Green Aesthetics II

Continued from the previous post.

Along with our human neighbors, on this often wind-swept ridge, we are frequently visited by deer, turkey, opossum and pesky raccoon (or two).  Bobcat, foxes, and coyote wander the streets and the bird population is colorful and varied.  The black bear moms bring their cubs to the spring-pool below the house and Bill, the six and half foot long black snake patrols the landscape and the hardscape for the frequent deer mice and the occasional copperhead. Red, a wood pecker, never fails to visit and greet me with a small screech when I sit in the alcove on the south-facing front of the house to read and soak in the sun.

I hope that my work over the past five decades of my 70 plus years, much of it mentioned in this blog, has contributed in some small way to help maintain the beauty of life on Earth and will continue to do so over whatever time I have left.  

Let me conclude these posts with the closing lines from the Navajo Night chant sometimes called House Made of Dawn.




In beauty it is finished
In beauty it is finished

Although I will post occasionally to this blog, this is the last of my regularly scheduled bimonthly posts.

Color it Green II

(Continued from the preceding post.)

While many of my neighbors apply pounds of chemistry to kill the moss in their lawns, I spend time on my knees (something my very religious Mother would have encouraged) pulling the grass from the moss one small clump at a time.  Moss grows quite well under the gnarly branches of the red maple that shelters the front of our home at Hidden Springs from the often hot Southern sun.

There is something about the repetitive task sometimes associated with caring for the moss that is very meditative.  Our moss garden responds best to sweeping rather than raking. I use a broom with soft bristle to brush away the acorns and leaves that, at various times of the year, coat the surface of the moss.  Each sweep of the broom not only moves the leaves and nuts along but also restores the unity of the green velvety surface.   The rhythmic whisper as the bristles move back and forth across the surface of the moss is the background to a profound meditation…one whispered sweep of the broom at a time.

Perhaps someday Aesthetics will turn its attention to other natural beauties.  For example, the beauty of evolutionary biology as a species comes into being or the beauty of a natural system feeding the cycle of life and death…that would indeed be a substantial transdisciplinary leap into the connections that bind and liberate us all.

Connections.

Shallow depressions in the sandy mud alongside woodland pond. 

Depressions made by a wandering raccoon, an animal so well adapted to feed on the clams buried beneath the surface of the sand that they fish by touch alone.

Connections.

The clams strain minute plankton, clarifying the water, cleaning it until it sparkles--growing inside their shells until a passing raccoon senses their presence beneath the sand, and....

Connections.

Plankton--tiny children of the sun using the basic elements of nature to create the stuff of life, to build their own living plant-selves from the sun and minerals that surround them in the water.

Connections.

Standing -- on the verge of the glassy waters watching the connections unfold, watching the interconnectedness take place. 

Stepping -- carefully least I erase the trace of what has passed here...of the connections that have taken place here.

Wondering -- where I and mine belong in this web of life. 

Sensing -- in those shallow wanderings the elements of nature flowing through me.   

Knowing -- that someway, somehow I and mine have become separate from the primal patterns shifting and blending in the waters of the woodland pond. 

Understanding-- that the separation is only temporary, can only be temporary, is only illusion. 

Standing -- again-- in the shadows at the edge of the pond.

Watching--in my delight and in my fear.

Color it Green I

The Aesthetics of Environment

Things change and old words take on new meanings.  Green for example has come to mean many things other than a color…nature, environment, products, politics, and many more.  Here in the mountains of western North Carolina we have a lot of green.  The mountains are clothed in a cloak of green, the meadows, fields, and lawns are green and gold, and it is beautiful. We are told by philosophers that Aesthetics is the study of beauty.  Apparently, the root of the word is derived from the Greek terms for sensing or feeling or perceiving.  I sense and perceive that a healthy world is a green, fecund, and growing world...a beautiful world.  These mountains are beautiful but my professional work has taken me from the deserts of the American West and Southwest to the Gulf Coast and Caribbean and, now, to the Southern Appalachian Mountains and I have seen a great deal of beauty in all of these places.

