Do you think of yourself as a visitor in Nature, or a part of it?

In our fast-paced society, we seldom make time for Nature. When we do, it is a quick visit to a park or a short trek along a favorite trail. These brief intervals surrounded by the natural world refresh and relax us.

Then, we return to our "real" lives. Deadlines, commitments, paperwork, phone calls. What a strange way to view the world. People are, and always have been an integral part of Nature. The more removed from Nature we are, the more removed we are from our true selves.

Too often, environmentalists implicitly underwrite and perpetuate the false assumption that humans are trespassers or interlopers. Granted, we as a species have wrought horrific terrors upon the earth, and taken many concepts to extremes which threaten the health of the earth. The answer to that, however, is not a strict preservationist's "hands off" attitude. The answer to that problem is moderation and a realization that what we do to the earth, we ultimately do to ourselves.

Living in balance, there are many uses we can make of our natural endowment that can enhance our lives and still leave the system healthy. This ultimately brings us closer to Nature, and to our own ultimate reality. Check out "Thumping Hickories," a new essay from naturalist William Hudson, and then get outside, learn something, and refresh your soul.

Good Plants Gone Bad: Invasive Plants of Southeast Ohio

Want to learn about ways to combat nuisance plants, network with others interested in controlling invasives, and enjoy a great workshop? Try this Ohio Invasive Plants Council program. You could not ask of for a better value. The council always has well-informed experts presenting at these workshops.

Check it out:

When?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Registration: 8:45 – 9:30 am
Workshop Program: 9:30 – noon
Lunch (provided) 12:00 – 12:45 pm
Workshop Program (cont.): 12:45 – 3:15 pm

Where?
710 Colegate Dr.
Community Room, Administration Building
Washington State Community College, Marietta, OH

What?
-Aren't Invasive Plants Just Weeds by Another Name?
-Breakthrough! A Biological Control for Mile-a-Minute
-Should YOU Be Part of a Cooperative Weed Management Area?
-The Story of What Happened When One Yard Went Native
-2009: The Year the Vine-that-ate-the-South Met Push-back in Ohio
-Funding Your Invasive Battle

How?
Registration: $10.00/person, those registered by Sept. 4 receive a free lunch
Register at: oipc.info.

Who?
For more information please contact:
-Marilyn Ortt, marilynortt@suddenlink.net, 740-373-3372
-Cheryl Coon,ccoon@fs.fed.us, 740-753-0558

Of Fairydiddles, Truffles, and Trees, an essay by Naturalist William Hudson

We are all connected. I don't mean just us children of Adam and Eve. The "we" is an inclusive one.

• People
• Other animals
• Plants
• Streams
• Lakes
• Rivers
• Oceans
• Dirt
• Fungi
• Trees
• Squirells.

All of it is "we" and is connected. In the words of our friend, naturalist William Hudson, "Most things in nature are connected in some very complex ways. Take for example fairydiddles, truffles, and trees."

Check out his essay, and be amazed by the intricacy of Nature. Then, go outside and re-connect with your source. Take care of yourself by just enjoying that connection.

Thanks Bill!

City Living 70% Less Carbon Intensive Than In Suburbs: TreeHugger

This Treehugger.com post was interesting mostly for the cool heat map of transportation-related carbon. It seems fairly obvious that if you live in an urban area and work close to your home (or in your home, if you are lucky), you will have significantly less commuting time, and hence a significantly lower carbon footprint.

What if, however, you live in an urban area and drive to the suburbs or another city to work? Does that happen? Sure it does. I guarantee that my current 4 mile round trip daily commute in a suburban township is much less carbon intensive than the 108 mile round daily round trip when I lived within the City of Akron, Ohio and worked in the City of Painesville, Ohio.

Or, what about this: Live in a rural area and work at home. Live in a suburb and ride your bike to a "sprawl" office complex a few miles away. I think the carbon intensity of these alternatives should compare favorably to urban living.

Maybe the analysis that really matters is not a geographical one. Maybe the choices that people make and how they relate to carbon footprint are just as important as their choice of geography, which in many case is an accident of socioeconomics as much as it is a choice of lifestyle and "green" over unsustainable.

For those of us who can choose where to live, maybe we should select the kind of surroundings that energize us, then figure out how to live there in the least consumptive way possible, whether urban, suburban, or rural.

