Environmentalists From The United States

"Limits exist everywhere in nature. Physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy—pick your field, dig into the literature, and you’ll soon be struck by how everything in the universe is defined by limits of temperature, weight, volume, density, number, power, frequency, speed, and more. Limits enable the functioning of systems at scales from the subatomic realm all the way up to galaxy clusters. If there is any physical thing that could credibly be claimed to be infinite, it is the universe itself. But not all cosmologists believe the universe is infinite, and proving whether it is or not may be impossible in principle. Leaving the totality of the cosmos to one side (an action possible only within the human brain—which does, most assuredly, have its own limits), everything else we encounter in life has boundaries. So, why have many people become obsessed with either denying or overcoming limits, to the point where they appear to feel that life can have meaning only if it’s tied to some limitless thing, quality, or substance? Humanity’s obsession with limitlessness probably began with the origin of language, which enables the asking of questions. People tens of thousands of years ago began to ask, “What happens to our essential sense of self when we die?” Their efforts to manage existential terror likely led them to tell stories about a boundless otherworld in which the dead live forever. Looking up at the night sky, they saw a realm of blackness punctuated by moving points of light; upon this screen they projected their wants, needs, and fears. Our lives and those of all the creatures around us may be brief, these early people must have thought, but there is another dimension that lies beyond—a dimension without endings. We’ve been searching for a path to infinity ever since."

"Fossil fuels enabled a dramatic expansion of energy usable by humanity, in turn enabling unprecedented growth in human population, economic activity, and material consumption."

"Agriculture enabled population growth and social complexity, but it gradually robbed soils of nutrients. Sailing ships guided with clocks and navigational charts could increase the scope of trade, but building wooden ships (and making charcoal for forging steel) was leading to the deforestation of whole continents. A reckoning with limits seemed to be in store. Then a miracle happened. People who lived in some key centers of global trade started using fossil fuels—energy sources capable of delivering power in previously unimaginable and seemingly endless quantities. Coal, oil, and natural gas enabled the development of transport technologies (steamships, railroads, cars, trucks, and airplanes) that overcame prior limits to the speed of travel and trade, so that products and resources that were abundant in one place could be transported to places where they were scarce. Fossil fuels could be used to increase the rates of resource extraction via powered mining machinery, and to process lower grades of ores as more concentrated ores were depleted. They could be fashioned into plastics and chemicals to substitute for some natural materials that were getting scarce, such as hardwoods and whale oil. And they could be made into artificial fertilizers, which could replace soil nutrients lost due to unsustainable agricultural practices. All these developments together enabled population growth at rates that far outstripped historic trends: human numbers expanded from one billion to eight billion in a mere two centuries. We were, in effect, stretching existing constraints on population and consumption to the point that it was difficult for many people to see that boundaries still existed at all."

"Intelligence is useful and entertaining. Companies go out of their way to hire applicants with high IQ scores, and spectacular intellectual achievements in the arts and sciences can win the hero-worship of generations ([like] Aristotle, Bach, Einstein). Measuring smarts is the job of an industry. Indeed, smartness is so endlessly praised in modern society that questioning its value may constitute one of the most dissident of human acts. High intelligence has been defined in many ways, but typically as the capacity for abstraction, logic, self-awareness, learning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. High intelligence values itself, selects for itself, and fascinates itself. Our remarkable human intellectual achievements are deeply tied to language, whose development occurred as a self-reinforcing evolutionary feedback process. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, early humans derived a collective survival advantage by developing precursors of language, which enabled them to coordinate their behavior and to plan. But language requires extra brain power, so natural selection also worked to increase brain size, which enabled further development of language, which conferred still more survival advantages, and so on. If evolution produced high intelligence, then high intelligence is latent in evolution. Yet high intelligence is quite rare in nature. While all species communicate to some degree, only one has developed abstract, symbolic language. If language-based high intelligence offers survival advantages, why has it cropped up in nature only once?"

