So what can our own government do to turn things around today? Over the next 100 months, they could launch a Green New Deal, taking inspiration from President Roosevelt’s famous 100-day programme implementing his New Deal in the face of the dust bowls and depression. Last week, a group of finance, energy and environmental specialists produced just such a plan.
Addressed at the triple crunch of the credit crisis, high oil prices and global warming, the plan is to rein in reckless financial institutions and use a range of fiscal tools, new measures and reforms to the tax system, such as a windfall tax on oil companies. The resources raised can then be invested in a massive environmental transformation programme that could insulate the economy from recession, create countless new jobs and allow Britain to play its part in meeting the climate challenge.

Goodbye new airport runways, goodbye new coal-fired power stations. Next, as a precursor to enabling and building more sustainable systems for transport, energy, food and overhauling the nation’s building stock, the government needs to brace itself to tackle the City. Currently, financial institutions are giving us the worst of all worlds. We have woken to find the foundations of our economy made up of unstable, exotic financial instruments. At the same time, and perversely, as awareness of climate change goes up, ever more money pours through the City into the oil companies. These companies list their fossil-fuel reserves as “proven” or “probable”. A new category of “unburnable” should be introduced, to fundamentally change the balance of power in the City. Instead of using vast sums of public money to bail out banks because they are considered “too big to fail”, they should be reduced in size until they are small enough to fail without hurting anyone. It is only a climate system capable of supporting human civilisation that is too big to fail.

Oil companies made profits when oil was $10 a barrel. With the price now wobbling around $130, there is a huge amount of unearned profit waiting for a windfall tax. Money raised – in this way and through other changes in taxation, new priorities for pension funds and innovatory types of bonds – would go towards a long-overdue massive decarbonisation of our energy system. Decentralisation, renewables, efficiency, conservation and demand management will all play a part.

Read the whole article here.
And if you’re American, I’d suggest supporting Obama – his plans match this urgency with rational tactics while John McCain would burn through the next 100 months making more coal mines, and cutting taxes for the big winners in this our race toward extiction.

Here is an email from Asma Jahangir, head of the Pakistani Human Rights Commission and the UN’s Special Rapporteur for freedom of religion worldwide. Now under house arrest in Lahore, she’s one of many Pakistanis urgently asking the world community to raise our voice:

There is a strong crackdown on the press and lawyers… The Chief Justice is under house arrest (unofficially). The President of the Supreme Court Bar (Aitzaz Ahsan) and 2 former presidents, Mr. Muneer Malik and Tariq Mahmood have been imprisoned for one month under the Preventive Detention laws…

There are other scores political leaders who have also been arrested. Yesterday I was house arrested for 90 days… the President (who has lost his marbles) said that he had to clamp down on the press and the judiciary to curb terrorism. Those he has arrested are progressive, secular minded people, while the terrorists are offered negotiations and ceasefires.

Lawyers and civil society will challenge the government and the scene is likely to get uglier. We want friends of Pakistan to urge the US administration to stop all support of the instable dictator, as his lust for power is bringing the country close to a worse form of civil strife…

–Asma Jahangir
Lahore, Pakistan

(still from Avaaz:)

General Musharraf claims that martial law is necessary to combat extremist terror. But it just doesn’t add up. Musharraf retains strong links with the Pakistani Taliban (see PS below). His emergency powers are being directed only against the democratic opposition, free press and judiciary – just days before a scheduled ruling on whether Musharraf could run for president while remaining army chief. In an August poll, too, Pakistanis rated “ensuring an independent judiciary, free press and free elections” as their top priority.

Right now, leaders around the world are deciding how to respond. The General is dressing up his crackdown in the rhetoric of “anti-terrorism” because Musharraf and his military supporters depend on foreign military aid and international recognition to maintain their legitimacy. That’s why we have to speak out now.