In recent decades Aesthetics has expanded its scope to investigate the questions of beauty in nature.  We now talk about environmental aesthetics. What is it that we sense when we look at a beautiful river valley or the winding rows of corn stubble cut for silage in the fall, or a small park in a concrete and steel city?  Something happens. We can feel it, we can sense it.  Sometimes that feeling is very powerful and often it is shared. A lot of work is being done on what it is that we feel by neurophysiologists, psychologists, biochemists, and other specialized fields such as cognitive studies.  Perhaps, one day they will tell us all about it in the often sterile, reductionist words of science.  But there is nothing sterile about our individual or, very often, our collective response to these things. 

We are moved by nature to paint it, write poetry about it, to emulate it in our gardens. In terms of the issues addressed by conservation biology, why is it important what we find beautiful?  A number of observers have made the point that the kinds of natural settings we find beautiful often make a substantial difference when it comes to reaching that collective decision of what places we wish to set aside, to save, to restore or enhance and which to surrender to other, perhaps more consumptive uses.

We most often perceive of transformation to a green world in a mega-sense…for example the greening of government programs…corporate greening…and organizational transformation. But, in fact, critical transformation can only take place one person or even one action…one blade of grass, if you will, at a time.

(Continued in the next post.) 

(The literature on the aesthetics of environment and nature pertaining to the world  environmental crisis has grown considerably over the past several decades with numerous journal articles and books.  Over the years, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and Contemporary Aesthetics have published a number of articles on the subject. Arnold Berleant, Allen Carlson, John Fisher and others have contributed significantly.  Books addressing this subject include those by  J.B. Callicott, T. Morton, and others. I also suggest Lance Hosey's The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design)

Transitions Part II

(Continued from the preceding post.)

What paths have theologies and religions taken on these issues?  How does this multidimensional, cross-cultural communion of saints view the trinity of God, humanity, and other nature?  Is there pattern we can discern?  If we loosely use the terms ultraconservatives, conservative, mainline, and progressives, we can see a pattern of religious and theological response within Christianity that goes something like this.  On the ultraconservative side, where there is any sensitivity to these issues, there is a slow but growing awareness of an Earth care responsibility based on a view that places God at the top of the heap, humanity at the top of what are referred to as the 'created orders,' and everything else being created by God for human use. Also, these theologies frequently view the cosmos as being fixed in time and space.  That really doesn't leave much room for the evolution of anything, and evolution is the unifying principle of the biological sciences, thus, making claims coming from those sciences very suspect. Two other factors make it difficult for environmental issues to enter into Christian theologies of the  Christian Right.  The first is the focus of many of these theologies on an immediately pending apocalypse at the end of which is predicted , the return of Jesus, the Christian Son of God. You see, if the perousia is just around the corner, why worry about warming temperatures, melting ice, and the extinction of species.  A second factor is the focus of the ultraconservative Christians on political power.  On the far Christian Right, the Dominionist movement, according to their leadership, is dedicated to insuring that the US becomes a Christian nation that will be the primary building block in a Global Christian empire.  These predisposition to apocalypse and the development of a theocratic Christian nation in the United States block any attention to environmental concerns, except as a cause to rally against.

Moving on from the Christian far right or ultraconservatives, to the conservative, within the big Christian tent, that is those who are Evangelical Christian but not necessarily literalists or fundamentalists, or dominionists, (and who do not believe that to be Christian one must be a member of the US Republican Party) we encounter a shift in thinking toward a stewardship in which humanity is charged by God with the responsibility of caring for the Creation. We are, according to these perspectives, God's stewards on Earth.  But these folks struggle with the nature of that stewardship.  What does it mean to be God's steward? What relationship do we have to the other species of the Creation? What is it that we are asked by God to do in terms of Earth and all of her habitats and inhabitants? What does Jesus drive asks the Christian evangelical Jim Ball? And, how does all of this fit in with the primary concern of Christianity, that being the salvation of the individual soul?

How about at the center of things, with the Mainline churches? Here we find  a great and wonderful stew of intellect and activity with Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodox, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and many other denominations and sects.  It is here, at the center, if you will, that we find the theological concept that God is, somehow, fully expressed in the smallest particle of the universe, the smallest quanta of energy, and the least significant of the natural processes.

