http://www.oaklandnews.com/nack991130.html

WHY BOCK QUIT THE GREEN PARTY
by Jonathan Nack
November 30, 1999
                                                       

Jaws dropped at the news that Audie Bock had changed her registration to
"Decline to State" and that she would run for re-election as an
Independent. Heads shook at Bock's explanation for this dramatic move --
that it was a tactical move to avoid the March primary and to leap
directly to the November run-off.

The Alameda County Green Party issued a terse press release stating it
was saddened by Bock's decision and that her move highlighted the need
for campaign finance reform, so that candidates would not feel so much
pressure to raise funds.

There is, of course, a much deeper story. After extensive interviews
with Green Party activists, former members of Bock's staff, and Bock
herself, a cautionary tale emerges. There are lessons for small
political parties born out of social movements and their candidates.

It is now clear that Bock's move was the result of important differences
she has with the Green Party which culminated in a breakdown in
communications and finally a break-off in relations. It is also clear
that there is a history to Bock's problems with the Greens which goes
back to before she was elected. Finally, it's clear that the color of
this story is green -- currency green.

Few people are in a better position to know about Bock's relationship
with the Green Party than Greg Jan. Jan is a member of the Alameda Green
County Council, and is as seasoned as campaign organizers get in the
Green Party. He has worked on a large number of campaigns since the
Greens achieved ballot status, including as the (California) campaign
manager for Ralph Nader, and for Dan Hamburg's run for governor. Jan was
there when Bock was recruited as a candidate, managed most of her
campaign, and continued to work with her after her election.

Jan was hit hard by Bock's move, but could see where it came from.
"Looking back to the March election campaign, some of the problems were
becoming evident. Audie didn't spend a large portion of her time working
with volunteers. She let the core campaign staff and volunteers go off
on their own. It was an area that didn't develop as much as it might
have because Audie didn't make it a priority. I could understand how
volunteers might feel that she was somewhat aloof or less interested in
them," recalled Jan.

After Bock won, Jan was involved in a liaison committee set up by the
Green Party County Council just to relate to Bock. But the liaison
committee never really got off the ground. Jan thinks it was again due
to Bock's lack of interest. "Audie didn't ask for the liaison committee
to meet regularly, or more often," Jan pointed out.

Then, a week before Bock announced she had re-registered, she informed
the Greens at a County Council meeting that she had accepted two
corporate donations, each for $500, from Chevron and Tosco. By all
accounts this news stunned everyone in the room. What followed was a
long debate which concluded in the issuance of a policy statement that
Green Party candidates should reject all donations from for-profit
corporations.

This apparently was the last straw for Bock, who shortly announced that
she had gone Independent.

Both Jan and Bock confirmed that the Green Party was not consulted prior
to either Bock's acceptance of the oil money or her move to re-register.
"We haven't had great communications," says Jan dryly.

Some Greens were irate. The most public was Hank Chapot, who has twice
been a Green Party candidate for state assembly. "I think she
perpetrated a fraud on the voters because they thought they were
electing a Green. She should resign," demanded Chapot. While Chapot's
anger was not reflected in the Green Party's press release, my
interviews with Green party activists reveal considerable bitterness. I
could find no Green activists planning to volunteer for Bock's
re-election campaign.

Irene Dieter was probably Bock's most dedicated campaign worker and was
hired as Bock's District Office Coordinator. In an exclusive interview,
Dieter told me, "I'll definitely not work for Audie's re-election. I
think it's good Audie left - she's not a Green. Her voting record has a
green slant, but she's not grounded in Green political principals," said
Dieter.

Dieter sees the high turnover on Bock's staff as being due to Bock as
having decided to rely on what she called "status quo political
staffers." She pointed to Bob Podesta, who is currently acting as Chief
of Staff, who is on full-time loan from Democratic Assembly member Dick
Floyd's office, as someone who "doesn't know how to build a grassroots
political movement."

Another former staffer is Rebecca Kaplan, who worked briefly as a Field
Representative in Bock's district office, before Kaplan quit to run as a
Green Party candidate for the At-Large seat of the Oakland City Council.
"It was a mistake for Audie to leave the Green Party because efforts at
movement building and social change must outlive the officeholder. I
think Audie decreased her chances to be re-elected, because to run a
progressive campaign you need lots of volunteers and she's lost a lot of
Greens."

Larry Shoup, who three years ago ran as a Green Party candidate for the
Oakland City Council (District One) is one of the Greens Bock has lost.
"Audie thinks she needs to make decisions on her own, she doesn't think
she needs other people's counsel. She's an individualistic person, she's
not collective, and we need collective decision-making because we're
always smarter together than we are individually."

Audie Bock doesn't understand such reactions. "There's been no
betrayal," Bock told me. "My agenda hasn't changed," she protested.

Bock feels that it has been the Green Party which has been less than
fully supportive of her. "I didn't anticipate so much lack of faith in
my being able to negotiate my way through Sacramento. I think there was
a protective feeling that I could be corrupted. I felt that Greg Jan's
statement in which he expressed disappointment in me for throwing a fund
raiser was not supportive."

Bock was also disappointed in the slow development of the Green Party in
the district. She said that while she had lots of Greens offering her
advice, people did not come forward to do a big voter registration
drive. "There are many Greens who are policy experts. What I needed was
people to do the grunt work," said Bock.

Jan said he never heard from Bock about a voter registration drive and
that Bock's re-election campaign was slow starting because, "Audie
didn't move on creating a re-election campaign structure."

Still, Bock's differences with the Greens really revolved around two
related issues: what should be the priorities of the first elected Green
Party state legislator; and what should be the position regarding
corporate campaign donations? To Bock it's one issue, which she calls,
"the validity of winning."

Since being elected to office, Bock has put heavy emphasis on being the
most effective legislator that she can. She quickly found out that
without support from Democrats and Republicans, she couldn't pass a
cold. According to one senior Bock aide, Bock decided that in order to
win the respect of the legislators from the dominant parties, she had to
win re-election. To do that, she became convinced that she would need to
raise far more money than before. But this caused controversy within the
Greens.

"What they're talking about is absolutely right," said Bock, in
reference to the Green Party's opposition to the influence of corporate
money. "The question is how to put theory into practice. Part of what
can be accomplished by my going Decline- to-State is for the Greens to
discuss fund raising issues. These are huge questions which merit a lot
of discussion. It's not for me to decide for them, but I can't wait for
them to hammer out a policy. I wanted to free the Green Party from my
campaign," explained Bock.

The discussion the Green County Council did have was described by Jan as
difficult. There was an effort to try to distinguish between good,
progressive, environmental, corporations, such as Progressive Asset
Management, which has donated to the Greens in the past, and bad ones
like Chevron and Tosco. In the end, they couldn't come up with
satisfactory generic language to make that distinction, so they voted to
ban all donations by for profit corporations.

A number of Greens told me that they never expected Bock to be able to
accomplish much legislatively as the only Green in Sacramento, and that
they wanted her to spend more time building the Party among the voters.
Rebecca Kaplan thinks that Bock should have spent more time in the
district. "She was rarely here and I did think that was a problem. If
she had spent more time in the district, she would have seen how popular
she was and that she could win without big money," said Kaplan.

Bock is hoping to recapture that popularity. "By next November, I'm
hoping that the Green Party can come to a decision to work with me
again," Bock told me. "I have to show them that I'm the same person with
the same agenda."

