Notable Event: Sustainability Fair 2015 (4th), Thurs., Nov. 19th, 5:30-8:00 pm, Silverwood Park, 2500 County Road E W, St. Anthony, MN.
Co-sponsored by the Cities of St. Anthony Village, Lauderdale, and Falcon Heights, in collaboration with the U of MN Institute on the Environment (26 sustainability class students and exhibits), Three Rivers Park District, and Citizens for Sustainability. Free!
SEF News-Views Digest No. 109 (11-11-15)
I hope you’ve missed receiving our informative newsletter for the past three weeks. For respite, Bettye and I spent two memorable weeks (Oct. 15-30) on a river cruise, from Budapest to Amsterdam. Throughout the entire wonderful adventure the ship’s crew enthusiastically providing first-class services, and treated all passengers as royalty. Not being accustomed to receiving such intentional pampering—or desiring it—we were keenly aware of some obvious wasteful, unsustainable practices.
SEF News-Views Digest No. 108 (10-14-15)
This catchy title caught my attention when checking out Netflix documentaries, which I selected and finally got around to viewing. What an eye-opener this film proved to be! I try to remain abreast of all developments related to creating sustainability, but I inadvertently failed to comprehend the full impact of livestock agriculture on global warming, which exceeds that of fossil-fuel use.
Some well-informed people are convinced that we humans are our most dreaded foe, unknowingly of course. I tend to agree, as did Pogo, a possum cartoon character created by Walt Kelly in 1948. The long-running popular comic strip featured humorous anthropomorphic animal characters that inhabited the Okefenokee Swamp, an actual national wildlife refuge located on the Florida-Georgia border. The strip often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of the many animal characters. For example, the above cartoon depicts the drainage of polluted water and careless disposed of trash, some typical human waste products. In this case, the saying “As you make your bed, so must you lie in it” might be paraphrased this way: “As you consume and discard more stuff, so must you live and deal with it.” And deal with it we must.
It’s been an exciting past week, highlighted by Pope Francis’s eagerly anticipated visit to the U.S. In general, Americans have received his inspiring, moralistic speeches positively, although both liberals and conservatives disagree over certain hot topics. While liberals enthusiastically support the pontiff’s pronouncements on climate change and socio-economic equality, conservatives mostly ascribe to his pro-life views. (I suspect that, in the next 40 or so years, as overpopulation is finally viewed as a systemic problem, future pontiffs will eventually endorse the moral benefits of family planning and birth control, in keeping with a growing trend among developed countries.)
As Courtney White explains in her article, “Little Normals” (see Solutions), we need to appreciate the various forms of normality we experience daily—pleasant memories, humor, contacts with friends, positive experiences, and so on. For example, Bettye and I were fortunate to spend a post-Labor Day week on the incredibly beautiful North Shore of Lake Superior, and each day we experienced natural wonders that appear to be normal, and apparently unchanging—the magnificent lake, the large rolling hills, the many rushing, rocky streams, and the occasional sightings of wildlife, especially soaring eagles.