Symbolic river may be removed from polluted river list

Ohio.com - Groups working to get Cuyahoga River off pollution list: "The once-dead and still-symbolic Cuyahoga River might be removed from an international list of polluted Great Lakes hot spots."

The burning river that spurred on the environmental movement is clean enough in some places to be removed from the list of polluted rivers. Where once no fish could live, now dozens of species of fish thrive.

The Clean Water Act calls for swimable, fishable water. The Cuyahoga River is to the point where it is fishable. Continued problems with combined sewer outflows on the middle and lower Cuyahoga keep it from being considered swimable, and canoeing is not recommended, but this is real progress. I have canoed the lower Cuyahoga and it is a wonderful, peaceful, wild experience. I can't wait until the day the bacteria levels from combined sewers and other sources are low enough that someone decides to open a canoe livery.

What a wonderful success story that is coming together.

Do your Part

Comment on pending decisions in your National Park!

Ever wonder how major environmental decisions are made? Well, the National Park Service, and other federal agencies, must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when deciding about “major federal actions having a significant effect on the environment.” Essentially, a federal agency has to consider reasonable alternatives to any proposal that might significantly effect the environment, and gather public input while doing so.

They are not necessarily constrained to choose the alternative with the least impact. They are, however, required to make a statement about it and are subject to public scrutiny. Such statements are called Environmental Impact Statements. They are created when it is fairly clear that there will be significant impacts. When the implications of an action are not as clear, and Environmental Assessment (EA) may be completed. An EA is less comprehensive than an EIS, but analyzes whether an EIS must be done or not.

When preparing an EA or EIS, agencies are required to seek public input, both early in the process (called scoping) and when they have formulated the alternatives and are ready to make a decision. How does the public get involved? How can you and I make a difference?

Well, since this blog is mostly interested in parks, here is a link to the National Park Service's site where you can find opportunities to comment on current decisions being considered. For those of you in northeast Ohio like me, here is a link to find what decisions are being made at Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

If you care about parks and the environment, you have an obligation to keep up on the decisions our public employees are making, and to tell them how you feel. If you support the decisions they are making, tell them so. If you don't support their path, tell them that too, and tell them what they ought to do and why. After all, maybe your comment will be the one that saves a precious resource that would otherwise have been lost.

So, keep tabs on what is going on in your National Park, and get outside and get to know the nature of the parks so that when the time comes to defend it, you know what you value about your parks!

The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems

The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones is an interesting look at the current state of the environmental movement and the economy. It is written from a progressive viewpoint, and proposes some serious actions on the part of our government and individuals which, if acted upon, could solve two of our biggest problems.

The book includes a short history of the environmental movement, starting with early conservationists and preservationists like Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, through a regulatory phase spurred on by Rachel Carlson, author of Silent Spring, and into a newly emerging phase, which he calls an "Investment Agenda".

During the new phase of the environmental movement, Jones says we need to meld equal protection, equal opportunity, and reverence for all creation into a new way of living, working and engaging with one another. Following these principles, with the government as a partner in removing barriers to green solutions, will put us on a road to both a more just, better world, and a better, more sustainable economy.

The book proposes a five-way partnership, a Green Growth Alliance between organized labor, social justice activists, environmentalists, students and faith-based organizations. Jones draws parallels with the civil rights movement and points out that we did not see Martin Luther King and other leaders marching out of shopping centers, libraries or high school gymnasiums. They marched out of churches. He suggests that having God on the side of the environment would add great power to the growing green collar economy.

One of the key points to this book is that many of the green collar jobs of the future are the same jobs we have now. Welders will fuse metal to create windmills rather than widgets; mechanics will work on electric motors alongside combustion engines; engineers will design wave powered generators instead of nuclear power plants. While some will require retraining or specialization, many workers can be assimilated directly into the green economy. That is a ray of hope in this economic environment.

The book closes with a focused set of recommendations for our political leaders, national and local. Let's hope they take up the cause and go for the green!

Department Of The Environment

Department Of The Environment-In One Ear…Out the Other.

Back in January, treehugger.com posted a brief suggestion that there should be a cabinet level department of the environment. Our friends over at In One Ear…Out the Other expanded on the thought, noting that:

"One of the reasons why we have such haphazard and uninformed debates in this country about environmental issues (there are some ridiculous global warming, clean coal and green energy myths flying around) and why the environment continued to be such a low priority for so many years is that we have no structured governmental method of tackling environmental issues."