"We’ve spent the last few million years evolving big brains, and we won’t un-evolve them in short order. Further, encouraging dull-wittedness and ignorance would result in terrible short-term consequences (as we Americans are likely to discover during the second Trump presidency). Moreover, intelligence is cool: it gives us art, music, literature, science, mathematics, and so much more. At least some of these achievements and abilities are arguably worth saving. So, what’s our best long-term plan to avert self-destruction, given that intelligence is now baked into our species? There are those who say the solution lies in realizing that we fixate on just one kind of intelligence—linguistic, rational thinking—to the exclusion of others, and that we’d be better served by nurturing multiple intelligences, including musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, and logical-mathematical. That’s good advice as far as it goes. But we’re unlikely to heed it sufficiently until we acknowledge why we came to rely so much on linguistic intelligence in the first place: it gave us power over our environment and over one another. So, our dilemma is as much one of ends (power) as means (language-based intelligence). In addition to needing a counterbalance to linguistic intelligence, we also need a way to check our individual and collective pursuit of excessive power."

"Most environmental dilemmas have to do with limits (usually limits to either resources or to waste sinks). And most environmental solutions have to do with reining in our wants and ambitions in some way. Cleverness may help at the margins—as when chemists identify a relatively harmless substance that can substitute for a toxic one. But without self-limits on population and consumption, no amount of cleverness can halt humanity’s accelerating march toward collapse. Economist William Stanley Jevons got an inkling of this stark reality in 1865, when he published his observation that making coal usage more efficient led to increased coal mining (and depletion), not conservation. Too often, we outsmart ourselves by thinking we’re doing something to save resources and reduce pollution, when in fact we’re just paving the way for more of the same. Another intelligence-resistant problem is deciding what’s a good life or a good death. These are arguably the most important personal questions with which any of us will ever grapple, but intelligence doesn’t always help with answers. It’s true that smart people sometimes avoid a lot of problems that plague less-smart people (such as falling prey to obvious scams and rip-offs). But they just as often end up burdening themselves and others around them with even bigger problems brought on by the unforeseen consequences of their own cleverness—as when a smart investor or inventor accumulates a huge fortune, over which their heirs fight bitterly, to the point that family dynamics are poisoned for generations to come. Finally, there is the uber-problem that should be at the top of all our minds—the long-term survival of humanity. We naturally want our species to stick around. And we like to think that our intelligence improves our prospects in that regard. But, so far, the evidence points in the opposite direction."

"Redford is a very good collaborator, a kind of alter ego for me: he was that young prince who was blond in appearance, but who had a much darker interior. It was clearly a metaphor for America. And most of the stories we've done together have become love movies, romantic movies. In my opinion, he was the ideal prototype of this kind of event. We never got tired of working together. We've always been somewhat demanding of each other, trying to get the most out of each of us, and we didn't waste time knowing what would work or not. It was a great advantage: we knew each other perfectly. (Sydney Pollack)"

"There was a time during a period of national crisis when politicians from both sides of the aisle put partisan politics aside to uncover the truth. There was a time when Democrats and Republicans united to navigate a peaceful ending to a corrupt and criminal presidency. There was a time when members of Congress placed defending our democracy above party interests for the greater good."

"Sound and accurate journalism defends our democracy. It's one of the most effective weapons at our disposal to contain the power-hungry. I've always said that All the President's Men is a violent movie. No shots are fired, but words are used as if they were weapons."

"I think he hates me a little, because after all, this year, the year of his professional "boom", there has been more talk about him by virtue of our flirtation than for his performances as an actor! (Barbra Streisand)"

"I've always appreciated diversity. I believe that American culture is founded on diversity and for this reason it is still alive and inspiring. I grew up in what you might call an unfortunate part of Los Angeles, where there wasn't much to do but experience the differences, go to different places, and hear different stories."

"The Gulf disaster is worse than a terrible oil leak. It’s the product of a failed energy policy that looked at profits before people and environment."

"I'm kind of approaching my carbon footprint like I approach my weight, going to the gym regularly, watching what I eat, and realizing I'm not going to lose that 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) all at once, like I want."

"If we let climate change continue unabated, it will affect the most vulnerable first."