The world can’t ignore the threat of chaos in Pakistan, or the voices of our fellow democrats there. Let’s come together as we did on Burma, and move our governments to act. In these crucial early days, the voice of the world’s people has tremendous power. Let’s use it. Sign the petition and tell your friends today -

http://www.avaaz.org/en/emergency_pakistan

With hope,

Paul, Pascal, Galit, Ricken, Graziela, Ben and the whole Avaaz team

PS for more background on Pakistani polls and Musharraf’s links to the Pakistani Taliban, see: http://www.avaaz.org/blog/en/pakistan

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29 @ 7:30pm
Concordia University: Henry F. Hall Bldg – Room H-110
1455 de Maisonneuve West, Montreal QC

Screening by donation, and open to the public.
Film info and trailer available at: http://www.cinemapolitica.org/films/60

A CO-PRESENTATION OF: Cinema Politica (Concordia University), Save Darfur Canada & The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS)

************************************************************************************************************
SYNOPSIS:

THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK exposes the tragedy taking place in Darfur as seen through the eyes of an American witness who has since returned to the US to take action to stop it.

Using the exclusive photographs and first hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle, THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK takes the viewer on an emotionally charged journey into the heart of Darfur, Sudan, where an Arab run government is systematically executing a plan to rid the province of it’s black African citizens. As an official military observer, Steidle had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate. He was unprepared for what he would witness and experience, including being fired upon, taken hostage, and being unable to intervene to save the lives of young children. Ultimately frustrated by the inaction of the international community, Steidle resigned and returned to the US to expose the images and stories of lives systematically destroyed.

USA / 2007 / 85 min – Eng / no subtitles

An INTERNATIONAL FILM CIRCUIT release of a BREAK THRU FILMS production in association with GLOBAL GRASSROOTS & THREE GENERATIONS.

________________________________________________________________________________

AWARDS

WINNER: SEEDS OF WAR AWARD Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
WINNER: FULL FRAME/WORKING FILM AWARD Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
WINNER: WITNESS Award SilverDocs Film Festival 2007
WINNER: Lena Sharpe / Women in Cinema Persistence of Vision Award / Seattle International Film Festival 2007
WINNER: Adrienne Shelly EXCELLENCE IN FILMMAKING Award /Nantucket Film Festival.

Directors: Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern
Producers: Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern, Gretchen Wallace, Jane Wells
Editor: Joey Grossfield
Music: Paul Brill
Cinematographers: Jerry Risius, William Rexer, Tim Hetherington, Phil Cox, Annie Sundberg, John Keith Wasson
Producers: Ira Lechner & Eileen Haag, Cristina Ljungberg, The Fledging Fund
Associate Producers: Seth Keal, Jed Alpert, Ted Greenberg
Assistant Editor: Kristin Rodriguez

———————————————-
ps. From Wikipedia on Darfur:

On October 16, 2006, Minority Rights Group (MRG) published a critical report, challenging that the UN and the great powers could have prevented the deepening crisis in Darfur and that few lessons appear to have been drawn from their ineptitude during the Rwandan Genocide. MRG’s executive director, Mark Lattimer, stated that: “this level of crisis, the killings, rape and displacement could have been foreseen and avoided … Darfur would just not be in this situation had the UN systems got its act together after Rwanda: their action was too little too late.” [132] On October 20, 120 genocide survivors of the Holocaust, the Cambodian and Rwandan Genocides, backed by six aid agencies, submitted an open letter to the European Union, calling on them to do more to end the atrocities in Darfur, with a UN peacekeeping force as “the only viable option.” Aegis Trust director, James Smith, stated that while “the African Union has worked very well in Darfur and done what it could, the rest of the world hasn’t supported those efforts the way it should have done with sufficient funds and sufficient equipment.” [133]