Whether Bock can win the Green Party endorsement is an open question.
Some Greens, such as Dieter and Kaplan, are still open to considering a
Green endorsement of Bock. Others such as Shoup and Chapot, are dead set
against it. They feel that Bock set the worst possible example for an
elected Green by leaving the party after only five months in office.
"There are a lot of bitter Greens, she won't get the endorsement,"
predicted Shoup.

Highlighting the fact that communications between Bock and the Greens
have broken down, Bock was surprised to learn that some Greens would
still consider endorsing her and that a decision has yet to be made. "I
was told I couldn't be endorsed," said Bock.

Bock will have a tough time putting together her re-election campaign. A
victory is a long shot. Bock thinks she has helped her chances by
becoming an independent. Critics think she has committed political
suicide by going against her base. Time will tell whether the Green
Party will end up being a footnote in Bock's political career or she's a
footnote to them.


Jonathan Nack is an Oakland activist and grassroots journalist. He
specializes in writing on issues involving Oakland's progressive and
left communities. Email him at jnack@...

Today's LA Times reports that Gore hopes to change "a 127-year-old mining law
that allows companies to extract minerals from federal lands without paying
royaltie."  The resulting funds would be used for parklands and wildnerness
preservation.

We should expect at least this much from everybody in government interested
in preserving the "American commons."
Regards,

Ed Evans
May wolves run at your side and not at your heels.
Monday, November 15, 1999
6:50:01 AM Pacific Standard Time

I thought that I would share this email dialogue among Greens, because it
represents the fruits of discussion the last three weeks' on the former Green
legislator Audie Bock and philosophical issues deeper than electoral
politics.  I suspect that my ideas here are compatable with the ideas of
older Greens world-wide.  For what it's worth, if you have any interest in
third parties and environmental issues.

"I find no fault with this man."
Tim Fitzgerald
Mammoth Lakes, CA

<<On Thursday Nov. 4th Recieved From: ELEvans@...>>
Well, actually, pure competion is a form of 'biological diversity' if  you
stretch a point as far as you seem to be willing to. The nature of  capital
is the consolidation of assets for productive purposes,>>

Has humanity ever experienced "pure competition" outside of natural
selection?  (And I'm aware that we left the field of natural selection when
language evolved.)  I would add that it is the nature of capital to grow or
die, so it's like natural selection, but not the same.  If you're making
the connection that nature competes, so should humanity, I'll opt for mutual
aid.

<<It is not the standardization and uniform process that is so unsettling,
but the nature of autocratic leveling of variety that seems to be the real
problem.>>

Standardization can be contained within human boundaries designed for
bio-regional sensitivities, and standardization (Taylorism) may be
beneficial when used with ecological sensitivity and a humanist approach to
manufacturing (Huxley's "Island" is good for this idea.).  The problem is
that capital will go this direction only if given the opportunity and
support; otherwise, we end up with what we've got -- autocratic institutions
booting peasants off their land and contaminating the planet in the name of
"progress."  So I don't disagree.  The Green goal is to bring capital under
democratic reigns peacefully with an ecological focus to be used on a human
scale -- I'm reminded of Shoemacher's (sp?) "Small is Beautiful" and various
discussions of Buddhist principles applied to economics.

<<But nothing but Corporate capital seems large enough, on a scale BIG
enough, to handle the economies of scale that are required to modernize and
develop third world and poverty pockets that those people may not have to
live in
want and subsistence.>>

Hold on!  This comment is packed with assumptions.  Given the trillions spent
on war and waste, reconsider.  Yes, everyone agrees that electricity, running
water, and flush toilets are the rage, but hardly justify allowing  corporate
capital to alter terra firma and evolution.  Populations given the choice and
opportunity to develop their own sustainable industries rather than
imposition of corporate capital stand a better chance of substain themselves
and species-populations habitats.  Capital can just as easily be used for
solar powered, wind powered local electricity production than enormous
hydro-electric dams sprouting miles of high-powered lines across wilderness.
The gimmick is convincing people that it's OK to live sustainably.

Most agree that corporations are currently setup better than any other
process for producing goods and services; however, they can also collapse,
and if and when they do begin to collapse, they'll do so like dominoes while
taking everything with them.  So the Green problem becomes capital
investment relative to capital return, and this is where the state,
communities, and political parties can play a role, rather than throwing the
entire process open to corporations, or "imperialist" proclivities.

<<What you are implying by attacking Corporateness in  this way, is that  you
have another form of organization that will take its place, and I see no such
substitute on the horizon.>>

I'm hoping that reason and ecological principles soon become obvious
substitutes to "consumerism" and mindless expansion.  There are alternatives,
but the problem is vision and political will; the technologies for
sustainable existence exist.  The resources for unlimited growth do not.  You
see where this is headed, north vs south and on and on.  On the other hand,
"yes," I do believe the near-worst is coming, and it's nothing like the
biblical apocalypse. (see my page:
http://hometown.aol.com/greenpolitics/myhomepage/index.html">http://home
town.aol.com/greenpolitics/myhomepage/index.html

<<But if you have no 'marketable aspects' in a society governed by a  market
economy, how to you expect to 'sell' your ideas to the public>>

Greens are essentially idealist; we expect to change ideas, change
subjectivity.  We share this aspect of Christianity and the Hegelian side
of Marxism.  Education is our method and it relies on ecology and related
issues.  As the crisis increases, people will look for alternatives.
(Notice the commercial radio stations declaring "global warming" for real
today).
The Greens will have laid the ground work (in the best of all possible
worlds) by elaborating the Greens' values and solutions, soft and
appropriate technologies, self--reliance, and the rest.  This is one reason
that it is
so important that "Green" represent accountability, so that people, not just
"voters," see that the Greens have been there and done that and have a
program.  Greens will never outspend the republicrats to win hearts and
minds; we'll have to prove Green accountability and integrity and program.

<<You are after all, in competition with  the time of the voter, if nothing
else, and a thirty second sound bite, well  placed, may do wonders for
marketing you 'product' - the ten key values,  you will agree this is your
own concept of your strength and 'selling point' - is it not??>>

I'm not sure what you're getting at; I may have hit it above.  Personally, I
see the Greens as much broader than the party, but the party has gotten the
attention because it's actually happening in a discernable manner.  Part of
the party's role is to help lay the groundwork for the movement to become
influential in its own right.  The two then work symbiotically, at least in
one theory.  In all cases, accountability is the marketing idea; we are,
finally, in the business of exposing the dominant ideology of growth for
the sake of growth and personal enrichment.  "Ecological" politics and the
Green philosophy are the most obvious ideas to market, in any case.

<< you must 1) define yourself, and 2) 'contest' your oppositions efforts
to define you for their benefit.>>

You are echoing my words here the last three weeks.  Greens certainly
cannot afford to be defined as on the "corporate payroll."  Greens must define
themselves by their actions, associations, means and ends.  If Greens allow
the media to continue defining us as "tofu fuzzies" then we're wasting our
time.  Greens are the people who have placed ecology and individual/social
responsibility (accountability) at the center of their politics. The
biggest danger to the Greens is taking corporate capital today for immediate
gratification, thereby spoiling their accountability image for later, IMHO.

Take money, but not from sources certain to contribute for self-serving
political and economic ends.  Greens are the means and ends folks.  If we
can't get to electoral power democratically and with accountability, then
we're not going.  Otherwise, what's the point?

