Comments on the Scope of the Vision

I received the first portion of your work through the Rachel News letter that I receive periodically via e-mail. I want to acknowledge your efforts and certainly agree that it is easier to criticize what is not working than to create a compelling vision of the future that motivates people in positive directions. So please keep up the good work.

The main reason that I am responding to you is that I want to question the whole idea of creating a compelling vision of America. It seems flawed to me that in 100 years we will still be talking about these issues in terms of one area of the world. If we do not create a compelling vision of the world or planet that celebrates our diversity and allows for the myriad of lifestyles and the planet to exist in harmony, we are doomed to failure. Maybe not failure but certainly not the success we should have. As a world leader I think it is incumbant upon all of us in America to creating a compelling world vision that allows all of the people, animals, and plants of this planet to survive and prosper. I agree with all of the components presented in the first part of the Worldview. Adaptive strategies will be key as we awaken to the technological possibilities that nature has to offer which we as yet do not see but I believe only a truly world vision will suffice. We need to lose our committment to boundaries and treat everyone and everything with the same degree of respect.

I have not gone to your website and read all of your work and I certainly do not want this to seem critical because even if the first step is to get an American Vision, it is certainly a good first step.

Thanks for your work,

Jeff

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This is a commendable task that the Envisioning a Sustainable and Desirable America has undertaken.

However, in reference your request for ideas about the name, would it not be more appropriate to be Envisioning a Sustainble and Desirable World. If the remainder of the World has destroyed the environment, America would also be affected. Charity does begin at home and the poverty situation here as well as other devastating situations must be addressed first.

Because people like the ESDA care, the world will be here for our children's grandchildren.

Thank you for caring.

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I am a professor of English at Hampton University and a long time Sierra Club activist in Virginia and elsewhere. I just received from Rachel's Environmental Newsletter the first part of your summary of your ESDA "Vision" project through the Institute for Ecological Economics, and I would like to offer some feedback that I hope will be useful to you.

First, I applaud your efforts--a more visionary approach to proactive (rather than reactive environmentalism is something for which I have yearned, for as long as I can remember. And accordingly I agree entirely with the overall thrust of your statement--you have hit all the right keynotes: an ethos of sustainability, steady-state economics, the holistic systems view, industrial ecology, solar power, the oneness of humanity and the natural world, and above all the need to abandon and replace our now-dysfunctional "Frontier ethic" of endless growth in what is now, clearly, a finite and diminishing world.

I enthusiastically agree with all of this--but will it sell in Peoria?

We both know the answer: not a chance. The above key words, and the ideas that flesh them out, are meaningful to scholars and thinkers like ourselves, but utterly meaningless to the vast majority of the population. So our challenge is to find a way of boiling all of these ideas down into sound bytes, yet without adulterating or trivializing them in the process.

Pursuant to that aim, here are my own ideas for finding an effective public education vehicle to communicate the shared consensual vision you have outlined:

First of all, scrap the name--"ESDA" is just another bland acronym that will fade into insignificance overnight. You need something elemental, a name that, in itself, embodies the vision you describe. My suggestion: GAIA. If you still need an acronym, you can call it "Global Awareness Interdisciplinary (or Intercultural) Alliance" or some such...(These ideas are my own, and they are not copyrighted; I give them to you freely if you wish).

Why Gaia?

--because it is the only concept we have that *intrinsically* subverts the man/nature dichotomy that lies at the epistemological root of our global crisis.

Gaia, as it is currently understood, has a fourfold definition--as a myth, a model, a metaphor, and a movement.

GAIA AS MYTH: As a myth, Gaia refers, of course, to the ancient Greek Earth-goddess, and is the etymological root of words such as "Geology" and "Geometry," or names such as "George"(Pardon the irony). As such, it refers to the common understanding embedded in the myths of indigenous cultures throughout the world--the knowledge that humanity is a part of nature, and not apart from it, and that nature is the matrix (another work derived from "mater" or mother) from which we all derive and to which we all return.

Contrary to popular belief, this Gaian understanding of nature as the Great Mother was latent even in our own Judaeo-Christian culture, at least until the Cartesian split of the 17th Century between "res cogitans" (mind) and "res extensa" (matter). It is present, for example, in the medieval figure of the Goddess Natura, who is schematically represented as the child of God and the mother of humanity. For example, Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence (in Romeo and Juliet) begins his opening meditation thus:

"The Earth that's Nature's mother is her tomb, What is her burying grave, that is her womb..."

What better way of expressing an ecological worldview than this? Yet this is from our own western tradition, immediately prior to Descartes. For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, it was axiomatic that humanity was a part of nature.

