Since I launched www.TheEarthConnection.org more than four months ago, my already strong love for birds has increased greatly.  Somehow, I feel more attuned to them.  I get great pleasure from the sight of a bird winging its way along the valley below my  house or from the subdued sound of a bird rustling in some brush. 

     My joy in observing birds, however, has a flip side.  And that is pain.  I know that bird populations have plummeted in recent years.  And this is true for even the commonest species, researchers tell us. 

     I can hardly feel the pleasure without the grief as well.–April Moore     

     The United States recently became the nation that generates the most electricity through wind power.  And the U.S. will increase its wind power generation by 45% this year.  I regard this as good news.  While we have a long way to go to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy diet, I am glad that the world’s biggest energy consumer is expanding its use of this carbon-free, renewable form of energy.  

     California, Texas, New York, the Pacific Northwest, and New England are all building wind farms that are generating clean power.  That clean power is displacing some of the fossil fuel-generated electricity in regional power grids.  

     Maine, for example, has two wind farms already in operation and a third one in the works.  The state has committed to generating 2,000 megawatts of electricity through wind power by 2015 and 3,000 megawatts by 2020, “an ambitious but doable goal,” says Pete Didisheim, Advocacy Director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

     We have all seen the giant, white wind turbines.  The word ‘windmill’ hardly seems adequate to describe these ghostly pillars topped with a triumverate of giant blades turning slowly and quietly.  

     Wind farms generate more than electricity.  Benefits to a state or local area include billions of dollars worth of new investment, millions of dollars in property tax revenues, and hundreds of new jobs, says Didisheim.

     Yet wind farms are controversial.  Understandably, many people object to their favorite natural view being altered by the addition of the wind giants.  But to Didisheim, it’s a matter of acting locally to accept some of the responsibility for addressing the energy issue.  “Yes, my view of a ridge is less beautiful because it has some wind turbines on it,” says Didisheim.  “But is it fair for me to have the great view and the electricity, while someone else is stuck with the view of a mountain stripped for coal?”  We all have a responsibility, Didisheim maintains, both to people who are currently affected by our energy decisions, and to future gnerations, who will certainly be affected by the ways we generate energy today.

         I agree with him.  While I prefer a completely unspoiled natural view, I am willing to look at some wind turbines in order to move away from the use of earth-damaging fossil fuels.  Besides, Didisheim does admit that there are many places where wind turbines should not be built.  “Some views are so special,” he says, “that they trump wind power.”

     For more information about wind energy, visit the site of the American Wind Energy Association, www.awea.org.  

                                              

     This poem by D. H. Lawrence captures the sense of power and wonder that fills us when we let ourselves BE in nature.–April Moore

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like sqirrels turning in the
     cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
     burnt paper.

 

     Working downtown is getting a little greener in some cities.  Portland, Chicago, and Atlanta, for example, have adopted regulations encouraging the greening of urban rooftops as a way to cool the urban environment.  After all, the conventional office building rooftop of tar and gravel absorbs lots of solar energy and re-radiates it back into the air, heating the surrounding air to as much as 10 degrees higher than the surrounding countryside. 

     And just what exactly is a green roof?  Simply put, a green roof is a roof that is partly or completely covered with vegetation and soil, planted over a waterproof membrane.  While such roofs have been common in Norway and Iceland for centuries, they were re-discovered in Germany in the 1960s.  And their environmental benefits are so great, they are now becoming popular in the U.S.

     A green roof offers many benefits:

• It can reduce heating needs in the winter and cooling needs in the summer by as much as 26%, research shows.
• It has a higher insulation value than a conventional roof.
• It attracts butterflies, bees, songbirds and migratory birds, and other wildlife that are facing a loss of natural habitat.
• It helps prevent flooding from heavy rains, as the living earth absorbs water that would otherwise pour off the building.
• It cleans the air by removing particulates and ozone-producing compounds.
• It adds oxygen to the air and sequesters carbon.
• It may be about the same temperature of the ambient air on hot, sunny days, while the conventional roofs of neighboring buildings may be almost twice as hot. 

     Some of the green roofs in America are quite lovely.  For example, the colorful sedums, sprawling iceplant with magenta flowers, and bunchgrass atop the Portland City Building draw many species of bees, butterflies, spiders, and damselflies.  And Chicago’s City Hall roof is a native prairie, with 20,000 plants that attract a variety of insects and birds.

     If you would like to know more about green roofs, visit the informative website, www.greenroofs.com.  –April Moore

     It is hard for me to articulate my deep feeling/belief that nature is sacred, that there is a holiness to the mind-boggling complexity of the web of life.  I love the fact that the more science I read, the more this feeling/belief is bolstered.  A deep and loving connection with nature is not a dreamy, ‘airy-fairy’ thing, but is actually much more grounded in reality than is identifying with our society’s standard assumptions that the lands and waters around us are free for humans to use, however we wish.  

     This excerpt from the book Earth Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon, resonates with me.–April Moore

     “To the ancients, as well as to many contemporary seekers, the world is alive with spirit.  The surrounding landscape is infused with creativity and meaning and each place speaks to us of the divine.

     “This notion of a richly sacralized world may seem strange to the mainstream western culture.  We live in a secular landscape.  We have been taught to identify the sacred primarily with cathedrals, churches, and temples.  The rest of the Earth is considered real estate–a mere “it” to be used as a resource for our benefit.  This effort to desacralize the world, dispel its sacred aura, is what made possible  our commercial relationship to the land.  It has allowed us to plunder the natural world, destroying places of more power and beauty than we will ever be able to recreate.

     . . . . .”[E]very notion we have of the spirit has been shaped by our experience of this Earth.  If we have a wonderful sense of the divine it is because we live amid such awesome magnificence.  As the Passionist priest Thomas Berry observes, ‘If we lived on the moon, our mind and emotions, our speech, our imagination, our sense of the divine would all reflect the desolation of the lunar landscape.’  Clearly the Earth is our primary revelatory environment.  Our most sacred scripture is he ‘holy book’ of Nature.

     “While the distinction between spirit and matter is valid, no one can separate the two; no one can draw a line between them.  Spirit and matter are not two differenet realms of reality, two different layers of the universe.  One and the same reality will be material or spiritual depending on how we approach it.  No matter where we immerse ourselves in the stream of realiy, we can touch the spiritual source of all that is natural.

     “From this perspective the Earth is a bountiful community of living beings of which we are only one part.  And each living being has an inner presence and dignity apart from any value we humans may place upon it.  While certain places always have been recognized for the powerful presence of their unique localities or landforms, these places are not isolated entities.  All the physical things that make up our daily life share a common spiritual reality–as such they are all to be revered and respected.”