Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership, Oceans

Truth and the Gift of Rachel Carson

I just watched a beautiful television program (link below) about the life of Rachel Carson.  Carson was born in 1907 and died in 1964.  She was a marine biologist, conservationist and gifted writer who is credited with advancing the environmental movement.  Her books, “The Sea Around Us”, “The Edge of the Sea” and “The Silent Spring” inspire us with their beauty, courage and insight.  She wrote, “To understand the shore, it is not enough to catalog its life.  Understanding comes only when, standing on a beach, we can sense the long rhythms of earth and sea that sculptured its land-forms and produced the rock and sand of which it is composed; when we can sense with the eye and ear of the mind the surge of life beating always at its shores – blindly, inexorably pressing for a foothold. ”

With those words in mind, I wonder, how we live in a world where fake news proliferates and people feel it is okay to lie and treat others poorly.  I wonder if we will bequeath a frightening future to our children because many feel it is okay to destroy the planet for profit.  It is time to speak the truth.  And it is time to protect our precious environment.

Sadly, Carson’s words are still appropriate today. “We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. 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.”

Rachel Carson was not afraid to speak up.  We can do the same and also make one of her wishes come true.  It was, “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

Program link:  http://www.pbs.org/video/2365935530/

Animals, Children, Leadership

Disappearing Words and Worlds

Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard

Thomas Friedman, a famous author, wrote an editorial a few weeks ago and made me aware of some disappearing names.  What do I mean by “disappearing names”?  The Oxford Junior Dictionary, which focuses on seven- year-old children, is excluding words which the editors feel are no longer necessary.  The words include otter, dandelion, nectar, chestnut, and cauliflower.  They are being replaced by words such as voice-mail, blog, broadband, and cut and paste.

At the same time as the Oxford Junior Dictionary is cutting words out of the dictionary we are losing species at an alarming rate.  In fact, the rate is about 1,000 times faster than if humans were not around.  I just read that African elephant numbers went down by 30% from 2007 to 2014.  I also know we are losing beautiful ocean coral and animals such as snow leopards, tigers, and the Vaquita porpoise.

When we lose animals, forests and our natural world, we lose a part of ourselves.  We need nature in all of its forms in order to survive. Cures to many illnesses are found in the amphibian class.  Oceans provide us with oxygen and a place to cool off and swim.  Plus, they shelter precious dolphins and seals.

We burn forests to plant palm trees for palm oil.  By doing so, we are rendering orangutans extinct and polluting our air.

A grandmother I know told me she has cried because she is afraid her grandchildren will never see and touch wild frogs.  It is time to cry.  I don’t want zoos to be the only place where we can see animals.  Losing wild animals is like losing words.  They signal the loss of our own species and diversity.

I don’t like words disappearing from the dictionary and I certainly don’t like seeing animals become extinct.  What can you do besides write to the dictionary editors?  You can make sure your children learn to appreciate our wild animals.  And you can make sure to protect both, before it is too late.

Carbon Footprint Reduction, Children, Leadership

Important Film

Greetings Everyone.  I hope you are well and enjoying the end of summer.  Please watch the trailer and then see this important film.  Our future, and our children’s future depends on it!  Thank you.

Climate Change, Leadership

Film4Climate Video Competition

Greetings,

The Film4Climate Global Video Competition invites filmmakers between the ages of 14-35 years old from all over the world to showcase their talents and create a Public Service Advertisement (PSA) (less than 1 minute) or a Short Film (1-5 minutes) about climate action.

Prizes will be awarded.

The video should show:

What does climate change mean to you?
What are you doing to solve the climate challenge?
What is your climate message to the world?

For more information go to https://www.film4climate.net/ and submit your video by September 15th.

Animals, Forests, Kindness, Leadership

Orangutans – Shocking!

Photograph by Mattias Klum, National Geographic Creative
Photograph by Mattias Klum, National Geographic Creative

I just read something I did not wish to see.  “The Guardian” headline said Bornean orangutans are now critically endangered because of shrinking forests.  Trust me, as an animal lover and environmentalist, I did not want to see that headline.  I would have preferred to read something like forests are growing and orangutan populations are increasing.

Because of habitat loss, illegal hunting and forest degradation we are going to see an 86% decline in the orangutan population between 1973 and 2025.  You are all intelligent readers, but let me put it starkly, that means if you have 100 orangutans only 14 would be left!  The other reality worth noting is that orangutans only reproduce every six to eight years.  So that means it is inherently much harder for orangutan populations to rebound.

So what can I say to make any of this sound more uplifting and less depressing?  Point one, Bornean orangutans are very adaptable and can survive in a degraded forest.  Point two, we can take actions to ensure that the current number of Bornean orangutans, which stands at 41,000, increases.  Please check the label and read ingredients for the foods you eat.  If palm oil is listed Don’t Buy It.  I repeat, don’t buy it.  Palm oil is one of the top reasons forests are being destroyed and depleted.  Point three, your actions make a difference.  Thank you.

Leadership

Life and its Lessons

Beach

Sometimes life does not go as planned and we have something terrible happen to us, or we see animals who are harmed or dead on the roadside.  Pema Chodron gives some wonderful advice below.

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know…nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion.   Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched.   Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast.   But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.   If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive.   It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.”