On the face of it, Wangari Maathai and David Kidd might not seem to have much in common.

One is a former Vietnam veteran and Transcendental Meditator; the other is a social justice and women’s rights campaigner from Kenya who was the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Yet both share an abiding passion and concern. They both fear the collapse of the world’s ecosystems and the advent of global warming, and both have found an answer to it: They have planted trees. Millions of them. David Kidd planted twelve million trees throughout the United States as part of his American Free Tree program. Wangari Maathai planted thirty million trees throughout Kenya with the Green Belt Movement, her grassroots environmental and civil rights movement that not only reforested whole swathes of her country but was instrumental in overturning the corrupt regime that ruled Kenya for twenty-five years.

Kidd and Maathai are both Arbor Day Foundation award winners and both understand that planting trees does not have to be left to the experts. Anyone can do it. They also know that something happens when you plant a tree: it stimulates a reverence for, and love of, the planet that can drive not only you, but everyone involved with your ideals, to work harder for their community, their county, their state, their country, and beyond that for the planet as a whole. You can visit each of their websites, linked with their names at the beginning of this entry, to support their work.

In Growing America, David Kidd reveals the secrets behind effective community organizing and how to transform the desolate and polluted corners, medians, and sidings of the US into green and productive land. In The Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai reveals the struggles and triumphs of her campaign to reforest Kenya and how you can start your own Green Belt Movement campaign. Both books save trees as well. They are published, like many Lantern Books, on at least fifty percent post-consumer waste, chlorine-free, recycled paper!

For more on World Environment Day, click here.

I went to the Denver Earth Day fair in Civic Center park on Earth Day, mostly out of a sense of curiosity but also just to be a witness to whatever it is that the environmental movement can put forward. For anyone who understands the urgency of our situation, the event was obviously disappointing. The fair was rather small (I counted 27 different tables) though tolerably well attended.

Greenpeace, probably the most radical group, was there.  They had a "photo petition" of people willing to say that they want to ban the slaughter of whales and have their picture taken holding one of several signs which they provide. Save the whales? Isn't this where the environmental movement came in decades ago?

Lantern tries to do its bit to support the earth. We publish environmental pioneers like Wangari Maathai, print on post-consumer recycled paper, use wind power, composts, keep a vegan office, use energy-saving light bulbs, and recycle. We even drink organic-shade-grown-fair-trade coffee.

You could say we're obsessed. Every day of the year. Yet, if the human species is to save itself on this planet, and not destroy everything else, beyond all individual actions we take and practices we change, we will need to change our consciousness: the way we see the natural world.

Contemporary science is now revealing what ancient wisdom long understood: that natural systems are not only more intricately connected than we at once thought, but their complexity reveals patterns of startling simplicity and beauty that can offer the cure to the restoration of those systems and the healing of the world.

It is experiencing these systems under threat and the working for the restoration of them that motivates the extraordinary activists (such as Julia Butterfly Hill, John Mack, and Deena Metzger) profiled by Andrew Beath in Consciousness in Action. All see that spiritual dimension underlying their green activism. Indeed, in their own way and from their own traditions they ask a simple question: What are our obligations as human beings to protect the planet, which God created and called "very good"?

Four books from Lantern offer further perspectives on this very question. In The Green Bible, Stephen Bede Sharper and Hilary Cunningham have gathered quotations from scripture, ecologists, world religions, and contemporary thinkers in a little book of meditations that reflects on the biblical mandates to care for the world and is itself a little bible of truths.

In The Bible According to Noah and Science and the Search for God, Unitarian minister Gary Kowalski examines apparently conflicting ideas and shows how they point to a greater unity. In beautifully lyrical prose, Bible reimagines episodes from the Hebrew scriptures and shows how they can help us rethink how we treat other animals and the earth. In Science, Kowalski explores the consonance between religion and scientific understandings of nature and the universe and advocates for a renewed conversation between them. Finally, In Judaism and Global Survival, Richard Schwartz illustrates how Judaism's central tenets demand reverence for, and responsible stewardship of, the planet.