Human rights advocates and opponents of the Sudanese government portray China’s role in providing weapons and aircraft as a cynical attempt to obtain oil and gas just as colonial powers once supplied African chieftains with the military means to maintain control as they extracted natural resources.[134][135][136] Political China has offered Sudan support threatening to use its veto on the U.N. Security Council to protect Khartoum from sanctions and has been able to water down every resolution on Darfur in order to protect its interests in Sudan.[137] There has been further evidence of the Sudanese government’s murder of civilians to actually facilitate the extraction of oil. The U.S.-funded Civilian Protection Monitoring Team, which investigates attacks in southern Sudan concluded that “As the Government of Sudan sought to clear the way for oil exploration and to create a cordon sanitaire around the oil fields, vast tracts of the Western Upper Nile Region in southern Sudan became the focus of extensive military operations.”[138] Sarah Wykes, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, an NGO that campaigns for better natural resource governance, says: “Sudan has purchased about $100m in arms from China and has used these weapons against civilians in Darfur.”[135] There are additional concerns that Chinese oil companies are devastating the environment further inhibiting the local population’s ability to survive. This includes the clearing of forests for timber exports that increases vulnerability to erosion, river silting, landslides, flooding and loss of habitat for plant and animal species.[139]

Calls for sustained pressure and possible boycotts of the Olympics have come from French presidential candidate François Bayrou[140], actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, Genocide Intervention Network Representative Ronan Farrow[141], author and Sudan scholar Eric Reeves[142] and The Washington Post editorial board[143]. Sudan divestment efforts have also concentrated on PetroChina, the national petroleum company with extensive investments in Sudan.[144]

On the opposite side of the issue, publicity given to the Darfur conflict has been strongly criticized in the Arab and Muslim world as exaggerated. Statements to this effect in the Arab press take the view that “the (Israeli) lobby prevents any in-depth discussion and diverts the attention from the crimes committed every day in Palestine and Iraq.”[145] and that Western attention to the Darfur crisis is “a cover for what is really being planned and carried out by the Western forces of hegemony and control in our Arab world.” [146] While “in New York, … there are thousands of posters screaming ‘genocide’ and ‘400,000 people dead,” in reality only “200,000 have been killed.” Furthermore, “what has been done” in Darfur is “not genocide,” simply “war crimes.”[147] Another complaint made is that “there is no ethnic cleansing being perpetrated” in Darfur, only “great instability” and “clashes between the Sudanese government, rebel movements and the Janjaweed.” [148]

Counting deaths

Accurate numbers of dead have been difficult to estimate, partly because the Sudanese government places formidable obstacles in front of journalists attempting to cover the conflict.[149] In September 2004, the World Health Organization estimated there had been 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the beginning of the conflict, an 18-month period, mostly due to starvation. An updated estimate the following month put the number of deaths for the 6-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and disease at 70,000; These figures were criticized, because they only considered short periods and did not include violent deaths. [150] A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died, [151] and others have estimated even more.

In March 2005, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland estimated that 10,000 were dying each month excluding deaths due to ethnic violence. [152] An estimated 2 million people had at that time been displaced from their homes, mostly seeking refuge in camps in Darfur’s major towns. Two hundred thousand had fled to neighboring Chad.

In an April 2005 report, the most comprehensive statistical analysis to date, the Coalition for International Justice estimated that 400,000 people in Darfur had died since the conflict began, a figure most humanitarian and human rights groups now use. [153]

On 28 April 2006, Dr. Eric Reeves argued that “extant data, in aggregate, strongly suggest that total excess mortality in Darfur, over the course of more than three years of deadly conflict, now significantly exceeds 450,000,” but this has not been independently verified. [154]

A 21 September 2006 article by the official UN News Service stated that “UN officials estimate over 400,000 people have lost their lives and some 2 million more have been driven from their homes.”[155] This now appears to be the official UN figure.

Amnesty International yesterday said the junta was still receiving military equipment from China, Russia, Ukraine, and India.

The Burmese generals claim to have released all but 500 of the Buddhist monks and other demonstrators detained since last month’s pro-democracy protests. But the senior British diplomat, briefing journalists yesterday on condition of anonymity, gave a “conservative estimate” that 2,000 to 2,500 were still being held and more were being picked up.