If we take one more step and look at what are referred to as postdenominational, and similar theologies, sometimes referred to as 'progressive,' we can add cosmogenesis to the broadening paradigms. From a theological sense, cosmogenesis views the universe and God as coevolving. Some form of evolutionary thought is at the root of cosmogenic theologies. On this end of the spectrum we see humanity opening itself up to the rest of creation, embracing it as being integral with humanity. Here, we encounter the use of concepts such as 'oneness' and 'unity' to relate humanity to the fullness of creation. In these theologies, even God may be viewed as evolving.

We could take the same journey that we just have with Christianity and visit the entire communion of green saints and, if we did, we would find essentially the same things happening whether it is Hindu, Baha'i, Islam, or any of the other religious faiths of the human project. The important point is that religion and theology are greening and will continue to do so. I would suggest that religious focus on the environment is an irreversible theme of theological inquiry and religious life.

In the current age we spend a lot of time looking out at the stars and wondering if we are alone in the universe. May I suggest that we are not alone. We share Earth with millions of other species. We are not alone and we have never been alone. We just act that way, and I think that the time for change has long come.

(For a referenced version of these thoughts please go to http://www.greeninstitute.net/, look down the left side of the page and click on Interdisciplinary Initiative.)

Transitions Part I

In the early 2000’s I was appointed a Fellow with the Green Institute (http://www.greeninstitute.net/). During that time I studied, analyzed, and wrote about the increasingly intense activity at the intersection of religion, theology, and environment.  Around the same time, I was instrumental in forming the Religion and Conservation Biology Working Group within the Society for Conservation Biology(http://www.conbio.org/workinggroups/Religion/. I am President Emeritus of this organization and an active member.

 NASA Photo

Over the past several decades we have experienced a growing ecological awareness, nationally and internationally, on a number of cultural levels, in many different sectors of society, and in a number of other societies and cultures. Along with this awareness has come an increased anxiety about the ways in which humans impact Earth and its resources and the results of these impacts on human well-being and the well-being of Earth.

The first views of an apparently very fragile Earth from space, those incredible pictures call Earthrise taken from the surface of the Moon, the publication of the disturbing book Silent Spring (Carson 1962) and the developing awareness of the impacts of human population increase and climate change, have all worked to establish a perception that the planet faces environment crisis of serious magnitudes.

Other forces were also at work at that time.  The dawning of the Age of Aquarius in the 1960's and 1970's and the influence of the so-called 'new religions' or 'New Age' religions had an increasing role in informing the religious communities in the West of possible links between religion and environment. The evolution of the science of ecology, the development of the interdisciplinary field of conservation biology, and the growing sophistication of the environmental sciences as well as the focus on the plight of an increasing number of species had much to do with raising general and religious consciousness. Anthropological studies contributed to the knowledge that humanity had always been fairly hard on the environment it occupied, often with disastrous results. Sociological studies and a lot of direct observation made it obvious to even the most skeptical that bad environmental choices and practices often fall most heavily on the poor and dispossessed.

All of this activity, and much more, converged to inform and energize the mainline Christian denominations in the West and, increasingly, religions world-wide, at least those that were not already energized. It was, therefore, inevitable that religion and theology would be drawn into growing environmental concerns. The question was, "If we are on the edge of environmental crisis what role, if any, did theology and religion play in the crisis and what role or roles might theology  and religion assume in helping to resolve the crisis?

There were those who placed the blame for environmental degradation directly at the door of religion and theology. The most famous of these accusers was historian Lynne White who, in his 1967 paper The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis, (Science, Vol 155:3767, pp 1203–1207) laid the blame squarely at the foot of Western religion, at the door of Christianity.

Regardless of the seat of blame, theology and religion responded. Some responded more than others and some are still in the process of figuring out if they should respond and, if so, how?  Many denominations and sects if the West, as well as Orthodox Christianity, developed formal statements linking their denomination to environmental and Earth care issues.  This is increasingly true for all except the most ultraconservative of those denominations and sects.