And then, of course, there are the tree-planters par excellence: Wangari Maathai and David Kidd, who between them have planted over 50 million trees. Both, as it turns out, are Arbor Day winners.

It's not an obvious connection, but Wear Pact is offering to plant 20 trees through the Green Belt Movement, run by Lantern author Wangari Maathai, for every piece of underwear that you buy from their site. You can buy patterned or plain, and there are men's and women's styles. The underwear is "responsibly manufactured" in Turkey, and vegan. So, I just bought two pairs, and thought you might be interested in doing the same. What more is there to say?

Other-than-human animals are an overwhelming presence in our collective and individual lives and, at the same time, are taken for granted by human animals. Sociologists have neglected the study of human-animal interaction and the role of animals in society. This is true despite the fact that animals are an integral part of our lives: in our language, food, families, economy, education, science, and recreation.

In more than thirty essays, Social Creatures examines the role of animals in human society. Including work by Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Carol J. Adams, Josephine Donovan, Barbara Noske, Arnold Arluke, Ken Shapiro, and many leading scholars, anthropologists, and psychologists, the book also comes with an extensive bibliography of hundreds of articles and books.

In order to know how we can best address cruelty to animals, we need to know why we are cruel to animals. This essential, yet perhaps elusive, question is the centerpiece to Lantern’s publishing program.

The other night I went to a meeting of the local group of progressive Christians. We heard a lecture on the subject of what we can know about the historical Jesus and what this means for progressive Christianity. The thesis put forward was that progressive Christianity supports inclusivity. Jesus believed in inclusivity — he hung out with tax-gatherers, prostitutes, and other disreputable characters. This is all very good, and very much to the point, because the presence of gays in the church (and the ministry) is very controversial in some circles.

But it doesn't go nearly far enough. What would Jesus say about the spectacle of the richest country in the world wantonly destroying the environment and polluting the atmosphere, conducting aggressive wars which kill hundreds of thousands of people, and rescuing the rich during a financial crisis the end of which we cannot foresee? And what would Jesus think about a society that allows all this to pass without apology, remorse, or accountability, or a church that thinks that this is too controversial a topic to speak about openly?

A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .

A friend who will graduate this spring with a fine arts degree plans to devote his energy to his creative passion, supporting himself as a waiter to make his artist's life possible. His parents have struggled over the years to be able to afford his education, and they ask: we spent thousands of dollars on his degree, and now he's going to work as a waiter?

I'd look at it from a different viewpoint. Those who put their artistic endeavors first in their lives, even though it may require entry level service jobs and financial austerity, do something valuable for themselves and society. This value exists independently of the beauty of the visual or performance art they bring forth, although that is significant in itself. The lifestyle of the "starving artist"—including not only visual and performance artists, but writers, composers, anyone whose life is dedicated to the creation of beauty and/or inspiration—benefits society in at least three ways:

As you walk on third street toward or from Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, across the Gowanus Canal (see previous blog), you pass a huge, abandoned red-brick building, a memento of the Canal's now faded industrial past. I've always thought it a beautiful, if delapidated, structure, with wonderful arched windows. I had fantasies of buying the property and turning it into a green building, with small businesses and creative ventures, and providing a park for the community's kids. The artists who were squatting in the building would provide their labor for rent.

Of course, as this blog points out, the building's provenance is complicated and the land on which it stands and the surrounds are deeply polluted. But there's still a romance to the shell that's hard to shake. One day, perhaps, someone with very deep pockets will rise to the occasion and redeem this magnificent structure.

Yes, just when you thought that Lantern couldn't get any more super than it already is, the Environmental Protection Agency has just designated part of our neighborhood a superfund site. We have our offices about half a mile away from the Gowanus Canal, one of the most polluted waterways in New York City.

Actually, this is good news, since the designation will mean that the polluters will have to pay for the mess they caused in over one hundred years of pouring gunk into the Gowanus. It's also curtailed some of the rampant over-development of our area, an issue of much controversy.

