I grew up in the mountains, and spent a lot of time alone in the forest. As a result, I suspect, I have always been keenly aware of trees, and always had an awe-struck respect for them. I find few things more emotionally effecting than, on my frequent train trips to Vancouver, the fields of incredible numbers of felled trees at the various logging operations along the train line. I can only hope that the logging in question is FSC certified, but even if so, it would be of little consolation. And regardless, there is something so shocking and disrespectful to me in the act of cutting down a tree that even the seemingly responsible stewardship of some organizations appears inconsequential.

To kill a being which might well have been alive for many hundreds of years, or as in many cases of the logging industry’s past: trees of many thousands of years in age . . . to kill these beings is to me indicative of the near-zero reverence many humans give to nature, akin to the massacre of countless bison on this continent in the early-to-mid 1800s.

(above: 19 men on a tree stump, and two men standing with a mountain of bison skulls.)

Somehow though, cutting down trees seems more perverse than killing animals or even humans (as the early settlers of Australia would hunt Aboriginals for sport (I’ll spare you those images)). Perhaps this perversion i interpret is because of how fundamental trees are to the life sustaining powers of the earth. It is nearly literally as if we chose in our early industrial history to slowly cut out our lungs, using the material to house and heat ourselves. Surely trees were unmatched as a cheap, readily available resource for powering trains, and building furniture, as well as houses, and indeed: whole cities even into the early 20th century. Cheap, and perhaps only considered a unchecked resource, because of an economy which systematically devalues nature. I wonder sometimes if our growth and advances were truly worth the losses.

Incidentally, concern for the loss of trees / nature to industry is no new idea, as the following quote illustrates:

One thing is sure, the Earth is now more cultivated and developed than ever before. There is more farming with pure force, swamps are drying up, and cities are springing up on an unprecedented scale.  We’ve become a burden to our planet. Resources are becoming scarce, and soon nature will no longer be able to satisfy our needs.

—Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, Roman Theologian. 200 B.C.E

Concurrent with Tertullianus’ writing, 2 centuries before the birth of Christ, fig trees in the the land now called Israel were planted. Some of these trees still exist, and under some, we can still sit. From some of these trees, we can still gather fruit. These trees are treasures, a part of our cultural and environmental heritage, and reminders of the scales on which the Earth reckons time. This is all the more amazing considering that merely 10% of the forests and trees now present on our planet are of this ‘old growth,’ as we call it. Which is a shame, especially because they are now understood to capture carbon from our atmosphere at a much greater rate than any newer forests. (It is believed that the old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. of A and in Russia account for up to 20% of the total global carbon sequestration.)

Obviously the early loggers in our country didn’t realize the extent of the damage they were causing to the planet, they lacked the ecological framework by which to understand their actions. But it’s hard to forgive them their ignorance. And I readily admit an element of hypocrisy in my derision of the early zealousness of the industry, as an artist and musician, woods are one of the most delightful, beautiful materials to use. It is only with a bitter sweetness that i enjoy my many guitars and piano. At times the experience borders on shame, in fact.

Still, it certainly seems at present that better choices can be made for a good many of our uses for wood, as an industrial material. And while it at least can be said that using trees for art is a semi-noble pursuit, rather than burning it as fuel and for heat, it is a shallow excuse at best.

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An article in Business Week caught my attention recently, one on ‘The Girl Effect.’

First a bit on the concept: the phrase is one of practical wisdom well known by many on the outer edges of economics, social sciences, and human rights movements, but it has been recently codified, organized, and brought to the the mainstream of the business world by, of all groups: Nike.

A lot of ill can be said of Nike, in both their business practices and their human rights effects, but a lot of good can be said of their efforts in sustainable design as well, and so too of this: their efforts with the Girl Effect. (The company would seem to be one of deep ambivalence about it’s place in the global community. But i would argue that that’s better than the alternative of completely disregarding the good that the company can do, as so many do.)

A video from the organization, explaining the concept:

And an excerpt rom the article:

There are 600 million adolescent girls in developing countries, but they are largely invisible to the world at large. Included among them are girls affected by armed conflict, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, sex trafficking, and internal displacement, as well as girls in child-headed households or locked in early marriages. To ignore them is to miss the “girl effect,” which could be an unexpected answer to the global economic crisis.

