Our Current Situation As A Species

The four books listed in the right sidebar under "Amazon Associate" are insightful analyses of our current situation as a species. I am a huge fan of all four of these books, and view them as foundational in my own process of trying to figure out how best to respond to what comes next. I have previously posted on each of the authors (see Gary Snyder at 83, Earth Consciousness, Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis, The Dream of the Earth, Distant Neighbors, and Happy Birthday, Wendell Berry), and what I would like to do now is to offer a brief selection from each book, each day, for the next four days. Like food for thought. Or tapas. And, of course, if you would actually like to purchase any of these seminal works, the links in the right sidebar work really well for this (thx).  

[NOTE: True-color image shown above from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is a combination of data from two satellites. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument abourd NASA's Terra satellite collected the land-surface data over 16 days, while NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) produced a snapshot of the Earth's clouds. Just so you know.].

Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis

Lovely, lovely book. Dr. Susan Murphy is the founding teacher of the Zen Open Circle in Sydney, Australia, dharma heir of John Tarrant Roshi (Pacific Zen Institute) and Ross Bolleter Roshi (Diamond Sangha - Robert Aitken), a radio producer, a film director - and a terrific writer. Hard to pick only a few illustrative passages, but:

"The crisis facing us all right now is a tremendous koan set for us by the earth, speaking to us plainly but in words we cannont yet fully comprehend, caught as we are in the frame of the past that cannot conceive of this emergency. To respond we need to free ourselves from a too narrow sense of self, and an unquestioned assumption of self-entitled priority as a species."

"I see the great adventure of our time as not losing heart or going crazy but regaining humanity in the course of fighting for a planet where our children's children can safely flourish".

Me, too. This a great book, and I highly recommend it, and you can buy it here. 

[NOTE: Beautiful cover design by Gopa & Ted2, Inc].

Hard To Deny

A new study by the Berkeley Earth Project, compiled from more than a billion temperature records, confirms that global warming is a reality. The average global land temperature has risen about 1°C since the mid-1950's. The data agree with the findings from other major groups who have chronicled the world's climate, including NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Met Office's Hadley Center (curves shown above). Hard to be a sceptic (I hope) given the clarity of these data. Gulp.