The growing interest in the relationship between religion and ecology is nowhere more apparent than the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and the earlier efforts of Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions to codify these relationships.  The Harvard project has produced a number of books on this subject in what is called the 'Religion and Ecology' series. The academic response has not ended with books and is not limited to Yale or Harvard.  Brilliant scholarship has been presented by a growing number of other scholars.  Some schools now offer lower division course work and advanced degrees in the evolving field of ecotheology. The American Academy of Religion's biannual meetings have specific sections that offer papers in ecological theology and praxis. These session are well attended and present a rich offering of thought linking religion and ecological and environmental issues, across the span of the religions of the world.  The academic effort continues with the recent formation of International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture and its journal Religion and Nature. Professional societies such as the Society for Conservation Biology, have established working groups to address the relationships between conservation and religion.

(Continued in the next post.)

Nature and Human Settlements - Part II

(Continued from the preceding post.)

Much has been accomplished since The Granite Garden was written. For example, in 1990 Black Rose published David Gordon’s book Green Cities dealing with ecologically sound approaches to the use and management of urban space.  In 1994 Platt, Rowntree, and others published a book titled The Ecological City focusing on preserving and restoring urban biodiversity.  In 2001 Richard Register, with the urban ecology group in the Berkeley/Oakland area of California and leader in the Ecocities movement, published Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature, and then, in 2006, revised it and reissued it as Ecocities: REbuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.

From all of this theory and professional practice has developed an evolving movement that is making inroads, some small, and some very large, into the ‘greening’ of human settlements.  Early on, the American Forestry Society turned its attention to urban forest cover and developed guidelines for the reforestation of urban areas. Green roofs are another technique used to reduce the urban heat island effect and increase urban wildlife habitat. Roofing materials have been developed that reflect light and thus heat from rooftops, rather than absorb heat and require air conditioning. Construction techniques are now being used in buildings and other places in our settlements to reduce environmental impacts.  For example, porous concrete is used to replace asphalt in order to make more efficient and environmentally sound use of the rainwater that falls on the thousands of acres of urban hard surface.

In order to move all of this forward and put all of it into practice, Urban Ecology study centers have been established at a number of places and the United Nations has a sustainable cities initiative.

Government is also involved in the greening of our settlements, sometimes through planning, ordinances, laws, and even funding. In number of areas we see nonprofit consultative groups, that concentrate a substantial amount of professional skills, focused on greening the built environment. A lot of this energy and movement is reflected in literally thousands of organizations in communities, cities, and towns across the world.  These organizations often take on the role of advocates, and sometimes as consultants.

Much of the greening movement within communities has centered on the stabilization and restoration of streams and, where they exist, rivers.  These projects have ranged from removing trash from streams, to planting vegetation or placing structures to slow or stop erosion, to the restoration of special wetland communities, to 'day-lighting' streams that were covered over in the past.

Other work has been undertaken to establish corridors of habitat along which wildlife can move with some freedom and safety.  Still other efforts include general protection, conservation, and restoration of existing patches of forest or desert or shrub-land habitat, depending on where the city or urban center is located.

The urban restoration movement seems to have merged, to a great degree with the broader sustainability movement, and to some extent with the community gardening and permaculture movement, and now we talk about ‘sustainable ecocities.’  In fact, the first International EcoCities Conference was held in 2000 and there have been others since. An increasing number of very fine colleges and universities now offer training in the field of Urban Ecology. 

Living in community requires that we reach agreement about how to proceed on the greening of our settlements.  There are other factors stirring out there, however, that will affect any decisions we make concerning the nature of our settlements, our place in them, and the place of other species.  Not the least of these are the costs and availability of energy, the costs and decreasing availability of water, and the inconvenient but undeniable truth of global climate change and its impacts.

On the morning of December 13, 2000 I was cochairing a regional committee of a US federal initiative. One of the young staffers, who had flown down from Washington to be with us, excused himself to take an urgent call.  When he reentered the room he asked for a moment to make an announcement.  We all knew what was coming. US Vice President Al Gore, following a decision of the US Supreme Court, had conceded the election to George W. Bush and our urban greening initiative had been dissolved by the incoming administration. Several months later buildings in American cities would be under attacks from the air and bombs would fall on Baghdad. The world had changed.

