wielded by petro-dictators like Putin.

[1] Quoted in Oliver Milman, “‘This is a fossil fuel war’: Ukraine’s top climate scientist speaks out,” The Guardian, March 9, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/09/ukraine-climate-scientist-russia-invasion-fossil-fuels.

[2] Euronews, March 14, 2022, https://www.euronews.com/2022/03/12/finnish-prime-minister-we-are-actually-financing-russia-s-war-by-purchasing-oil-and-gas.

[3] Quoted in: Somini Sengupta, New York Times: Climate Forward. Newsletter. March 25, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/climate/the-problem-with-shipping-gas-to-europe.html

[4] Will McCarry, “Don’t panic: Reasons for hope despite a grim UN climate report,” Conservation News, September 30, 2021, https://www.conservation.org/blog/don’t-panic-reasons-for-hope-despite-a-grim-un-climate-report

[5] Thomas L. Friedman, “How to defeat Putin and save the Planet,” New York Times, March 30, 2022, Section A, Page 24, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/how-to-defeat-putin-and-save-the-planet.html.

[6] On climate change as a moral crisis, see for example: “Morality of Climate Change,” AARCC Newsletter, https://www.arrcc.org.au/about-climate-change-morality.

Posted in Reflections | Tagged war | Leave a comment

TEK

Posted on January 24, 2022 by Jonas

John Englart from Fawkner, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
(More information below.)

In 2015 at the conclusion of the UN Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) COP21, the 196 participating nations produced a treaty aimed at addressing climate change. Called the Paris Agreement, it was the first time a COP document stated that the world’s efforts to deal with the climate crisis needed to incorporate Indigenous ecological knowledge. To quote from the COP21 report: “Parties acknowledge that adaptation action should . . . be based on and guided by the best available science and, as appropriate, traditional knowledge, knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems . . . (Article 7.5).

After last year’s COP26 conference in Glasgow, an article published by the UNCCC reported that the effort initiated at COP21 to draw on Indigenous knowledge would continue. According to Rodion Sulyandziga (of the Udege people, from Krasnyyar, Primorski Kray, Russian Far East and a member of the UNCCC’s Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform Facilitative Working Group), “This is a strong achievement and historic progress under the UNCCC, to bring the Indigenous knowledge holders to the table to voice solutions and humanize the impacts of climate change.”

In 1988, the climatolgist James Hansen provided scientific evidence for global warming at a Congressional hearing that is now considered by many to be a historically significant moment in our awareness of the threats posed by climate change. Of course, as we know, political efforts around the globe to address the crisis have thus far fallen short of what actions are needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change. This despite the fact that the science behind climate change has been confirmed in numerous statements by scientific societies and governmental agencies. Indeed, over the past forty years scientists have increased their research efforts to understand the dynamics behind climate change and how to reverse its effects as much as possible. According to Scopus, a major citation database in the sciences, the number of 1988 publications tagged with “climate change” as a subject was 567. By 2021, it was 46,934 (as of January 21, 2022).

Though quite modest in number compared to the thousands of articles focusing on the more general topic of climate change, a similar increase occurred in the number of articles tagged with “traditional ecological knowledge.” Here is the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) definition of this type of knowledge:

Traditional Ecological Knowledge, also called by other names including Indigenous Knowledge or Native Science, (hereafter, TEK) refers to the evolving knowledge acquired by Indigenous and local peoples over hundreds or thousands of years through direct contact with the environment. This knowledge is specific to a location and includes the relationships between plants, animals, natural phenomena, landscapes and timing of events that are used for lifeways, including but not limited to hunting, fishing, trapping, agriculture, and forestry. TEK is an accumulating body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (human and non-human) with one another and with the environment. It encompasses the world view of Indigenous people which includes ecology, spirituality, human and animal relationships, and more.
US Fish & Wildlife Service. “Traditional Ecological Knowledge for Application by
Service Scientists.” Accessed January 21, 2022. https://www.fws.gov/nativeamerican/pdf/tek-fact-sheet.pdf