<< As you profess to be a 'politcal party' and not a debating society,  I
assume you
are, in fact in that one and the same, 'political areana.'>>

In no way can Greens ever hope to "compete" monetarily with any established
electoral party.  The Green assumption is that we are witnessing right now
catastrophic, ecological collapse world-wide, and that the dominant
ideology seeks to justify corporate and state activity in this collapse.  Our
task
is to unmask the dominant ideology and help people learn to sustain themselves
without further damaging the planet.  If it ever becomes clear to voters
that Greens are the people with the correct ideas, the Green ideas will fall
into place; keep in mind, Greens are essentially idealistic and "prone to
scepticism in thought and optimism in action."  Personally, I think it's
already too late and the Greens will sell out to capital, but I've got time
for the moment to theorize.

<<You will be hard pressed I believe to improve on the  system of
distribution of goods and services over Corporate organization>>

Not to be sarcastic, but for whom and when?  The consequences of this
expedient distribution system are well known, and the consequences belong
to future generations.


I thought that I would share this dialogue, because it represents the fruits
of discussion around the former Green legislator, Audie Bock and Green
ideology.  I suspect that my ideas here are compatible with the ideas of
older Greens world-wide.  It also deals with deeper philosophical issues than
electoral politics.  Just delete if you care.

<<If you can improve on that, then you might have a chance at modifying
the grip corporatenss has on the political sturcture's > >>

We can only try to educate the population; we cannot bring a better sort of
consumerism to it; the purpose of the party is to help educate the
population about the consequences of the political, social, and technological
status
quo.  In the end, humanity will find sustainable relationships and Earth
will abide.  The question is how much damage must it inflict to get to that
point and what sort of social organizations will develop?

time being.
Regards,
>
>Ed Evans
>May wolves run at your side and not at your heels.
>http://hometown.aol.com/greenpolitics/myhomepage/index.html
>1:22:44 PM Pacific Standard Time
>Thursday, November 04, 1999

The Ten Commandments of Dog Ownership

1. My life is likely to last 10 to 15 years.  Any separation from you will be
painful for me.  Remember that before you adopt me.

2. Give me time to understand what you want of me.

3. Place your trust in me.  It's crucial to my well-being.

4. Don't be angry at me for long and don't lock me up as punishment.  You
have your work, your entertainment, and your friends.  I have only you.

5. Talk to me sometimes.  Even if I don't understand your words, I do
understand your voice when it's speaking to me.

6.  Be aware that however you treat me I'll never forget it.

7.  Before you scold me for being uncooperative, obstinate, or lazy, ask
yourself if something might be bothering me.  Perhaps I'm not getting the
right food, or I've been out in the sun too long, or my heart is getting old
and weak.

9.  Take care of me when I get old: You too will grow old.

10.  Go with me on difficult journeys.  Never say I can't bear to watch it or
let it happen in my absence.  Everything is easier for me if you are there.
Remember I love you . . . .

Here is a look into the corporate mind that is very interesting, educational,
historical, and completely true!

The Canada and US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4
feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge
used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were
built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the
pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use
that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that
they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on
some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing
of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial
Rome for their legions.

The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? The initial
ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon
wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots.

Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike
in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from
the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications
and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a
specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly
right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to
accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the
original question.

Now the twist to the story. There's an interesting extension to the story
about railroad gauges and horses' behinds.

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
rocket boosters, or SRBs.

The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who
designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the
SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the
mountains.
The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than
the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses'
behinds.

So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced
transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width
of a Horse's Ass! Think about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

chain email

MILKWEED AND GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CORN

By Brigitte Mars, for healthshop.com
Cornell University's entomologist John Losey and colleagues reported
that pollen from a strain of corn genetically engineered using a gene
from the organism Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) killed 44 percent of the
monarch butterflies that were exposed to it. Other butterflies were
stunted in their growth. Monarch butterflies may be exposed to the
pollen because their only source of food--milkweed--may often be found
growing near cornfields. England and India are refusing to allow
genetically engineered plants to be planted on their soil, yet these
crops are being planted at a rate of 20 million acres a year in the
United States. Once this is allowed to proliferate, there is no way to
prevent pollens spreading to nearby organic crops and causing
environmental changes that may be unexpected and perhaps detrimental.
For more information on the benefits of milkweed, visit

Dominant Worldview                                      Deep Ecology
Dominance over Nature                                   -Harmony with Nature
Natural Environment as resource for humans              -All nature has
intrinsic
worth/biospecies equality
Material/economic growth for growing human pop          -Elegantly simple
material                                                        needs
(material goals
serving the larger goal of
self-realization)
Belief in ample resource reserves                       -Earth "supplies"
limited
High Technological progress and solutions               -Appropriate
technology;
nondominating science
Consumerism                                         -Doing with
                                                         enough/recycling
National/centralized community                          Minority
tradition/bioregion
  <A HREF="http://www.envirolink.org/enviroethics/deepindex2.html">Deep Ecology
</A>    http://www.envirolink.org/enviroethics/deepindex2.html

Here's an article by Murry Bookchin, and it seems to hit the nail on the head
from a social ecology perspecitive as well as other environmental and social
ecology perspectives.
  <A HREF="http://www.tao.ca/~ise/library/bookchin/b_doasp.html">ISE Library -
Death of a Small Planet</A>

http://www.tao.ca/~ise/library/bookchin/b_doasp.html


DEATH OF A SMALL PLANET:
It's growth that's killing us
by Murray Bookchin
We tend to think of environmental catastrophes -such as the recent Exxon
Valdez oil-spill disaster in the Bay of Alaska-as "accidents": isolated
phenomena that erupt without notice or warning. But when does the word
accident become inappropriate? When are such occurrences inevitable rather
than accidental? And when does a consistent pattern of inevitable disasters
point to a deep-seated crisis that is not only environmental but profoundly
social?

President Bush was content to blame the spill of more than ten million
gallons of crude petroleum off Valdez Harbor on negligence by a soused sea
captain. In fact, however, it was the consequence of social circumstances far
more compelling than the usual "human" or "technological" factors cited in
mass-media reporting. Since the pipeline at Valdez Harbor went into service a
dozen years ago, there have been no fewer than 400 oil spills in the Bay of
Alaska. In 1987, the tanker Stuyvesant dumped almost a million gallons into
the gulf after leaving Valdez, presumably because of mechanical failures
attributed to severe weather. The environmental - protection organization
Greenpeace recorded seven spills in Alaskan waters this year even before the
Exxon Valdez ran aground.

Oil spills ranging from a few thousand gallons to a million or more-as well
as the oil routinely flushed out of tankers to make room for return-trip
cargoes have polluted vast areas of the world's ocean surface and coastline.
The appalling effects of oil spills that occurred many years ago are still
apparent today, and new incidents keep adding to the damage. The widely
publicized 10,000-gallon spill that "mysteriously polluted the coastal areas
of two Hawaiian islands a week after the Exxon Valdez ran aground was more
than matched by the little-publicized 117,000 gallons that the Exxon Houston
dumped off another Hawaiian coastal area some three weeks before the Valdez
spill.

On a single day, June 23, 1989, three major spills--off Newport, Rhode
Island, in the Delaware River, and on the Texas Gulf Coast--dumped a total of
well over one million gallons of oil into U.S. waters

Many find it difficult to see these incidents as part of a continuum that has
a common source. To trace a chain of events from its cause to its consequence
is an unfamiliar task for people who have been conditioned to see life as a
television sit-com or talk show composed of discrete self-contained,
anecdotal segments. We live, in effect, on a diet of short takes, devoid of
logic or long-range effect. Our problems to the extent that we recognize them
as problems at all-are episodic rather than systemic; the scene dissolves,
the camera moves on.

