We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses.
(via mothernaturenetwork)
Source: bbeebea
“To the last we have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
![stepett:
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
— Carl Sagan](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0fkjw0bTn1qle02xo1_500.png)
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
— Carl Sagan
Source: stepett
We’re always in this kind of mood! That’s why we train students how to be activists!
I’m in that mood you sometimes get where you feel like occupying a Russian oil rig in the arctic for the purpose of saving some polar bears n shit.
Source: speakatslowerspeeds
Xena, out to #savethearctic
“Shell and the other oil giants need to hear this message loud and clear from people all around the world – the Arctic is off-limits to your oil rigs.”
-lucy lawless after boarding - with Five other Greenpeace activists - an Arctic-bound Shell oil drillship now in New Zealand.
Join them and take action!
Updates at: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
Source: greenpeaceusa
Want to become a David on your campus? Train with Greenpeace in Washington D.C.! Find out more here.
Greenpeace Illustration: Become David and Rise Against Earth Guzzling Goliaths [via Anatolij Pickmann]
Source: visualnews.com
Over 200 youth attended Rocky Mountain Power Shift this weekend, which was the first ever in the region.
Read more about it here.
Special shout out for the 4,000 petitions that students delivered to Senators Baucus and Tester from Montana residents urging them to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline!
Climate Change Science Under Attack + The Need to Organize
As I sat down this morning to sip my first coffee and surf the interwebs for the lastest news action, I ran across this disturbing article on Grist: http://grist.org/election-2012/crazy-talk-rick-santorum-out-denies-the-climate-deniers-and-spins-eco-conspiracy-theories/
According to leading Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, climate science is “just an excuse for more government control of your life”. This seems ironic coming from a man who wants the government to tell people who they can/can’t love, how they can love them and how women should feel about being impregnated by rape (it’s a “gift from god”).
Also in this mornings news, activists leaked a flood of internal documents from the Heartland Institute, most famous for pumping millions of dollars into climate science denial efforts. Amongst other things, the leaked documents indicate that the Heartland Institute plans on orchestrating a full on campaign against climate science by creating an alternative curriculum for public schools. This curriculum would claim, for instance, that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”
The spreading of deliberate misinformation about climate science is an attack on you and your future. As the article linked to above notes, there “is in fact not a scientific controversy. The vast majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by humans are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk”
Why are politicians like Rick Santorum and pro-corporate think-tanks like the Heartland Institute worried that young people might understand the real and imminent threat of increasing climate change?
Because they know that when people organize, they are powerful and can produce great change. They saw what incredible progress student movements were able to achieve when they organized to fight for civil rights, or when they came together en-mass to campaign against the war in Vietnam. They are scared you will get angry, get active and work for a better world.
There’s a lot at stake here. Nothing less than the fate of the planet. We need young people who believe that there are more valuable green things than money to organize now for a different kind of conversation and a different kind of world. There are students doing just that in North Carolina. If you want to get active too APPLY NOW to the Greenpeace Semester and get the skills and experience you will need to defend Science and organize for a greener and more peaceful future.