“There are substantial night-time raids going on. They have scooped up hundreds of people,” the diplomat said.

British officials and human rights activists believe there are four main detention centres in Rangoon: a racecourse, the city’s institute of technology, the Insein prison, and the Mingladon detention facility.

But the diplomat said detainees were increasingly being dispersed around the country, particularly to centres the regime calls New Life camps – gulags where detainees are used as forced labour.

“We are hearing from people who have been locked up directly … the conditions in which they are being held: in excrement-smeared rooms, hundreds to a room, not fed, interrogated,” he said.

The official death toll of the crackdown is 10, but the diplomat said: “We believe it is very many multiples of that.”

The protesters are being tried in secret, facing a minimum sentence of two years. British officials believe those found guilty of participation in the protests would face more than seven years in jail, and the leaders could be imprisoned for 20 years.

The diplomat said the monks’ treatment had outraged a profoundly religious nation. “The anger is quite extraordinary when you scratch the surface. In fact you barely need to do that,” he said. “We are still seeing incidents of low-level resistance with rocks and bricks being thrown at the police at night.”

Burma’s streets are quiet–no mass demonstrations, no riot police. But the calm is an illusion. Change is coming to Burma, and we are all a part of it.

Here’s where we stand: The regime has massacred, tortured, and intimidated its critics at home, and continues its night arrests and brutal interrogations. But while it has momentarily silenced the domestic opposition, its attacks on the revered Buddhist monks ignited an anger amongst the Burmese people that cannot be extinguished. Contacts inside Burma tell us that the demonstrators are steadily regrouping, even in the face of the deadly crackdown.

And around the world, the roar has grown deafening–so powerful that governments are scrambling for ways to bring new pressure to bear on the junta. Government leaders and the media have publicly credited the outcry of global civil society. Look at the statistics in the box on the right to see how, working alongside allies around the world, Avaaz members have begun to make a difference.

Many Burmese members of Avaaz have written in. Here’s a note from one of them–Trisa, now living abroad:

I am one of the 8888 uprising generation. Since the September uprising in Burma, I can’t get good night sleep. I can’t contact my remaining families and friends if they are ok… The voice of the world is very powerful. I have heartfelt thank you for all the supporters. Your voice can change our lives!

And here’s a note from an Avaaz member, Lynn in London, who joined a group of Burmese monks to hand-deliver the Avaaz petition–contained in a big red box–to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, on the steps of 10 Downing Street last week:

When I put my hand on the red box, which held the 753,000 signatures from around the world collected by Avaaz, I imagined the outrage of the many people from every country in the world, every culture, every race, and every religion, contained within this box which was about to be presented to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I thought about what it might mean for these Burmese monks whose religious brothers far away had been hurt and mistreated by the crackdown, to know that in every country in the world, people were supporting them.

And here’s what May Ng, a Burmese writer, editorialized on the news site Mizzima after seeing our petition:

As their voices have been heard and their faces have been seen, Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma will no longer be alone. Avaaz.org, whose mission is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decisions, will make sure that Burmese people will have a voice over their own fate from now on.

Avaaz will share the struggle of the Burmese people until the struggle is won. Our goals are constant: transition, dialogue, reconciliation, and democracy. We will also continue to take action together on many urgent issues, from climate change to peace in the Middle East to human rights–but we will not turn from the cause of the Burmese people. We believe that every human life has equal value, whether in Berlin, Beijing or Rangoon.

As Aung San Suu Kyi once urged, we will use our freedom to promote theirs.

With hope,

Ben, Ricken, Paul, Galit, Graziela, Iain, Sarah, Pascal, and Milena–the Avaaz team

PS: 52 years ago today, the UN charter enshrined “the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” Twelve years ago today, Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned. And today, in key cities around the world, protesters held a new wave of protests; the first shipment of supplies, paid for by Avaaz members, left for Burma–and the junta agreed to re-admit Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. envoy who is working to build a dialogue between the regime and the opposition, earlier than previously announced. It’s been a long struggle, but the most important ones always are.