"We can be pushing all these individual change things on people, but unless the government steps up, we won't be able to reach the target."

"In my experience and that of my colleagues, public interest in climate change has actually increased over the past few years - We’re witnessing the effects of climate change with far more frequency than we used to due to increased storms, flooding, and generally wacky weather."

"Far from it! The sooner we tackle climate change, the less extreme the measures need to be to solve it. In fact, most of the things we need to do to solve climate change are things we would want to do anyway for health, economic and social reasons. There are a lot of great reasons to move to a transport system that’s dominated by cycling and public transport options over traffic-inducing, isolating and dirty cars."

"So maybe the one biggest thing you can do is to get politically engaged, because behavioral change is really slow. Too slow to stop runaway climate change."

"I wrote Thank God for Evolution! mostly to help religious believers from different traditions move toward an evidential worldview without having to abandon their tradition and join the atheist/humanist camp to do so. ...Few things are more important... than for... of religious believers... to embrace a science-based understanding of the world. ...Trying to understand reality without an evolutionary worldview is like trying to understand infection without microscopes or the structure of the universe without telescopes. It's... impossible."

"[L]et me slip into pride or arrogance, deception or inauthenticity, blame or resentment, or stingy, ungrateful self-centeredness, and I won't have to worry about burning in some otherworldly hell after I die. I'll be supping with Satan right here and now."

"No otherworldly, unnatural paradise can compare with the utterly REAL heaven I now experience... every moment of every day, free of resentment, guilt, and unfinished business. ...By genuinely appreciating my instincts—thanks to the evolutionary world-view—and creating... structures of support, I now, by grace, experience an ease and freedom I've never known before regarding old habits, patterns, and temptations."

"May I continue to have the humility, strength, and peer encouragement to do what is necessary to remain in this state of grace. May I be a blessing to those around me. May I leave a positive evolutionary legacy, in service to God. And may the light of the living Christ shine within my heart and continue to guide my steps."

"So long as religious and political leaders continue to ignore our evolutionary heritage, and thus do not put in place structures of internal and external support that can withstand the high dosages of that high status and power necessarily confer, then there will be no hope for a less calamitous future."

"[W]hat a difference it makes to be groping our way forward in faith—in partnership with God, or, should you prefer less traditional terminology: trusting the Universe... Reality... Time."

"Understanding the unwanted drives within us as having served our ancestors for millions of years is far more empowering than imagining that we are the way we are because of inner demons, or because the world’s first woman and man ate a forbidden apple a few thousand years ago. The path to freedom lies in appreciating one’s instincts, while taking steps to channel these powerful energies in ways that will serve our higher purposes."

"Each and every human being who has ever brought anything of beauty, value, or importance into the world has done so only because... impregnated or in-spirited by some aspect of Beauty, Truth, Love, or other attributes of God. This... is beyond comprehension, beyond... force or free will. ...as if some power greater than ourselves is at work. ...There is a sense of having served, like Mary, as a vessel for something ...greater than our own capacities. ...[[[w:Peak experience|P]eak experience]]s are religious moments ...The story of Jesus's conception can remind us of such miracles in our ...lives."

"[M]y intent is to help you see what I see—science and religion can be mutually enriching."

"The ancient religious paths are aching for coherence with the great discoveries born of the quest to understand this... Universe, the living world, our evolved selves, and... our innermost psyches."

"[F]or... over 99 percent of human history—there is little evidence that any culture understood developmental time and space... remotely similar to... today. Nevertheless, the big cosmological questions demanded answers, and so the answers came. ...Orally transmitted stories would evolve—until (and if!) they were written down and declared to be the unchanging revelation of God. When a story becomes scripture, it ceases to evolve."

"[M]any... believers have rejected evolution because... [it] has been depicted as random, meaningless, mechanistic, and Godless. The growing edge of evolutionary thinking... points to a very different understanding... a... realistic picture of divine creativity. ...a Universe astonishingly ...suited for life and ...consciousness."

"Evolutionary versions of each religion... are emerging. ...[A]dherents of each religion have discovered ...Religious insights and perspectives freed from the narrowness of their time and place of origin are more comprehensive and grounded in measurable reality ...Evolution does not diminish religion; it expands its meaning and value globally."