But the present crisis will not disappear with a switch of channels. It was
predictable-and predicted-decades ago. There is an all-but-forgotten history
of dire portents, urgent warnings, and unsuccessful efforts by an earlier
generation of environmentalists to deal with the social factors that underpin
environmental problems. In many instances, they predicted with uncanny
accuracy the results of ecologically insane policies pursued by the corporate
establishment in the West and the bureaucratic establishment in the East.

The earliest disputes around the dangers posed by the oil industry's
expansion into oceanic drilling occurred even before the Arctic regions were
opened to oil exploitation. They go back well into the 1950s, when larger
vessels started being used to transport Middle Eastern oil. Long before
spills came to public attention, environmentalists were voicing fears over
hazards posed by growing tanker capacity.

No less serious than the possibility of "human error" in the operation of
these huge vessels was the well-known fact that even the sturdiest ships have
a way of being buffeted by storms, drifting off course, foundering on reefs
in treacherous waters, and sinking. In lectures I gave decades ago on the
Pacifica Radio network, I emphasized the sheer certainty of disastrous oil
spills that would surely follow upon the growing size of tankers. The Exxon
Valdez spill was, therefore, not an unforeseen accident but a dead
certainty-and one that may yet be beggared by others to come. It was as
predictable as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

No less predictable was the global warming trend. Forecasts that carbon
dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels could raise planetary temperatures
go back to the Nineteenth Century and have been repeated from time to time
since then, though more often as atmospheric curiosities than as serious
ecological warnings. I wrote as early as 1964 that increases in the "blanket
of carbon dioxide" from fossil-fuel combustion "will lead to more destructive
storm patterns and eventually to melting of polar ice caps, rising sea
levels, and the inundation of vast land areas."

The possibility of acid rain and the systematic deforestation of the
equatorial rain-forest belt, not to speak of the impact of
chlorofluorocarbons on the Earth's ozone layer, could not have been foreseen
in technical detail. But the larger issue of environmental destruction on a
global scale and the disruptions of basic natural cycles was already on the
radical agenda in the late 1960s, long before Earth Day was proclaimed and
ecological issues were reduced to ridding city streets of cans, bottles, and
garbage.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--

Predictions of disaster come cheap when they are not derived from reasoned
analysis of the sort that has become unpopular in this era of New Age
mysticism. But we have no reason to rejoice in the fact that Margaret
Thatcher often sounds like an environmentally oriented "Green" in her public
warnings about the Greenhouse Effect, if we bear in mind that Thatcherism in
Britain can often be equated with a transition to high-technology and
nucleonics.

Nor would it be particularly encouraging to learn that Mikhail Gorbachev is
prepared to follow Thatcher in phasing out the older "rust-belt" industries
and their fossil-fuel energy in the aftermath of Chernobyl and earlier,
possibly worse nuclear "events" we haven't yet heard much about. If solutions
to the Greenhouse Effect create potentially more disastrous problems like the
proliferation of "clean," nuclear power and its long-lived radioactive
debris, the world may be worse off as a result of this new kind of
environmental thinking

Attempts by President Bush to join this chorus by revising the Clean Air Act
to reduce high ozone levels, cancer-causing pollutants, and other toxic
substances have earned almost as much criticism as praise. The effects of
Bush's proposals which are modest enough if we bear in mind the appalling
magnitude of the enviro nmental casts-will not be fully felt until the first
decade of the next century. Understandably, that has aroused the ire of
environmentalists. Moreover, for Bush to leave the execution of his plan to
industry is to guarantee that the costs of pollution-control technology will
be passed on, with some extras, to the consumer and that many of the
proposals will be honored in the breach.

What environmentalists must emphasize is that the global ecological crisis is
systemic not simply the product of random mishaps. If the Exxon Valdez
disaster is treated merely as an "accident" as were Chernobyl and Three Mile
Island-we will have deflected public attention from a social crisis of
historic proportions: We do not simp1y live in a world of problems but in a
highly problematical world, an inherently anti-ecological society. This
anti-ecological world will not be healed by acts of statesmanship or passage
of piecemeal legislation. It is a world that is direly in need of
far-reaching structural change.

Perhaps the most obvious of our systemic problems is uncontrollable growth. I
use the word "uncontrollable" advisedly, in preference to "uncontrolled." The
growth of which I speak is not humanity's colonization of the planet over
millennia of history. It is rather an inexorable material reality that is
unique to our era: namely, that unlimited economic growth is assumed to be
evidence of human progress. We have taken this notion so much for granted
over the past few generations that it is as immutably fixed in our
consciousness as the sanctity of property itself.

Growth is, in fact, almost synonymous with the market economy that prevails
today. That fact finds its clearest expression in the marketplace maxim,
"Grow or die." We live in a competitive world in which rivalry is a law of
economic life; profit, a social as well as personal desideratum; limit or
restraint, an archaism; and the commodity, a substitute for the traditional
medium for establishing economic relationships-namely, the gift.

It's not enough, however, to blame our environmental problems on the
obsession with growth. A system of deeply entrenched structures-of which
growth is merely a surface manifestation-makes up our society. These
structures are beyond moral control, much as the flow of adrenaline is beyond
the control of a frightened creature This system has, in effect, the
commanding quality of natural law.

In a national or international market society (be it of the corporate kind
found in the West or the bureaucratic kind found in the East), competition
itself generates a need for growth. Growth is each enterprise's defense
against the threat of absorption by a rival. Moral issues have no bearing on
this compelling adversarial relationship. To the extent that a market economy
becomes so pervasive that it turns society itself into a marketplace-a vast
shopping mall-it dictates the moral parameters of-human life and makes growth
synonymous with personal as well as social progress. One's personality, love
life, income, or body of beliefs, no less than an enterprise, must grow or
die.

This market society seems to have obliterated from most people's memory
another world that once placed limits on growth, stressed cooperation over
competition, and valued the gift as a bond of human solidarity. In that
remote world, the market was marginal to a domestic or "natural" society and
trading communities existedmerely in the "interstices" of the premarket
world, to use Marx's appropriate words.

Today, a rather naive liberal language legitimates a condition we already
take as much for granted as the air we breathe: "healthy" growth, "free"
competition, and "rugged" individualism-euphemisms that every insecure
society adopts to transform its more predatory attributes into virtues. "It's
business, not personal, Sonny!" as the Godfather's consigliere says after the
family patriarch has been pumped full of bullets by his Mafia rivals. Thus
are all personal values reduced to entreprenerinal ones.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
---

It has been dawning on the First World, which is rapidly using up many of its
resources, that growth is eating away the biosphere at a pace unprecedented
in human history. Deforestation from acid rain, itself a product of fossil
fuel combustion, is matched or even exceeded by the systematic burning that
is cleaning vast rain forests. The destruction of the ozone layer, we are
beginning to learn, is occurring almost everywhere, not just in Antarctica.