PPS: If your friends haven’t yet signed the petition, urge them to sign at: http://avaaz.org/en/burma_hope_lives/6.php

PPPS: Some further reading:

Voices from within Burma:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7058610.stm
and
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/east-asia/myanmar-burma/
and
http://www.mizzima.com/MizzimaNews/Interview/01-Oct-2007.html

Avaaz’s Paul Hilder “People Power can win”:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/paul_hilder/2007/10/people_power_can_win.html

An eyewitness from inside Burma reports that injured protesters are being taken to the Yay Way cemetery outside of Rangoon, and burned alive in an effort to destroy the evidence of the genocide occurring.

This shocking report comes only hours after news that dozens of high school students were shot and beaten to death.

Regardless, the junta continue to claim responsibility for only 9 deaths. They have cut off internet and telephone connections to the country almost entirely, to shield their horrific actions from world scrutiny.

China and India need to do more then urge restraint and turn a blind eye hoping for oil, and the UK and Canada are little better.. Their action – lack thereof – stems I believe from a desperate sense of how bad their position is in terms of environment. With resources depleted and environmental disasters almost every week nations are trying to keep up an image of themselves as super powers while seeing the collapse that looms pretty damn near inevitable on the horizon. With this in mind however, and calmly considered, they must realize that supporting violence and cruelty in the hopes of profiting from the regime that commits it is a terrible short term option, only that only builds up hatred against them and only shortens the length of days the people will let them rule. It relies on some imagined future date where these insane-with-power brutal leaders will suddenly decide to negotiate rationally. Which is like thinking if you support a drug addict who abuses their kids you’ll be able to trust them with your own later. It’s ridiculous and vile.

Please help make peaceful public noise – Here’s an Amnesty International Petition.

Here’s the world’s Facebook group for supporters.

And here is the email address for the Olympics – this is one area where we can really exert pressure:

China has played a role in Tibet, Darfur, and Burma (…) I suggest we e-mail International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge to reconsider Beijing 2008 in lieu of China’s recent Security Council veto on Burma: pressoffice@olympic.org

(…)

“China is the puppet-master of Burma. The Olympics is the only real lever we have to make China act. The civilised world must seriously consider shunning China by using the Beijing Olympics to send the clear message that such abuses of human rights are not acceptable.” Edward McMillan-Scott, vice-president of the European Parliament

Another column of thousands of people are coming to their way to reinforce the peaceful demonstrators who are in confrontation with armed military troops.

A respectful old monk is in the vanguard of the column singing national anthem and holding flags of fighting peacock.

Despite peaceful demonstrators having been beaten to break up the crowd, the demonstrators are still together reciting “metta sutta”(A discourse on loving-kindness, about disseminating love to those who are aggressive)

source.

Please sign the Petition here to help the peaceful demonstrators. China and India, Canada and everywhere: Don’t let this happen! When people rise up peacefully and call for help, peacekeepers should respond! Wouldn’t this make more sense then going in where we’re unwanted? I’m just saying.

The monks led the crowd in chanting: “May we be free of torture, may there be peace in hearts and minds as our kindness spreads around the world.”

source: the age.

Put this public cry for communication alongside the reality in Burma in recent decades if you can:

The junta’s efforts to quash free expression continue. A 1996 SLORC decree provides up to 20 years’ imprisonment for anyone publicly opposing the junta’s policies. Under the 1996 “Computer Science Development Law;’ unlicensed possession of a fax machine or modem is punishable by I 5 years in jail. These are among many repressive measures enforced without regard to international standards or Burma’s own constitution. In Burma, the law is what the generals say it is; it can and does change from day to day.