GAIA AS MODEL: The Gaia myth has recently, of course gained a new notoriety as the transgressive label for a rigorous but holistic scientific model developed by the British biochemist James Lovelock and his American colleague, the eminent bacteriologist Lynn Margulis. The model portrays the Earth as a complex adaptive system in which the processes of life regulate, and thereby perpetuate, the geological and atmospheric conditions most suitable to life. Contrary to popular understanding, the Gaia model is not a hypothesis which can be proven or disproven, but rather an epistemological framework within which to ask a whole new set of research questions that were never considered under earlier paradigms. And as such, it has already demonstrated its value many times over; for example, NASA scientist now use overtly Gaian criteria in their investigation of the likelihood that distant planets harbor life--they study the atmospheric mix, and if, like that of Earth, that mix is far-from-equilibrium, they are taking that as strong evidence for the presence of life. All of this is right out of Lovelock & Margulis.

More importantly, the Gaia model encourages us to ask the right kinds of questions about our own human activities vis a vis the biosphere; it encourages us to perceive nature as an adaptive *system* rather than as merely a set of "resources" for human consumption.

GAIA AS METAPHOR: This new Gaian approach to biogeology and atmospheric science has in turn contributed to the increasingly prevalent use of "Gaia" as a metaphor for systemic understanding in general; for a worldview that does away entirely with the man/nature dichotomy and perceives the human realm *in the context* of a complex, and self-organizing biosphere. This Gaian perspective in turn becomes an epistemological basis for evaluating policy, education, everything else we do; it encourages us to adopt a new "categorical imperative" in which we evaluate our actions based on their effects on self, community, and ecology: To what extent does a given benefit to the self (or community) have adverse effects on the larger systems of which it is a part (community and ecology)? This concentric self-community-ecology triad can become the foundation of a Gaian ethical and cultural consciousness.

GAIA AS MOVEMENT: As a consequence of all of the above, we can see that the "environmental movement" must broaden to become the Gaia Movement. The contemporary "environmental movement" presupposes a Cartesian split between "man" and "environment"--or "economy vs. ecology"--and thus perpetuates the very problem it seeks to combat. But "Gaia," widely understood as "Mother Earth," the only living planet we'll ever know, and the complex adaptive system to which we all belong, includes "humanity" within its definition.

So the Gaia movement includes, but transcends, the "environmental movement." It is not reactive, but culturally transformative, in its very essence. And above all, it gives us a nonexclusive basis for identification; we could sell pins and tee shirts that say "I'm a Gaian--so are you." (since "Gaian," by definition, includes everyone born on Earth who breathes air, drinks water, and eats food.)

In order to engender a cultural transformation, we need a nodal idea. And in my view, "Gaia" is the nodal idea we've all been waiting for.

I look forward to continuing this discussion, and please let me know how I might assist your efforts. Please feel free to circulate my post to whomever you like.

Your fellow Gaian,

Thomas

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You might consider being a bit more inclusive and look beyond the boarders of the USA, especially if the Envisioning a Sustainable and Desirable "America" is the name. Keep in mind America includes North, Central and South America.

Take care, Easy

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I am from The Bahamas. Here is my contribution hope it is not too late. I think a word wide umbrella organization with prime objectives Possibly a worldwide survey what does the average person thin about the environment in general - different cultures will require different solutions to the same problems. the concept of a sustainable america, but in 100 years there may not be much of The Bahamas left. 80% of our land mass is between 0-5' above sealevel...

In terms of the name I think it should be ESDWorld The world needs to be involved with this process.

Sam

There are a number of reasons we chose to limit our vision to only the USA. First, the USA is the leading consumer of global resources and the leading generator of waste. Achieving a sustainable future here will take us a long way towards achieving global sustainability. If we can arrive at a vision of a sustainable and desirable future, then other countries certainly can. Second, our goal is to bring together a broad cross section of the people affected by this problem, to discuss the issues and arrived at a shared vision. In the case of the USA, this means representatives of all the various social, political, cultural, religious and economic groups in the country. This is a tremendous challenge, of which we obviously fell far short in our first effort. It would be that much more difficult to achieve on a regional or global scale.

A related question is why we were so arrogant to refer to the USA as America, ignoring the fact that South America, the Caribbean and the rest of North America are also part of the Americas? We accept the criticism, and I guess our weak response is that ESDUSA is even a worse acronym than ESDA. No arrogance is intended on the part of any of us involved in this vision. As an aside, it is probably almost as arrogant to refer to the USA as simply the US, since at least Mexico and Brazil are also United States. Perhaps Envisioning a Sustainable and Desirable Future would be a better name, or GAIA, or ESDWorld. We encourage further suggestions for names, and suggest you post them on the discussion board.