We now sense that unlimited growth is literally recycling the complex organic
products of natural evolution into the simple mineral constituents of the
Earth at the dawn of life billions of years ago. Soil that was in the making
for millennia is being tunned into sand; richly forested regions filled with
complex life-forms are being reduced to barren moonscapes; rivers, lakes, and
even vast oceanic regions are becoming noxious and lethal sewers, radio
nuclides, together with an endless and ever-increasing array of toxicants,
are invading the air we breathe, the water we drink, and almost every food
item on the dinner table. Not even sealed, air-conditioned, and sanitized
offices are immune to this poisonous deluge.

Growth is only the most immediate cause of this pushing back of the
evolutionary clock to a more primordial and mineralized world. And calling
for "limits to growth" is merely the first step toward bringing the magnitude
of our environmental problems under public purview. Unless growth is traced
to its basic source-competition in a grow-or-die market society-the demand
for controlling growth is meaningless as well as unattainable. We can no more
arrest growth while leaving the market intact than we can arrest egoism while
leaving rivalry intact.

In this hidden world of cause-and-effect, the environmental movement and the
public stand at a crossroads. Is growth a product of "consumerism" -the most
socially acceptable and socially neutral explanation that we usually
encounter in discussions of environmental deterioration? Or does growth occur
because of the nature of production for a market economy? To a certain
extent, we can say. both. But the overall reality of a market economy is that
consumer demand for a new product rarely occurs spontaneously, nor is its
consumption guided purely by personal considerations.

Today, demand is created not by consumers but by producers-specifically, by
enterprises called advertising agencies that use a host of techniques to
manipulate public taste. Amencan washing and drying machines, for example,
are all but constructed to be used communally-and they are communally used in
many apartment buildings. Their privatization in homes, where they stand idle
most of the time, is a result of advertising ingenuity.

One can survey the entire landscape of typical "consumer" items and find many
other examples of the irrational consumption of products by individuals and
small families-"consumer" items that readily lend themselves to public use.

Another popular explanation of the environmental crisis is population
increase. This argument would be more compelling if it could be shown that
countries with the largest rates of population increase are the largest
consumers of energy, raw material, or even food. But such correlations are
notoriously false. Often mere density of population is equated with
overpopulation in a given country or region. Such arguments, commonly cynical
in their use of graphics-scenes of congested New York City streets and subway
stations during rush hours, for example-hardly deserve serious notice.

We have yet to determine how many people the planet can sustain without
complete ecological disruption. The data are far from conclusive, but they
are surely highly biased-generally along economic, racial, and social lines.
Demography is far from a science, out it is a notorious political weapon
whose abuse has disastrously claimed the lives of millions over the course of
the century.

Finally, "industrial society," to use a genteel euphemism for capitalism, has
also become an easy explanation for the environmental ills that afflict our
time. But a blissful ignorance clouds the fact that several centunes ago,
much of England's forest land, including Robin Hood's legendary haunts, was
deforested by the crude axes of rural proletarians to produce charcoal for a
technologically simple metallurgical economy and to clear land for profitable
sheep runs. This occurred long before the Industrial Revolution.

Technology may magnify a problem or even accelerate its effects. But with or
without a "technological imagination" (to use Jacques Ellul's expression),
rarely does it produce the problem itself. Indeed, the rationalization of
work by means of assembly-line techniques goes back to such patently
pre-industrial societies as the pyramid-builders of ancient Egypt, who
developed a vast human machine to build temples and mausoleums.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
---

To take growth out of its proper social context is to distort and privatize
the problem. It is inaccurate and unfair to coerce people into believing that
they are personally responsible for present-day ecological dangers because
they consume too much or proliferate too readily.

This privatization of the environmental crisis, like New Age cults that focus
on personal problems rather than on social dislocations, has reduced many
environmental movements to utter ineffectiveness and threatens to diminish
their credibility with the public. If "simple living" and militant recycling
are the main solutions to the environmental casts, the crisis will certainly
continue and intensify.

Ironically, many ordinary people and their families cannot afford to live
"simply." It is a demanding enterprise when one considers the costliness of
"simple" hand-crafted artifacts and the exorbitant price of organic and
"recycled" goods. Moreover, what the "production end" of the environmental
crisis cannot sell to the "consumption end," it will certainly sell to the
military. General Electric enjoys considerable eminence not only for its
refrigerators but also for its Gatling guns. This shadowy side of the
environmental problem-military production-can only be ignored by attaining an
ecological airheadedness so vacuous as to defy description.

Public concern for the environment cannot be addressed by placing the blame
on growth without spelling out the causes of growth. Nor can an explanation
be exhausted by citing "consumerism" while ignoring the sinister role played
by rival producers in shaping public taste and guiding public purchasing
power. Aside from the costs involved, most people quite rightly do not want
to "live simply." They do not want to diminish their freedom to travel or
their access to culture, or to scale down needs that often serve to enrich
human personality and sensitivity.

Rambunctious as certain "radical" environmentalist slogans like BACK TO THE
PLEISTOCENE! (a slogan of the Earth First! group) may sound, they are no less
degrading and depersonalizing than the technocratic utopias issued by H.G.
Wells early in this century.

It will take a high degree of sensitivity and reflection-attributes that are
fostered by the consumption of such items as books, art works, and music-to
gain an understanding of what one ultimately needs and does not need to be a
truly fulfilled person. Without such people in sufficient numbers to
challenge the destruction of the planet, the environmental movement will be
as superficial in the future as it is ineffectual today.

The issue of growth, then, can be used either to deliver us over to
banalities about our consumption patterns and technocratic passion for
gadgetry (Buddhism, I note, has not rendered Japan less technocratic than the
United States) or to guide public thinking to the basic issues that bring the
social sources of the ecological crisis into clear focus.

In Vermont, for example, Left Greens who are seeking to radicalize the
state's rather tepid environmental movement have followed the logic of
diminished growth along challenging and useful lines. In their demand for a
year-long moratorium on growth and a public discussion of vital needs, they
have made it possible to ask key questions about the problems raised by
growth control.

By what criteria are we to determine what constitutes needless growth, for
example, and what is needful growth? Who will make this decision-state
agencies, town meetings, alliances among towns on a countywide basis,
neighborhoods in cities?

To what extent should municipalities be empowered to limit growth? Should
they begin to buy open land? Should they subsidize farmers to save farms for
future generations? Should they bring major industrial and commercial
concerns under the control of citizen assemblies? Should they establish legal
criteria to determine ecologically sound restrictions on developers and
venture-capital investors?

This sequence of questions, each of which logically follows from the idea of
controlling growth, can have impressive consequences.

It has forced people in Vermont communities to think through the nature of
their priorities: growth or a decent environment? Centralized or local power?
Community alliances or bureaucratic agencies? The exploitative use of
property that involves the public welfare or the communal control of such
property?

A number of Vermont towns have challenged the right of the state government
in Montpelier to disregard the demands of citizens and town meetings to
inhibit growth-indeed, to ignore their attempts to determine their own
destiny.

New Age environmentalism and conventional environmentalism that place limits
on serious, in-depth ecological thinking have been increasingly replaced by
social ecology that explores the economic and institutional factors that
enter into the environmental crisis.

In the context of this more mature discourse, the Valdez oil spill is no
longer seen as an Alaskan matter, an "episode" in the geography of pollution.
Rather it is recognized as a social act that raises such "accidents" to the
level of systemic problems-rooted not in consumerism, technological advance,
and population growth but in an irrational system of production, an abuse of
technology by a grow-or-die economy, and the demographics of poverty and
wealth. Ecological dislocation
cannot be separated from social dislocations.