Both posts make a great point. If we do not have a cohesive, singular focus on the environment, we will never act upon environmental problems in a coherent, systematic manner. If, for example, a developer wants to fill a wetland in Ohio, they need to get a permit from the Ohio EPA, and the U.S. Army. Each agency has different rules, different jurisdiction, and ultimately, different standards governing whether permits can be granted, and under what conditions.

At the federal level, as Marc Hudson points out, the Department of Interior is populated with agencies with divergent goals. The National Park Service mission is "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." We all know that National Parks are special places where nature can proceede unimpeded by man's dominance. There are generally not timber harvests, extensive mining, or major extractive activities in National Parks.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management, also within the Department of Interior, is responsible for carrying out a variety of programs for the management and conservation of resources on 258 million surface acres, 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, 57 million acres of commercial forests and woodlands, more than 18,000 grazing permits and leases and nearly 13 million authorized livestock animal unit months on 160 million acres of public rangeland, 117,000 miles of fisheries habitat, as well as a plethora of other lands and resources. While the mission of BLM is managing and conserving, the emphasis appears to be on managing for revenue production. In 2007 alone, BLM collected $4.5 billion in mineral royalties, rents and other payments. Compared to the National Parks, BLM is much more of a land management agency, rather than a conservation or environmental agency.

A third agency, the U.S. Forest Service, is housed within the Department of Agriculture. The Forest Service's mission is more straightforward: to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands. The National Forests are managed for timber production. BLM, over at the department of Interior, also manages forests. Why two agencies?

These small examples of overlap are indicative of a bigger problem. As Treehugger and Marc Hudson both point out, there is no cohesion. We have a warped system that is not set up to meet environmental goals. Our current agency configuration is remnant of a past when we as a people were not thinking in terms of ecology and protecting the environment. This country has come along way since the Clean Water Act, NEPA, and the beginnings of the environmental movement.

Our issue is now mainstream. This is not a side issue. A clean, healthy environment is not an extra. A clean, healthy environment is essential. If we are to have a healthy, vibrant human community, and a healthy, vibrant economy, we need a healthy, vibrant natural environment. The only way to do this is to align our governmental structure with this reality. "We the people" already see it this way. Our government needs to be responsive to reality and form a Department of the Environment or Department of the Ecosystem. Then, it needs to take the true conservation and environmental agencies and place them within that department.

Doing so would lead to clarity for the employees of the agencies, increased efficiency, less overlapping jurisdiction, decreased cost, and perhaps a simplified regulatory structure for the regulated community as well.

Write or call your representatives and urge them to draft and sponsor such legislation. Don't know who to contact? Go to this web site to find out.

I’m Not A Commie!

I’m Not A Commie!: "As a matter of Justice, if someone were take a biological weapon and empty the contents in a public reservoir maintained for a city’s public drinking water, would you consider this mass murderer to be a terrorist?"

I would say "terrorist". Even if it is a corporation polluting our water for profit. However, there are many who believe that environmental regulations are somehow anti-capitalist and hence somehow wrong. And of course, if it were 1950, we might just be called "commies" for suggesting such a thing.

Well, it ain't 1950, but I do hear the term "commie" thrown around frequently these days. Times just don't change for some people, including those of us who only lived through the last part of the cold war. Marc Hudson does a good job of debunking this anachronistic, unenlightened, red-baiting point of view in this post at In One Ear and Out the Other.

What do you think?

Ecological Stimulus Package: TreeHugger

Ecological Stimulus Package: Investing In Natural Capital : TreeHugger: "We need to be investing, much more seriously, in our natural capital. Green energy sources, green jobs, and greener consumption habits are a terrific start towards positive environmental change. Interventions and actions that reduce environmental stresses are good for our ecosystems."

Check out this Treehugger post. It makes a great distinction between environment and ecology that we all ought to bear in mind. The post, from the Earthwatch Institute, suggests that we need to look more holistically at not just the outside environment, but at the ecosystem, which is an inclusive term that encompasses the various parts of the environment, but also the systemic interrelationships, and ultimately, us.

In order to really solve our planet's problems, we need to think in this way. Investing in what Earthwatch calls our natural capital is not an extra or option. Such investment is necessary if we expect future generations to share in the tremendous wonders that our planet has to offer.

What can you do to help. Invest in a green company? Contact your congress people? Tell your friends? Drive less? Eat more locally?

Think about it.