After selecting all of the Earth Day related posts, and after spending the past few years studying the various environmental aspects related to the mission of our organization to preserve, protect and strengthen the American River Parkway, what remains difficult in trying to determine what is really going on with the environment is discerning between the opposing representations of it.
On the one side are the folks who see ‘environmentalism-as-a-way-of-life’, of various persuasion, whose essential message seems to be that human beings are a part of nature, but unfortunately, the part most responsible for destroying it.
On the other side are the folks who see ‘environmentalism-as-reaction-to-certain-aspects-of-life’, of various persuasion, whose essential message seems to be that human beings are stewards of nature and whatever problems have been caused by human living can be fixed by human ingenuity.
There is obviously plenty of common ground that can be found here, but with the clearly politically partisan, and religious aspects of each side, the enmity appears stronger (at least at the moment) than the collegiality.
Hopefully that is changing, and from my brief period of studying the field, it certainly appears to be, with many of the once radical ideas of the early ‘environmentalists’ now being accepted as common knowledge as the care and respect for God’s creation (or evolution’s result) slowly deepens.
As your erstwhile blogger and senior policy director for ARPPS, I have a charge to try and sort through all of this to discover those policy ideas presenting the best opportunity to fulfill our mission, and while not always an easy task, it is one in which the vast amount of knowledge available is particularly helpful if also sometimes overwhelming; leading to my tendency to post more than less, to allow you to also join in on the study if so inclined.
The blog is also designed, as you may have noticed, without the opportunity to comment as I have found that leaves little time (of the little time to begin with) for research and posting, so the decision was made early on just to keep this as a bulletin board blog; and for those really wanting to respond to a particular issue, a contact email is available on the ARPPS website noted in the blog header.