Nature and Human Settlements Part I

During the latter part of the 1990's I had the opportunity to work on a number of projects intended to restore some environmental health to the built environment...to towns, cities, and other concentrations of humanity. This was especially rewarding work. I also had the opportunity to reflect on the 'greening effort' of human settlements in presentations and publications.  Nature and Human Settlements is the title of one of those reflections.

Nature and Human Settlements - Part I

The year 2007 was a special year, a landmark year in human history. This was not the year during which war was abolished. This was also not the year when hunger and crushing poverty were vanquished, more’s the pity. No, 2007 was the year of Urban Humanity.  This was the year when over half of humanity came to live in what we call urban settlements. Well over three and a quarter billion people came reside in the cities, towns of Earth.

One would think that after all of these centuries…millennia, in fact…in response to this great migration of the human tribes…our settlements would be places of choice by virtue of the quality of life and environments they provide.  But this is not the case. The air in most of our larger and many of our smaller settlements is foul and transportation is abysmal.

It was while living in Atlanta a few years back that I learned some of the more unique aspects of human settlements.  I learned, for example of what is called the ‘heat island effect.’  Because of the exhaust of heat as a waste product of the human enterprise, many of our larger settlements are warmer than the surrounding countryside.  They are covered in a bubble of essentially waste energy and gases. In some cases, these bubbles are so dense that they create their own weather…within and outside of the bubbles. The heat island can have an impact even on the weather of the surrounding countryside.

The very structure of so many of our communities mitigates against good health practices. We drive everywhere, we walk nowhere, obesity has become the rule, and a major health crisis. I learned about something else in Atlanta.  I learned about what happens when the integrity of rivers and streams are not honored.  If you put a map of Atlanta (and many other cities) on a flat surface and look at the streams that flow into it…those streams vanish as they enter the city.  They don’t actually vanish they go under the ground, under the cities.

I learned some other things during my urban years, however.  I learned how wonderful it is when citizens band together with a dream. While serving on an interagency initiative, I remember visiting with a group of people who wanted to create a little niche park in their community. And when I say little, that is just what I mean.  A very old house in one of the then more challenged sections of Atlanta, with a stone basement cut into the side of a hill, had decayed and collapsed into its basement.  Over the decades an oak had grown from the stone wall.  When I visited the site, I saw a mess but the citizens saw a small, pocket park.  We gave them the funds and a little technical expertise, they cleaned the site, put in a small path, some flowerbeds, and a couple of benches and had a park.

As an ecologist I have stood looking out over literally thousands of acres of wildflowers after the rains of spring and a bit of snow had moistened the earth just enough for one of those infrequent and incredible desert wildflower blooms.  I have floated over a hundred feet below the surface alongside a massive wall of corals, a thousand feet above the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.  These are wonderful experiences for someone with my background and interests.  But I have also experienced the great pleasure of seeing the first river otter return to a clean and stable urban stream whose rehabilitation I had a small something to do with. I have been part of the day-lighting and rehabilitating of streams that had been buried under a city for decades, and I’ve had the joy of helping link previously detached patches of seriously degraded urban ‘wildlands’ into corridors that allowed the movement of native animal and plant populations.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is the power of people when they decide they are just ‘not going to take it anymore’ and begin to green and replant their communities.  In each generation there have been those who look upon the city…the town, the built environment…as the center for the intellectual and spiritual enrichment of the human experience. The urban ecology movement has been part of that.  In a way, it has been around as long as there have been those sensitive to what it means to gather together in human settlements.

In the mid-1980’s, while still wandering the deserts of the Southwestern US, I came upon Anne Winston Spirn’s book ‘The Granite Garden’ in which she discusses the cities from the perspectives of nature and human design. I bought that book and have had it all of these years, never thinking, when I made the purchase, that I would have a small part in the contemporary movement to reinvent that which we call ‘urban.’  In the opening words from the Granite Garden…Anne says, “Nature pervades the city, forging bonds between the city and the air, earth, water, and living organisms within and around it.”  That was her vision and it’s a good vision.

For additional material on this subject search the WEB using the terms baugh with urban residential wildlife or urban ecology or urban resources.

(Continued in the next post.)