Walk with Nature - Part 2
We can transform towns and cities into self-sustaining communities, which will redefine the balance globally and allow indigenous people in poor countries to reclaim their natural resources and land to grow their own food again, to make natural resources publicly-regulated resources, including water, electricity and fuel. Countries such as Africa, Central, South America and India still suffer while privatisation of natural resources such as water, geological natural resources and even the food they grow continues to be managed by giant corporations based in the US and the EU. When we do start living more sustainably in the western world, we give back the freedom to those continents that have been treated as slave nation, allowing them to re-establish their own public sustainable natural resources.
Privatisation and ‘scarcity’ is also something we in the Western culture read about but rarely do we feel the results ourselves, yet its due to mismanagement of Nature’s capital and the way we live our lives as part of predatory capitalism. Water can be managed as a sustainable resource, we have learned of revolutionary ways to extract abundant water out of air to transform the lives of communities in deserts, by using technologies such as Trevor James Constable’s rain-engineering technology and other kinds of water-extracting systems. Already tested in many countries such as Malaysia for example, these systems have been government-certified to create rain and successfully clean up pollution.
Despite these and other such pioneering methods being vehemently suppressed by governments, the list for sustainable technology possibilities is continuing to expand, thanks to the courageous people who risk their lives to bring such technology into the public eye. These technologies are exciting to implement and experiment with, from 3D printing to Free Energy
“We could build anything we choose to build and fulfil any human need. It is not money that people need; rather, it is free access to the necessities of life. In a resource-based economy, money would be irrelevant.” — Jacque Fresco
This old system will not work for much longer, as it has outgrown its ecological and economic niche. After all, the word ‘economy’ is defined by how communities of people choose to use their environmental resources to meet their chosen living requirements, therefore it is ‘us‘ as a community, who have the power to change the direction of humanity, and not governments.
We have the ability to create change in our local communities, change is a product of communal action and communication. Sustainable living opportunities are choices which we create by how we utilise and engineer water, alternative energy, recycling, food production and soil management. Sustainability also extends to conserving our personal rights as to where we buy our food, how we grow our food, and the availability of herbs and alternative health therapies and products, which it is our right to use in addition to mainstream medicine, so that we can maintain our health in a sustainable way.
These are choices which we have a right to defend. We can do this by looking at the principles of deep ecology which really are not much different to the principles and beliefs of the native indigenous people of the world. The way to go is to give Earth the same rights as a human being; in fact it is our duty as guardians of nature to do this. If a Corporation can become a fictitious ‘person’ in a court of law, then Nature has far more rights than that of a Corporate entity as it is, in scientific terms, a living organism and a network of ecosystems that sustain life for all creatures. We are beginning to assign Nature economic value for the goods and services which we do not see. Services, such as oxygen production and the pollination services of insects, such as bees and butterflies. Nature is only beginning to be recognised in this way in a court of law, where it can be represented by any non-governmental organisation or individual, therefore it is imperative that Nature be assigned more rights than corporate entities.
In 1972 the Sierra Club won a lawsuit to stop Walt Disney building a Ski resort in the Sierra Wilderness. William Douglas was a key person in the case defence, he stated that –
"Contemporary public concern for protecting Nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation, a ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes.... The ordinary corporation is a 'person' for purposes of the adjudicatory processes, whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic or charitable causes. So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life."- William Douglas.
There is an international Alliance for the Rights of Nature that has been set up. Every year, they hold a summit where individuals and organisations from all over the world take part and are encouraging politicians and governments to join in the Universal declaration for the rights of Nature. There is now a specialist Earth Law Centre set up in Oakland, California. Their mission statement says
"The Earth Law Centre educates and advocates for laws and policies that recognise and promote the inherent rights of Nature to exist, thrive and evolve. We envision a future where the inherent rights of Nature are respected and implemented globally’’.
There are lawyers such as Polly Higgins, who founded the organisation ‘End Ecocide’ and Linda Sheehan who is part of the ‘Earth Law Centre’ who are campaigning to put Environmental Law protection back on the internationally recognised body of laws. The End Ecocide organisation has drawn up a petition that individuals can sign, asking the European and International Union to make ecocide a crime. The last time I checked there were 187,196 signatories and by the time you read this book, the number will have multiplied for a global call named the “Charter of Brussels” which officially requests the establishment of a European and an International Criminal Court of the Environment and Health, to end Ecocide on Earth.
The Charter calls for the recognition of environmental crimes (and crimes against human health), as crimes against Humanity and Peace by the United Nations and is now open for signatures by individuals and organisations and will be handed over to Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General, the last was during the COP21 Climate Conference in December 2015 in Paris. It is long overdue that Earth should be treated as a conscious being that has rights to protect the future preservation of ecosystems and all species. We need laws to protect Earth from exploitative corporate developments. These are all important steps to progress that will create positive change and progressive laws for the rights of Nature.
We, as humanity, have forgotten the importance and value of communities, which are a gateway for us to move away from global governance to local community commons, so as to be able to disengage from the controlling corporate pressures on Earth's natural resources to self-empowerment and more independence for local communities.
Governments in the UK and the USA have spent the last forty years fragmenting communities by cutting back or withdrawing funds on public education and community projects. Communities do not need to rely on capitalism to thrive; we now have crowd-funding and peer-to-peer funding.
The responsibility is with each of us, to use this time in our lives, without inhibition, to experiment, pioneer and refine solutions that interest us by putting sustainability into action, it can restore that self-esteem which we can use to gain from being innovative contributors to our local communities, or a new-era of pioneers for sustainable development. We can work together as a conscious community to implement the best solutions, taking our energy and focus away from dependence on an archaic political system that has destructive values and that has failed to serve humanity.
The capitalist machine is a self-serving system sacrificing the planet and humanity, but each of us can transform it into a green capitalism, a new ecological system which could work for the benefit of humanity and a more harmonious relationship with the Earth. We can put our energy into focusing on developing more green technologies and continued refinement to undo what has been done, to renew and rejuvenate the Earth and ourselves. The ultimate message is not only in what is said, but in the way we choose to live our daily lives, so please choose to walk with nature.
by
C S
Author of
The Silent Ecocide,
a crisis of human consciousness.
Available in Paperback
http://amzn.com/1512365718
Kindle
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XK9AB2A
Related articles
A Different Perspective on Depression and the Ecology of Human Consciousness
People on the Edge of Extinction, the Last Tribes of the Amazon
Activism not Terrorism, Land Defenders,
911 Truth and our dwindling Freedom
The World's Worst Oil Spills, Ramifications & Amazing Alternative Solutions.