In 1988, there were six publications tagged with “traditional ecological knowledge”; in 2021 there were 466 (as of January 21, 2022). Here is an example – a summary appearing the National Park Service’s website of a research article published last year:

This article begins with a presentation of new research which found that “Indigenous-created forest gardens of the Pacific Northwest support more pollinators, more seed-eating animals and more plant species than supposedly “natural” conifer forests surrounding them.” This counters the long-held belief of western scientists and land managers that ecological conservation requires the absence of people. The focal point of this new research is the analysis of forest gardens’ functional diversity, which captures an ecosystems ability to feed animals (among other measures). Compared to traditional measures of diversity, how many species are found in an ecosystem, functional diversity seems to be a better indictor of ecosystem health. This is demonstrated by the fact that these gardens have survived 150 years without maintenance. In addition to documenting these important findings, a goal of this paper, titled “Historical Indigenous Land Use Explains Plant Function Trait Diversity”, was to provide tribes with citable scientific literature that may be useful as they push for co-management and management agreements. The authors hope their research, by helping Indigenous communities use the land again, will bring the gardens back.
National Park Service. Traditional Ecological Knowledge. “TEK vs Western Science.” Accessed January 21, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tek/tek-vs-western-science.htm

Another article, published this year, presents a case study where TEK is applied in a scientific project designed to combat the destructive effects of climate change.

Indigenous communities are often on the front-lines of climate change, and for tribes such as the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe (PACIT) that make their homes and livelihoods in the dynamic landscapes of Coastal Louisiana (USA), sea-level rise, subsidence, and land loss are very real reminders of why they must continue to hone their adaptive capacity that has evolved over many generations and continues to evolve as the pace of change quickens. PACIT members have an inherited wisdom about their surrounding environment and continue to build on that body of observational knowledge that is passed from generation to generation to sustain themselves in this dynamic landscape. This knowledge is woven through their culture and is sometimes referred to as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). The PACIT and other Indigenous communities around the world are using creative strategies to adapt to the impacts of climate change that include partnering with researchers to combine their TEK with science in approaches to enhance strategies dealing with climate change impacts, mitigation, and adaptation. . . . Better inclusion of their knowledge into applied research is necessary to support these communities in their efforts to make sure their knowledge is recognized, understood, and valued in environmental management applications.
Bethel, M. B., D. H. Braud, T. Lambeth, D. S. Dardar, and P. Ferguson-Bohnee. “Mapping Risk Factors to Climate Change Impacts Using Traditional Ecological Knowledge to Support Adaptation Planning with a Native American Tribe in Louisiana.” Journal of Environmental Management 301, no. 1 (2022).

What is common to both research articles is the recognition that modern scientific efforts to mitigate the damage caused by global warming and climate change should seriously consider Indigenous people’s “inherited wisdom” as a resource. We are only beginning to explore how much we need to incorporate Indigenous wisdom or TEK into the way we live on this planet. It may be that we need it a great deal more than we realize today.

Photo: Marcha por el clima on 6 December in Madrid (during COP21). Organisers estimated 500,000 people attended the protest march. Greta Thunberg was there and read a short statement to the crowd at the end. A manifesto – The World Woke Up Facing A Climate Emergency – for climate justice and climate action was read to the crowd by various people from different organisations and constituencies. A concert then followed entertaining people into late into the night. The march was lead by Fridays for Future students, Chileans and Indigenous people.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged indigenous peoples, Native Americans, traditional ecological knowledge | Leave a comment

Ecozoic Cafe

Earth Day April 22, 2024

Ecospirituality

The Oak Tree

“Whether wings and feathers or hands and fingers”

Personhood, Intelligence, and Happy the Elephant

The Rights of Nature

Are Modern Science and Indigenous People’s TEK Compatible?

Jane Goodall – A Messenger of Hope

“This is a fossil fuel war”

TEK

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