(https://alamo.zoom.us/rec/share/FnRcyDfvrx4HxMo3ir6VIxA_Hd_Jhy9oW72MZQWyQUN2jML2DxADd3qrGPEJ-Sv_.ZwexkNEU1vQBv3JI?startTime=1617375618000)*
St. Philip’s College will be taking these materials for “saving the Earth”, tidying them up and making them more succinct, attractive, and digestible … and releasing them via various media vehicles during Earth Day Week, 2021.
Biography of Presenter paul bain martin.
The highest hopes for keynote webinar presenter, paul bain martin, on Earth Day, April 22, 2021 (also his amazing NISD San Antonio-educator brother, Lawrence Alton Martin’s birthday) are:
- that folk will read his little heavily-illustrated book on applied ecology, Games We Play, and
- wisely fight for socio-ecological justice in this world of monumental challenges.
paul has three degrees in agricultural entomology; nevertheless, about 50 years ago he began to truly realize in a socio-political/economic (ecological) sense that the Earth’s problems are not insects, but rather imprudent actions by Homo sapiens. He has farmed and ranched, served on boards of various NGOs, worked in various capacities for Texas A&M, USDA, University of Florida, University of Georgia, Jim Hightower’s Texas Department of Agriculture, public K-12 school systems, as a consultant and researcher for EMBRAPA & OAS in Brasil, and in much joy for 20-plus years with the wonderful HB/HS St. Philip’s College (paul is now retired from the Natural Sciences Department, SPC.).
paul has numerous publications, essays, reports, poems, and blog posts dealing with applied entomology and applied ecology. Some of his heroes are ecologists E.J. Dyksterhuis, Archie Carr, H.T. Odum, David Pimentel, Miguel Altieri, and E.O. Wilson. He and his lovely biology teacher-wife volunteer in the Seguin area of Texas, across the Plains, and in Latin America in ecological activities, primarily with youth.
Songs within the Webinar*.
(1115) Wonder If The World Can Wait That Long by Adam Wright (lyric video). – YouTube (1115) Cody Canada | Wonder If The World Can Wait That Long | The Next Waltz – YouTube
Rollin’ in Sweet Earth’s Arms1 – PabloEco3500K (paulpeaceparables.com)
paul’s Answer to Webinar Audience Questions Not Answered Within the Recording/Chat-Transcript at the URL Above.
Ana Maria Gonzalez – Plastics are increasingly dangerous and recent studies have been indicating the negative impact on human cognitive development as they are being absorbed through the blood stream. What can we do about it as individuals and as a community? How?
Sylvia Manning – Is there a public school anywhere that doesn’t pour thousands of pieces of Styrofoam away every school day? How can the schools tell students they should care when the kids see the school doesn’t care? Or, has this changed?
Marvel Maddox – Could you address how to overcome intentional mis-information by elected officials and corporations re: issues around sustainability? My second concern is how do we gather enough movement to have a paradigm shift … [away from]capitalism because continued growth and consumption can not continue.
……………………
- we have overshot the limits of Earth’s carrying capacity,
- we are drawing down on Earth’s limited natural resource base, and
- there is no way that we can continue to consume what We one-half to one (1) billion Haves do, except (temporarily) with fossil energy and fossil material inputs.
My rough napkin-calculations tell me that we Haves need to reduce our consumption by 2/3rds from upwards of 200,000,000 to 300,000,000 calories per day down to ca. 70,000 Kilocalories per capita daily. That includes rapidly getting off of socio-ecologically destructive polystyrene, plastics, and high-energy input/throughput systems..
For the short term–even though we don’t necessarily have their social capital, intellect, education, experiences and/or personal energy–we need to be Greta Thunbergs, Jason Hickels, Naomi Kleins, Chris Hedgeses, Berta Cacereses, Vandana Shivas, Herman Dalys, Gregg Popoviches, Dalai Lamas, St. Francises of Assisi and Jesuses of Nazareth. We should actively, wisely, and systematically use our voice, including through the written word, to struggle for local and global system change toward sustainable community. (For me, “sustainability“ means social justice, humaneness, and ecological sanity)..
As some locales and countries have already done, we need to work individually and in solidarity, in multifaceted efforts, to ban single-use polystyrene foam, single use plastics, and other plastics. We must regulate national and trans-national corporations and laissez-faire, neoliberal capitalism NOW! (I must add, that we must regulate and dramatically reduce the funding of the GLOBAL MILITARY-industrial complex, but especially that of the all too powerful, world-exploiting EEUU, … toward pacifism)
For the long term, the answer to all of these questions is to:
- level off population growth rates of humans and domesticated species,
- dramatically reduce consumption rates by Haves,
- lower our individual collective ecological footprints (of Haves) locally and globally, and
- share power and resources with have-nots including other species.*
(*And transition eventually to a mostly local matriarchal agrarian world-system in concert with Nature.)
Through positively ethical applied community ecology/PEACE across curricula and campuses of all human organizational entities, we need to learn … and then spread, values and practices of socio-ecological justice … and agitate/protest, organize, plan, lobby, twist arms, vote appropriately, develop good policy, and take action (with monitoring and assessments to make certain we are on track toward our goals of restoration/regeneration & conservation of resilient, sustainable community), locally and globally. In this process, we must consider well-researched life-cycle analysis and negative externalities. We must get off of our capitalistic addiction to: growth, exploitation of the poor and powerless and Nature, profits by the already too powerful & greedy, and fossil fuel energy and materials (including fossil energy-dependent nuclear energy and fossil energy-dependent [heavily subsidized] so-called “renewable” energies).
I’m sorry (I guess). … But we need, in the relatively near future, a new system of values and practices. (Well, what we truly need to do is to actually live a profound and holistic Golden Rule, abide by the Second Law of Thermodynamic and the Precautionary Principle, and tear down walls and barriers to communication–and sustainably live within the various ecological principles and practices. We must change to a neo-Earth from this overly artificial Eaarth of the Anthropocene which is precariously providing “quality” life for perhaps 3-4 billion as well as some individuals of some other species. This must happen for the continuation of a dynamic homeostatic symbioses/Nature including quality life for Homo sapiens and other free/”wild” species with which we have historically/prehistorically been accustomed to sustainably interact).
Some books I would recommend to help answer your questions are:
Less Is More. How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel
The Art of Commonplace by Wendell Berry
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth
Social Ecology: Society-Nature Relations Across Time and Space by Helmut Haberl et al.
Ecological Literacy by David Orr
Remaking Society by Murray Bookchin and …
our little book which will be available very soon:
Games We Play. More Than 200,000 Years of Living Truthfully and 5.000 of Searching for Truth by and for All Biota (An abbreviated book with abundant illustrations all about applied ecology for kids from 12 years of age to 120)
pbm
( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )
PowerPoint Presentation Used for the Webinar*.