The social roots of our environmental problems cannot remain hidden without
trivializing the costs itself and thwarting its resolution.




Institute for Social Ecology
P.O. Box 89
Plainfield, Vermont 05667 USA
(802) 454-8493
ise@...

Urban Legend No More?
Modem tax myth may be for real
ZD Net

It may no longer just be an urban legend. The Federal Communications
Commission this year will re-examine the issue of whether Internet
service providers should pay a per-minute fee for connecting to the
local telephone network, said a commission official speaking at the
annual convention of the United States Telecom Association.

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2376030,00.html

This time the Money is attached!

Monkey, the movie!

In a message dated 10/21/99 12:52:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
DUmanBeing@... writes:

<< I found a 97M virus on my computer and wanted to let everybody know.  With
  all the correspondence from so many avenues, there is no way to know where
it
  originated, but I when to McAfee.com and downloaded a free 14-day virus
  detector-cleaner to clean it up.

  I think we should all probably do the same.  I have been in touch with all
of
  you. >>

Hello Eddie:

Thank you for your encouraging remarks, although, ironically, they are
almost deliberately pessimistic.  Do you really think that we are going to
lose the BIG ONE?  Frankly, I haven't confronted myself on this one.  I
don't know which way I would put my money on.

But the way I think is this:  If I put my money on losing, I wouldn't be
able to enjoy my winning, so I may as well put my money on winning, whatever
the odds.

Besides, if I lost, I could always have the consolation prize of "I did my
best."

Not very funny, really, but all semi-joking aside, after three visits to
deep rural India, and inevitably urban India as well, I cannot help but
think that those little islands of green in the sea of rice paddies and
wheat fields and degraded ex-forests, and the uncontrolled population
growth, and the 300 million sacred cows that overgraze every available
square inch of sacred ground, including the tiger's remaining habitat... I
cannot help but empathize with you.  I guess sometimes you've got to blind
yourself to the dark vision just to maintain the energy to just minimize the
damage.

Anyway, I do need all the help I can get.  I hope, when I get to California,
we can meet.  If you would help out, better yet, "join in", I'd be very
pleased.

For life on Earth and the life of Earth,

Anthony

Anthony.

>From: ELEvans@...
>Reply-To: DeepEcology@onelist.com
>To: DeepEcology@onelist.com
>Subject: Re: [DeepEcology] Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE) World Petition and
>road tour
>Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:45:32 EDT
>
>From: ELEvans@...
>
>In a message dated 10/10/99 7:18:05 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
>anthony_marr@... writes:
>
><< Yours for life on Earth, and for the life of Earth, Anthony Marr
>  founder, HOPE-GE >>
>
>Nice post Anthony.  It is a pitty that there are so few people like
>yourself
>and so little time.  We are going to lose this one, the BIG ONE.  Maybe
>something will remain if enough people like yourself continue their efforts
>and others join in.
>Regards,
>
>Ed Evans
>It's what we learn after we know it all that really counts.
>Sunday, October 10, 1999
>7:46:47 AM Pacific Standard Time
>
>>May wolves run at your side and not at your heels.

<A HREF="aol://4344:3167.worldpop.21059248.622468767"> World Population
Reaches 6 Billion</A>
World Population Reaches 6 Billion

By MATT CRENSON
.c The Associated Press

NEW YORK (Oct. 10) - A majority of the 370,000 children born this Tuesday
will be poor. Half will be Asian. And in theory, one will be the planet's 6
billionth person.

Most experts greet this milestone with anxiety. In just 12 years, they note,
humans have increased their number by 1 billion. During the 20th century, the
world's population has tripled. And by 2100, ecologist David Pimentel of
Cornell University warned in a recent paper, ''12 billion miserable humans
will suffer a difficult life on Earth.''

Advocates for population control call it ''Y6B.'' They warn that if humanity
can't clamp a lid on the population explosion it will spell serious trouble -
war, famine, economic collapse.

But not everybody agrees that Oct. 12 is a day for doom and gloom. Economist
Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington,
D.C., considers it an occasion for celebration.

''This is an incredible thing that we have 6 billion people,'' he says.
''It's a real tribute to human ingenuity and our ability to innovate.''

Moore was a student of economist Julian Simon, who died last year at the age
of 65. Simon criticized warnings about population growth, arguing that
technological innovation would progress fast enough to support the human
race. To an extent, that is what has happened this century.

''A lot of these prophecies of doom have really proven to be false,'' Moore
says.

Even the United Nations, a leading advocate for population control, has found
reason for encouragement in recent population growth, because the boom is
proof of increased agricultural production, decreased infant mortality and
prolonged life expectancy.

But the ''Green Revolution'' that increased food production so dramatically
in the 1960s and 1970s appears to have reached its limit. Total agricultural
yields have leveled off and per capita food production has actually been
falling since 1983, Pimentel notes in the current issue of ''Environment,
Development, and Sustainability.'' And there is little chance that
genetically modified crops and other biotechnology will reinvigorate
agricultural production.

''We can hope, but actually if you look, biotechnology's been with us for the
last 20 years,'' Pimentel says. ''To state it will turn the food situation
around, the evidence is not there.''

Pimentel argues that the optimal world population in the year 2100 is 2
billion. To reach that population level, people would have to reduce their
fertility from the current level of 2.7 births per woman to 1.5, a highly
unrealistic prospect. But if they did, he says, those 2 billion people could
enjoy a standard of living comparable to that of the average European today.

An international agreement reached five years ago in Cairo pledges all
nations to cooperate in trying to limit population growth by providing family
planning services throughout the developing world. The United Nations credits
similar efforts with decreasing the fertility rate in those countries from
six births per woman in 1950 down to about three today.

''We can say with some pride that fertility rates have fallen sharply,'' says
William Ryan, editor of the annual United Nations State of World Population
Report. ''Of course a lot depends on choices and actions that governments
make, particularly over the next couple of decades.''

Developed countries, especially the United States, have been accused of
failing to meet the commitments they made in Cairo. Developed countries
contribute about $2 billion a year to population control, less than half the
amount they signed up for in Cairo.

''Not providing these resources will guarantee that we can't make the
progress we would otherwise make,'' Ryan says.

It is his agency, the United Nations Population Fund, that declared Tuesday
the ''day of 6 billion,'' the official date that the world population
surpasses that figure. But population statistics being what they are, nobody
knows for certain which day the clock will turn over. U.S. Census Bureau
figures put the date nearly three months ago, on July 19.

No matter. Whether the globe's population has already passed 6 billion or
not, at the close of the 20th century there are really two demographic
worlds. One is poor, young and growing. In countries like Uganda and Niger,
the median age is 15 and the growth rate is fast enough to double the
population in 23 years.

The other demographic world is wealthy, old and shrinking. The median age in
Italy and Japan is 40. And the population growth in those countries has
fallen to zero or below.

''Europe is a demographic catastrophe,'' says Moore, of the Cato Institute.
''If you take that trend out 500 years you're going to have eight Italians
and three Irish on the face of the Earth.''

Closer to the present, the United Nations projects that in 2050 a quarter of
the developed world will be older than 65. That is a higher proportion of
retirement-age people than Florida has today.

''Politics will change. Environment will change,'' says Joseph Chamie,
director of the United Nations Population Division. ''Automobiles,
consumption, clothing, living arrangements.''

As one world grows old, the other will grow up - and have more children.
There are about 1 billion teenagers living today, mostly in the Third World.
Even though fertility rates are expected to keep falling, the simple fact
that so many people will reach adulthood in the coming decades will boost
population by another several billion.