Perhaps by the time it's all done, the Gowanus will be clean and will change its name to Little Venice. This is probably going to take at least ten years. So, until then, the advice will have to remain contradictory: hold your nose and don't hold your breath.

It is one thing to want to act; it is another thing to take action; and it is an another thing still to act consciously to bring about lasting change.

Sometimes the most effective activism takes place during ordinary encounters with family, friends, and even strangers—each interaction a chance to educate by example, embodying our ethical beliefs as best we can. In Living Among Meat Eaters, Carol Adams helps us become more aware of the message we're sending, with self-tests, strategies, meditations on vegetarianism, and tips for dining out and entertaining at home when meat eaters are on the invite list.

In Consciousness in Action: The Power of Beauty, Love, and Courage in a Violent Time, Andrew Beath has gathered the wisdom of several leading spiritual activists (John Mack, Julia Butterfly Hill, and others) to show how right mind and right livelihood can bring about enormous change. The activists talk about aligning their spiritual values with their wish to bring about social and political change.

Will Tuttle in The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony offers a powerful and polemical call for us to recognize that our choices not only impact the lives of others but also make us healthy or sick. We can no longer separate our lives off from the lives of the beings who live with us on this planet, and, conversely, working for the good of others is working for the good of ourselves.

Declaring e-books to be the future of publishing may be a bit premature.

What are the energy requirements of a paper book? They probably aren't that much. Medieval monks and Gutenberg churned them out, at a much slower rate, long before the industrial revolution.

The energy requirements of an e-book are likely analogous to the energy requirements of computer equipment. Computers are extremely energy-intensive. The electricity to run the computer is fairly minor; about 81% of all the energy used by computers is expended in the process of manufacturing the computer. The typical household computer actually consumes 1.3 times more energy than a refrigerator.

Confusing laws and confusing situations do not encourage more bicycle riders. In Denver it is technically illegal to ride your bicycle on the sidewalk. You are supposed to ride your bicycle on a bike path or on the streets. Laws in different municipalities are quite different —Portland has a completely different situation. 

In general, staying off sidewalks is a very good idea. Pedestrians need to have some protection, and because of driveways, riding a bicycle on a sidewalk is often much more dangerous than riding in the street.  Some urge the idea of riding a bicycle on a sidewalk as quite logical, but there are actually some bicyclists who point out safety issues for cyclists in riding on sidewalks.  I avoid sidewalks about 99% of the time.

As if there aren't already enough difficult problems in the world, suddenly climate change activists are themselves divided over the right way to deal with climate change. The hot issue now is "cap and trade."

Oh wonderful, you're probably saying to yourself. How much do we need to know about climate change — do we need to worry about all this? Yes.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the house of Lance Wright and his wife, built with the German "Passive House" standards as the ideal. It’s called a "passive house" because it relies on retaining natural heat in winter through "superinsulation," rather than "actively" generating heat with an oil or gas furnace.

Buildings get astoundingly little attention from scientists and the public, given the fact that they are responsible for almost half of all carbon dioxide emissions in this country. If we’re going to cut our carbon emissions by 80% to deal with global warming (let alone oil and gas depletion), we have to achieve deep energy reductions in building energy use. Just insulating the attic and turning down the thermostat isn’t going to cut it.

We desperately need radical changes to meet the challenge of resource shortages and global warming; but there's no political will to do so. Until this happens, two potential economic futures are likely: a slow decline, or a dramatic, quick crash. These alternatives were covered marvelously in a brief talk by Gail Tverberg, mild-mannered actuary by day but also an editor at TheOilDrum.com.

"Slow slide" looks like the default choice. As oil becomes more difficult and expensive to extract, energy becomes more expensive, people stop buying, and we go into a recession (as happened in 2008). The downturn causes oil prices to fall, but as soon as the recovery starts, oil consumption rises and the price of oil spikes again: wash, rinse, repeat.