"Scientists... are moving away from a mechanistic... way of thinking and into an emergent, developmental worldview. Evolution... can be embraced as God glorifying and Christ edifying."

"School textbooks, unfortunately, sometimes render science as dogmatic as any fundamentalist doctrine. In truth, science is quintessentially open to revision and discovery."

"Thanks to our fresh understanding of the deep-time face of grace, science and religion... are ushering each other into greatness."

"[W]e chose to display on our van both a Jesus fish and a Darwin fish—kissing. A retired biology professor... laughed, "Oh great! Now you piss everyone off!""

"[W]e were watching... Evolution: A Journey into Where We Came From and Where We're Going. ...episode ..."What About God?" It examined the struggle that conservative Christian college students face in trying to embrace both evolution and a pre-evolutionary interpretation of their faith. ...Connie ...said, "You need to be out there talking to those students. ...to show how an evolutionary understanding can enrich one's faith!" ...A few weeks later, after a frustrating day at work, I told her (not really serious...) "...I wish we could travel non-stop, teaching and preaching the Great Story ..." Her response... "I'd love to do that!""

"God's gift of science reveals that our faith traditions are... meaningful and grounded in undeniable reality... When we focus... on points of broad consensus rather than... legitimate disagreement, conflicts... lose their grip."

"I met Connie Barlow at a lecture... Connie was the author of four books, and two of them had "evolution" in their titles... She, too, was a long-time "epic of evolution" enthusiast. ...[H]er passion for sharing a sacred understanding of cosmic history was no less than mine. Seven months later I asked Connie to marry me."

"Discussing Thank God for Evolution! with those you care about will open new doors of possibility... and provide common ground where none existed before. This book is a perfect gift, not to convert others to your way of thinking but to converse... deeply and heartfully about those things that matter most."

"Connie was a self-described atheist, and her professional life was steeped in the sciences. My life was devoted to religion. Our union embraces both."

"[T]he fact that our Universe has been transforming along a discernible path for billions of years—the fact that creation was not a one-time event—is of little or no dispute. ...[T]his undeniable fact ...makes me want to shout from the mountaintops: "...The war is over!""

"I promise that this book will provide... an experience of science, and evolution specifically, that will fire your imagination, touch your heart, and lead you to a place of deep gratitude, awe, and reverence."

"I dedicate this book to the glory of God."

"You will... find here effective ways to talk about evolution to any friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors who are biblical literalists or young earth creationists."

"Traditional religions have played crucial roles in fostering cooperation within each tribe, kingdom, and early nation—though not infrequently by provoking suspicion and enmity of those outside the group. ...[T]o fulfill their potentials in our postmodern world, each will have to harmonize its core doctrines with the evolutionary world view. ...[T]he evolutionary outlook bolsters their core teachings. Instead of an intrusion... a precious blessing."

"To agnostics, humanists, atheists, and freethinkers... you will find nothing here that you cannot wholeheartedly embrace as... rationally sound, mainstream scientific understanding of the Universe. ...[T]he vision of "evolutionary spirituality" presented here will benefit you and your loved ones without your needing to believe in anything otherworldly."

"Denial gets a bad wrap, because denial is instinctual."

"Denial is the largely unconscious habit of thought whereby we refuse to accept the reality of things that are bad or upsetting—or that challenge our world view, our legacy, how we live, what is required of us, and/or our feelings of self-worth or superiority."

"The message is laid out in Dowd’s book, "Thank God for Evolution"... Dowd presents evolution as a sacred epic of emerging complexity that can be seen as "14 billion years of grace." He sidesteps the question of whose grace... although the book’s title offers a hint. ...[H]e’s not talking about an intelligent designer. Instead, he exhorts his audience to supplant or complement their individual notions of God with sometimes-fuzzy concepts like “cosmic creativity.”"

"Methane belching from the permafrost, the deep and shallow seas, hydrates and clathrates, tropical wetlands.. as well as the millions of wells."