''Even if all those couples had only two children, population would continue
to grow for another 40 years or so,'' Ryan says.

At the same time, that growing population faces enormous obstacles. In some
parts of Africa, one adult in four is HIV positive. Worldwide, 8 percent of
the population lives in a place without enough water. By 2050, a quarter of
the world will have less water than it needs.

''Some experts believe the wars in the Middle East in the 21st century will
be over access to drinking water,'' says Brian Dixon, director of government
relations for Zero Population Growth, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group.

Global warming and other environmental factors may also cause problems. If
current estimates are correct, sea level will rise as much as 3 feet over the
next century, displacing 72 million people in China and 71 million in
Bangladesh.

It would seem almost too much to handle - the disease, the limited resources,
the environmental threats - but even the man who would like to see a world
population one-third its present size is hopeful.

''Obviously we can't make land and we can't make water, but I think we can
turn things around,'' says Pimentel. ''I have great faith in human nature.''

  AP-ES-10-04-99 1503EDT

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news
report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed
without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active
hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

In a message dated 10/10/99 7:18:05 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
anthony_marr@... writes:

<< Yours for life on Earth, and for the life of Earth, Anthony Marr
  founder, HOPE-GE >>

Nice post Anthony.  It is a pitty that there are so few people like yourself
and so little time.  We are going to lose this one, the BIG ONE.  Maybe
something will remain if enough people like yourself continue their efforts
and others join in.
Regards,

Ed Evans
It's what we learn after we know it all that really counts.
Sunday, October 10, 1999
7:46:47 AM Pacific Standard Time

Dear friends ar Deep Ecology:

Since time to heal our ailing planet is short, let me cut right to the chase.

Since the great extinction of the dinosaurs 64 million years ago, our planet
Earth has maintained a state of dynamic equilibrium, even through five major ice
ages, until this very last century - a mere blip in geologic time - when it
suddenly developed what can be analogized as the Six Planetary Diseases, any one
of which can prove fatal to life on Earth, and the life of Earth itself:

      1.  Malarial fever - global warming due to the unprecedented emission of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
      2.  A.I.D.S. - loss of immunity against solar UV radiation due to damage to
its protective ozone shield.
      3.  Cancer - human and cattle populations  multiplying unchecked,
unsustainably consuming the rest of the biosphere.
      4.  Wasting disease - loss of fertile soil (10,000 tanker-loads per year
from India alone), biomass (massive deforestation) and biodiversity (extinction
rate - 3 known species every hour and an unknown number of unknown species every
minute, totaling hundreds if not thousands every day.
      5.  Blood poisoning - pollution, acid rain, toxic waste
      6.  Suicidal tendency - despite the ending of the Cold War, the planet may
still blow itself up any time in the form of a self-generated global nuclear
holocaust.

If left unchecked, any or all of the above "Planetary Diseases" could doom our
Earth itself to extinction.  But for those of us who would take on the
responsibility to heal the planet, the first obstacle we face is an exorbitant
medical bill - one trillion dollars over the next decade might just be enough to
start the process rolling.  So, where does this money come from?  Does it even
exist?

It does.  Ironically, the clue is in the 5th Planetary Disease.  As we speak,
the global military expenditure is about $1 trillion per annum.  And to what
good end?  If, on the other hand, each and every nation on Earth would cut but
10% of its military spending per year over the next decade, we would
collectively liberate $1 trillion, or $100 billion per annum, to start the
healing of our planet Earth.

To answer several main objections:.
      1.  No nation would suffer any weakening of military strength relative to
any other, since all will be set back by the same proportional measure.  On the
contrary, global security will be strengthened.
      2.  No nation would suffer significant financial drain since each nation
can by and large reclaim it's portion of the HOPE Fund to solve its own
environmental problems.
      3.  No military personnel need be laid off, since they can be retrained for
conservation operations such as anti-poaching and anti-smuggling, activities
which would qualify under the new fund.
      4.  No arms manufacturers need lose business, since their capabilities can
be channeled to making high-tech conservation tools and environmental
instruments.
      5.  No nation will be worse off, since it environmental problems are
finally addressed.
      6.  The fruit of labour of the HOPE Petition shall be in the form of a U.N.
resolution, to which all nations must abide.

In view of this, HOPE-GEO (Heal Our Planet Earth Global Environmental
Organization) was formed in September, 1999, to rally all concerned citizens of
the world to exert their collective will, by means of an international,
multi-lingual petition, known as


The HOPE World Petition:

"We, the people of Earth, in view of its 'Six Planetary Diseases', which require
massive, super-expensive and immediate intervention, hereby petition all the
world's nations to each reduce its own military budget by 10 percent per year
for 10 years, thus collectively reducing the current
one-trillion-dollars-per-annum global arms expenditure by
one-hundred-billion-dollars per year over the next decade.  The funds thus
liberated shall be placed into a United Nations created and managed Global HOPE
Fund - to heal our planet Earth."


This petition will be translated into various languages and distributed around
the world.  Filled petitions will be returned to HOPE GEO which will keep an
accurate count of the total number of signatures accumulated.  When the count
reaches the first million, HOPE GEO will deliver the accumulated petitions to
the United Nations General Assembly, while the petition will keep on growing,
until the objective is achieved.

At this juncture, I should point out that a petition is not worth its weigh in
paper, unless it propells a media wave, better yet, a media tsunami, towards the
goal.  To generate this media wave, I will go on a 5.5-month-long Northan
American road tour covering 70 cities in the US and Canada, starting January 31,
2000.
In 1996 I conducted a 7-week, 12,000 km anti-trophy-hunting road tour through
out Brtish Columbia, and generated 200 newspaper articles and dozens of hours of
TV and radio interviews, making trophy hunting particularly of the grizzly bear
the hottest issue in the province.  HOPE-GEO aims to do the same for the Earth
worldwide.

But this cannot be done without the passionate participation of environmentalist
of all countries worldwide.  In the Bear Referendum road tour, which rallied
2,000 volunteers to the cause who eventually collected 93,000 signatures in the
government-prescribed 90-day-period, I was billetted by local hosts in every
city on my itinerary - mostly environmental activists known to me only by
reputation - who also volunteered their services to organize local events on my
behalf such as arranging speaking opportunities, hall rentals, publicity, etc. 
I usually "passed the hat" at the end of each multimedia presentation to cover
expenses.  In return, local support groups were given honorable mention in media
interviews.

This modus operandi will apply to this HOPE World Tour, whose budget will be in
the currency of love.  In dollar terms, it will either cost HOPE-GEO a million
dollars, or nothing at all.  HOPE-GEO certainly cannot afford a million dollars.
The project must pay for itself, with a few dollars left over to "pay my rent".

Global participation by myriad environmental goroups is required for this
project to be successful, and if successful, it will benefit all environmental
groups worldwide.

If you are interested in helping out in any way, shape or form, including
financially I might add, you will find the itinerary of the road tour, and
petition forms in two formats, plus media excerpts of past and current
campaigns, in HOPE-GEO's web site:

                                http://www.hope-geo.org

If your city happens to be on the itinerary, then I ask for your help.  Even if
it is not, I would still ask you to please distribute the petition forms by
electronic means or in paper forms.