Consider the situation in Kenya. Some 1.6 million girls there drop out of high school every year. If they finished their secondary education, they would make 30% more money and contribute $3.2 billion more to the Kenyan economy every year. Instead, many take their place among Kenya’s 204,000 adolescent mothers and cost the economy $500 million a year.

[ . . . ]

In Ethiopia, if you are a 15-year-old girl, you have a 43% likelihood of being already married. A pilot program run by the Population Council gave families a $25 goat as an incentive to allow their daughters to go to school instead. Within two years, some 11,000 girls, or 97% of the participants, had stayed in school, gained confidence, and delayed marriage and childbirth.

The article mentions another organization, BRAC (an NGO founded in Bangladesh in 1972), a group offering, among other things, micro-finance opportunities for us in the affluent west, to support our friends in the south. Remember that estimates (by the likes of Ashraf Ghani) are that 1 dollar invested in the ‘developing world,’ can be roughly equal to 20 dollars of ‘foreign aid.’ That is, with a minimal investment, each of us, can have a major impact.

Back at the Girl Effect website, they have a 72 page PDF you can download, for more information.

(and John Podesta, but watching his part is not so necessary, nowhere near as focused, and i dare say, less interesting.)

A Green World is a Safer One from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Now, this is a recording of a museum lecture, which means (for those of you who have never been to one) there’s about 10 minutes of introduction and thank you’s to supporting organizations, et cetera, ad nauseum. Just skip ahead. Also, it is a longish talk (Ed’s part is about 35 minutes long).

The Canary Project is an organization working to increase the public’s awareness of our global ecological predicament. They do this by “[producing] visual media, events, and artwork that builds public understanding of human-induced climate change and energize commitment to solutions.”

The list of related projects on their website is very impressive, and inspiring.

Beautiful work, to be sure. please do check it out.

Direct from the most recent TED conference, last week:

Sustainable Innovation Conference 2008: Alex Steffen from Joel Mulligan on Vimeo.

and something else from the bibliography.

At present, the education system in the united states is as so many things are: an exercise not in being good, but in being less bad, an exercise in bandaging wounds. It is yet another example in our world-wide parade of attempts at being efficient, rather than effective (an outcome not only of the “businessing” of schools in the early 90’s, but also of the facts of the basic generation of our education system, as it happened during the industrial revolution).

Rather than ask the question: “how can we create a place where young people will want to come, learn, engage, and give back in the form of student directed community activities of progress and creation” many of our educators ask simply, dismally: “how can we make students do what we want them to?”

Where competition in the times of the Romans (the inventors of the word) meant “to seek together,” or to “work together,” it has come through time to mean almost the exact opposite. This happened by virtue of accidental mixture with puritanically reformed Christianity (and the superfluous vestiges of predestination) as well as an embedded misunderstanding of Darwinism. Now the word many times means: to work against one another, to fight. Sometimes this manifests in what’s called a zero-sum situation: where either I win or you lose, mutual exclusivity as a violent resource grab, that is: competition as war. In schools the situation is less drastic, but the grading system of standardized and simplified ratings (tied to status) generates another unhealthy form of competition, which (often paired with various other form of stigmatization) can have demonstrably unhealthy psychological effects, self esteem issues, depression, lethargy.

As test scores and funding drop together with the rise of drop-outs, “No Child Left Behind,” addresses the wrong (small subset of) problems for our nation’s children, and in the wrong way.

Although the subject of Dave Egger’s 826 mission (see video below) is focused on the same somewhat narrow portion of learning as NCLB (reading / writing), the difference in approach has made all the difference. Rather than doling out money to schools based near meaningless test scores that are often manipulated for the rewards of more funding to misuse, 826 Valencia—and other partner organizations in major and minor cities throughout the world—works as a barely funded volunteer base that work one on one with children to empower and honor their creativity and ability (and finish some home work in the process).

These organizations work additionally to engage the surrounding school system, and enliven both the school district and it’s parents into activity toward the bettering of their children. When school no longer has recess or the arts, and is punitive and suspicious toward the students, it’s no wonder the children will flock to something better, or lacking anything better: get themselves into new and exciting kinds of trouble, or, perhaps worse, do nothing at all, and spend their lives playing video games.

Dave Eggers explains how his plan has worked so far, and what he thinks will help next:

Good magazine has responded to Egger’s TED wish with it’s own Project no. 12: brainstorming for school; go submit an idea, and help others get inspired. For that matter, look into Good magazine, they have interesting well written articles, and 100% of your subscription dollars go to charity.