Naomi

But there are so many possibilities at this stage. Who knows, I might even not make it past the Solomons. So any effort expended on lining up contingency plans would very likely be wasted. Last year Nicole put a lot of effort into making plans for Tuvalu, which was all wasted when I had to divert to Kiribati. And things fell into place remarkably quickly for my new destination.

I have my passport, and I have friends. Which is all I had when I was trying to get home from Copenhagen and the Eurostar train was cancelled. And it all turned out okay, thanks to my amazing supporters. So without wanting to seem irresponsible, my feeling is that it makes more sense to wait and see what happens, and to have faith that we’ll manage to figure something out once we see what is most likely.

My feeling is that we Rozlings find inspiration and motivation in what Roz has to say — in our heart and in our gut — and we don’t need her every word to be vetted scientifically. Like Steve said, she is there … she has credibility by being there on the churning ocean touching the docile whale shark and the colorful wise turtle, in the Pacific gyre seeing the myriad bits of plastic, and in Tarawa understanding the vulnerability of their water supply (like her own vulnerability to a failed water maker).

Incidentally, Friday I met 22 bright energetic 13-year-olds who are engaged in GAIA (Global Awareness, Investigation and Action) elective activity at the International School of Monterey. These young students don’t need much inspiration, but they love Roz … I showed them Roz’s Eco-Adventurer video. During the discussion that followed, they identified plastic grocery bags as an issue they are concerned about. They are ready to go visit their mayor to find out what the city is doing to combat global warming, and to ask the city to ban plastic grocery bags.

Doug: Welcome back, we’ve missed you. Well actually, I didn’t miss you that much because I was in Mexico City during the last couple weeks (surprising blue skies, wonderful food). And I know what you mean about the shock of coming back to the real world, and work.

However, Roz’s experientially based oceanic adventure is also exactly what we need–intelligent people out in the world reporting on what they see. Those of us desk-bound (and rowing machine-bound!) folks have to see the world as they report it. Watching her getting washed over the side of her boat and struggling back in doesn’t get any more real. She has “street cred.”

When she reports trash in a huge ocean it may be anecdotal but it has a huge impact, at least on me. When she says Tarawa will be one of the first islands to be covered in the event of a rising ocean, we listen–she was there! As long as she has credibility she will have more influence than 100 scientific papers alone. If she and others lose their credibility then their impact is minimized. But they have to, in my opinion, stick to “facts,” and their own observations….both of which are very difficult to come by.

Induction is only limited by imagination; sorting out the true and false is done by the hard work of deduction and hypothesis testing. Hence the above brilliant people were found to be in fact fallible.

What we need is more science in the environmental movement. That is how we will move forward.

What is intuitively obvious is often found to be wrong.

Keep up the good effort. We need more of the heart-felt support, gut-level commitment, and positive connections that you are promoting. In my own efforts, I try to live by the words of Raymond Williams: “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”

Thanks, fellow Rozlings, for your positive comments, especially Richard. Good stuff!

And are there others who have the gift, when it comes to the environment? I don’t know. I guess it depends on how you define the gift, or the ability to “see”, and on how you look at their pronouncements.

Loren Eiseley: “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

Gandhi: “What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”

Jacques Cousteau: “Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”

Luther Standing Bear: “The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.”

Cree Indian Prophesy: “Only after the last tree has been cut down…the last river has been poisoned…the last fish caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”

John Muir: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

John F. Kennedy: “The supreme reality of our time is … the vulnerability of our planet.”

Joni Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go, That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Robert Louis Stevenson: “Sooner or later, we sit down to a banquet of consequences.”

Ted Turner: “I see the whole field of environmentalism and population as nothing more than the survival of the human species. I have wanted to have some bumper sticker made up saying ‘Save the Humans’. At the bottom of it all, we are trying to save ourselves.”

Anyway, since there is a purported interplay between humans and the environment, one can only conclude that 1.) humans are animals, and 2.) we are part of the natural world (what else is there?), and 3.) the world will feed-back and develop an environment favorable to our existence. If that is what it has done for the last 5 billion years, why won’t it do it in the future? So what is the concern? Given Gaia, all we can be certain of is that the future world will be different from the present, and it will be better adapted for Homo sapiens….Gaia predicts a rather rosy future world, no?

As applied to our planet, it does not handle well changes that are now well documented, such as the greater concentration of atmospheric oxygen that allowed for creatures as large as some of the dinosaurs and, much earlier, the conditions that preceded the emergence of multicellular life forms.

What is particularly interesting is the rate at which the evolution of various life forms occurs in response to geological and atmospheric changes. At any given point in time the mix of plant and animal life tends towards balace while never quite reaching equlibrium.

Our current interest is in the possibility of causing changes to the total environment more quickly than can be adjusted to by evolution of flora and fauna.

The point is that these words – regardless of who said or wrote them, and in what circumstances – absolutely chime with the Gaia concept (and my view) of the interconnectedness of Earth, animals, and humans. We poison our habitat, we poison ourselves. On a finite Earth, this seems to me to be patently obvious. On a finite Earth, there is no “away”.

The above ethic I have expounded upon for most of my life. I have been condemned and persecuted as a radical romantic over the principles of Life First. I laugh and cry at the same time.

A common question – Was there life on Mars? My response: If there was, and the dominant species treated the planet as we are treating this one, would the end result not be the same?

Everything you, I, and the rest of US are doing is crucial to the health of our world! What we use must be used wisely. What we do must be done with the welfare of our progeny a constant forethought. Our message is slowly, very slowly, being recognised, and comprehension of the message is reluctantly growing. So..

Please continue doing what you do, and validating our comments to you. Con mucho gusto,

Achates