I also spent the better part of four years trying to save the critically
endangered tiger, including going to India three times, averaging 10 weeks per
times.  After all this, my conclusion is that working with the resources
currently available to save the tiger is futile.  I am convinced that unless
there is a hundrend-fold, no, thousand-fold increase in funding, the tiger is as
good as gone.  This is why I've "taken the plunge" and "gone for broke".

Together, we can make it happen.

As for me, I've done it before, and I'll do it again.

Yours for life on Earth, and for the life of Earth,

Anthony Marr
founder, HOPE-GEO

HEAL OUR PLANET EARTH Global Environmental Organization
4118 West 11th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6R 2L6
Tel.: 604-222-1169; Fax.: 604-222-1127;
Email: <anthony_marr@...>, <anthonymarr@...>
Web site:  http://www.hope-geo.org

With the increase in CO at 4 times 1950 levels and the reduction in production
capacity of O corresponding to deforestation we are on target for the
tribulations. PS

WolfSave@... wrote:
Biodiversity:   We are losing plant and animal species at a rate not seen
since
the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.  Biologists project that within
the
next 25 years one of every five species will die out.

Forests:         We are eliminating our forests.  The United Nations reports
that since 1970 the world's forests have shrunk from 11.4 square kilometers
per
1,000 people to 7.3 square kilometers per 1,000 people. The world's tropical
forests have lost somewhere between one-fifth and one-third  of their
original
size.
From the Sierra Club

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Biodiversity:   We are losing plant and animal species at a rate not seen
since
the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.  Biologists project that within
the
next 25 years one of every five species will die out.

Forests:         We are eliminating our forests.  The United Nations reports
that since 1970 the world's forests have shrunk from 11.4 square kilometers
per
1,000 people to 7.3 square kilometers per 1,000 people. The world's tropical
forests have lost somewhere between one-fifth and one-third  of their original
size.
From the Sierra Club

Here's a nice page for resources:

  <A HREF="http://www.peak.org/~mageet/tkm/ecolenv.htm">The Need to Know
Library - Ecology and Environment Links</A>

I just placed a new "Green" page on aol's web pages.  Tap the following
hyperlink and you shoud be able to go directly to it if you like.

  <A HREF="http://hometown.aol.com/greenpolitics/myhomepage/index.html">Green
Politics</A>

It gives my definition of Green Politics, which might be useful for anyone
who cares to use it as a reference point for discussion/debate.  I have found
that it does stimulate discussion around political assumptions.  It's the
same piece I sent around several weeks ago, by the way.

It also links to my other page on aol (primarily political economy), besides
Geo 2000.  I'll probably add to both as time passes.
I would appreciate suggestions.
Regards,

Ed Evans
It's what we learn after we know it all that really counts.
Saturday, September 25, 1999
7:09:04 PM Pacific Standard Time

<A HREF="http://www.unep.org/unep/eia/geo2000/ov-e/index.htm">GEO-2000
Overview Table of Contents</A>

Tap the above to go to the source for global CO2 gas reporting.
I would still like to see corroborating evidence.  The graph shows a great
increase, quadrupled, in any case.  I would think that this makes moot issues
of "national defense" and "national security," even laughable.
Here's a graph I located with the help of another's email:

[Unable to display image]

I am sorry to bother you all with this, but I'm about to split!  I just heard
(again in 24 hours) that the earth's CO2 level has quadrupled since the
1950's.  This information came from the United Nations, via KPFK; I find it
hard to believe.  Is there another source for this information that anyone
may know about?

Apparently, Earth's human population has just topped 6 billion, incidentally;
the global warming has its source in the industrialized (rich) nations.

Don't forget the animal cruelty charges.
Blazing chicken used in Minneapolis arson case
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Two youths set a chicken afire on a house porch in south Minneapolis,
and the bird raced around inside for a minute before dying under a
kitchen table, fire investigators said Monday. Another suspect, an
18-year-old Minneapolis man, was arrested and jailed pending possible
charges of arson, cocaine possession and driving after license
suspension, police records show.

http://www.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisSlug=CHIK21&da
te=21-Sep-1999

"Oh God! It's Godzilla!"
Government Officials Unnerved By Runaway Reptiles
Fox News

Government ministers took time out from a busy schedule of debates over
the economy and financial markets to tackle another slippery issue -
reptiles on the loose in the streets of Japan.  Runaway turtles,
iguanas, snakes and even the occasional alligator have been spotted on
Japanese streets and chased down by police as a Japanese trend to buy
reptiles gathers pace.

http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/etcetera/wires/0920/e_rt

International Marine Mammal Project: US Government Sued
    Over "Dolphin Safe" Tuna Label

In mid-August, Earth Island Institute, nine other
environmental groups, and 87-year-old environmental
activist David R. Brower filed a lawsuit in U.S. Federal
District Court to overturn the decision by the government
to weaken the standards for the "Dolphin Safe" label on
American tuna cans.

For more information on this historic suit, visit:
http://www.earthisland.org/news/news_immp5.html

In a message dated 9/14/99 9:47:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
pilgrim@... writes:

<< Thank you for starting a list of such great importance.  Your new
  member, Betsy >>
And thank you for the kind comment!  I should let you know that to date,
we've had very little mail here, which is fine.  Still, it would be nice to
see some discussion develop on Deep Ecology, a sorely neglected subject in
our world.
Regards,

Wolfsave
It's what we learn after we know it al that really counts.
Wednesday, September 15, 1999
6:45:51 AM Pacific Standard Time

Thank you for starting a list of such great importance.  Your new
member, Betsy

DeepEcology-owner@onelist.com wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Welcome to the list.  Please take a moment to review this message.
>
> To unsubscribe from this list, go to the ONElist website, at
> www.onelist.com, and select the My ONElist link from the menu bar
> on the left.  This menu will also let you change your subscription
> between digest and normal mode.
>
> Thanks,
> The List Owner.

From: ADAPTLA@...

  The late astronomer and author Carl Sagan was a secret but avid marijuana
  smoker, crediting it with inspiring essays and scientific insight, according
  to Sagan's biographer.

  Using the pseudonym "Mr. X," Sagan wrote about his pot smoking in an essay
  published in the 1971 book "Reconsidering Marijuana." The book's editor,
  Lester Grinspoon, recently disclosed the secret to Sagan's biographer, Keay
  Davidson.

  Davidson, a writer for the San Francisco Examiner, revealed the marijuana
use
  in an article published in the newspaper's magazine Sunday. "Carl Sagan: A
  Life" is due out in October.

  "I find that today a single joint is enough to get me high. . . . In one
  movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the
cannabis
  smoke which permeated the theater," wrote Sagan, who authored popular
science
  books such as "Cosmos", "Contact" and "The Dragons of Eden."

  In the essay, Sagan said marijuana inspired some of his intellectual work.

  "I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in
  which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of
  gaussian distribution curves," wrote the former Cornell University
professor.
  "I wrote the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea
  down."

  Sagan also wrote that pot enhanced his experience of food -- particularly
  potatoes -- music and sex.

  Grinspoon, Sagan's closest friend for 30 years, said Sagan's marijuana use
is
  evidence against the notion that marijuana makes people less ambitious.

  Sagan died of pneumonia in 1996. He was 62.


  Copyright ©1999 Daily News of Los Angeles

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Welcome everybody to deepecology@onelist.com

I hope we can share some deep ecology ideas here.

Regards,

Wolfsave
It's what we learn after we know it al that really counts.
Friday, September 10, 1999
7:09:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

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