As the demonstrations have grown from 1000 to 100 000 people asking for open conversation the military junta have been wary, and they’ve moved carefully so far, but today they sent troops out into the street and as this marks a step toward rising tension, potential collision, I think we need to join our voices with the demonstrators as loudly as we can to make sure the “leaders” know the world’s heart and support – billions of people – are on the side of the monks and citizens realizing this beautiful, peaceful, large scale gesture.

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. For decades the Burmese regime has fought off pressure–imprisoning elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy activists, wiping out thousands of villages in the provinces, bringing miseries from forced labour to refugee camps.

But last Tuesday Buddhist monks and nuns, revered in Burma, began marching and chanting prayers. The protests spread—now they’re growing by tens of thousands every day, as ordinary people, even celebrities and comedians join in.

Peaceful protesters numbered 20,000 on Saturday, 30,000 on Sunday, 100,000 today. This week, they could win a new life for their country. In the past, Burma’s military rulers have massacred the demonstrators and crushed democracy. This time it can be different—but only if the world stands with the Burmese.

Global leaders are gathering now in New York for the annual United Nations summit. In speeches and press interviews, we need them to show Burma’s military junta how grave the consequences will be if they crush the protesters with violence this time. Click below urgently to sign the emergency petition supporting the peaceful protests in Burma, it’ll be delivered to UN Security Council members and the UN press corps all week:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/tf.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

Signing this demonstration sends a plea to the UN but specifically to India and China, the two voices the Junta might listen to, calling on them to stand for the people’s rights. Governance is a social contract – we as citizens give over some of our power and money to leaders and in turn they organize, protect, provide space and tools for prosperity and peace. When they do not keep up their end of the bargain, then people will reject the bad deal, consider the contract void and take their power back. When a tidal movement like this comes along that is miraculously peaceful and sensible every nation in the world that claims to stand for anything good had better step up and support them, I figure, or be shown for hypocrites and face the mounting tide themselves.

The western gorilla, a Chinese dolphin and even coral are all at the top of the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) priority cases, according to the organization’s Red List released Wednesday.

Furthermore, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one third of all amphibians and 70 per cent of the world’s assessed plants are also endangered.

“This year’s IUCN Red List shows that the invaluable efforts made so far to protect species are not enough,” said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the IUCN’s director general in a news release. “The rate of biodiversity loss is increasing and we need to act now to significantly reduce it and stave off this global extinction crisis. This can be done, but only with a concerted effort by all levels of society.”

source.
From the Red List.

And places in your country where you can volunteer and help can be found using this tool from IUCN.

First just a quick share a link, here’s video showing Fox’s campaign for war in Iran:

foxattacks.com/iran

And an excerpt from and article about Iran and the way the truth goes there:

The last newspaper I worked for in Iran – Zan – was closed by the judiciary in the spring of 1999. I was in the United States at that time, and as soon as I returned to Tehran, I was arrested. The government held me in solitary confinement for three months, and during that time I confessed to crimes I never committed and did whatever a human being could do to save his or her life.

I now wonder if all the opportunities we had seen for reform were really illusions created to trick us. Did the government encourage a fleeting era of reform in order to identify its opponents so as to come after them? Was Khatami’s election the storm that ultimately allowed the government to hunt us down?

And on how the truth is being treated in China:

President Hu Jintao’s most ambitious attempt to change the culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known as “Green GDP,” was an effort to create an environmental yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or GDP, to reflect the cost of pollution.

But the early results were so sobering — in some provinces the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to zero — that the project was banished to China’s ivory tower this spring and stripped of official influence.

…

This spring, a World Bank study done with SEPA, the national environmental agency, concluded that outdoor air pollution was already causing 350,000 to 400,000 premature deaths a year. Indoor pollution contributed to the deaths of an additional 300,000 people, while 60,000 died from diarrhea, bladder and stomach cancer and other diseases that can be caused by water-borne pollution.

China’s environmental agency insisted that the health statistics be removed from the published version of the report, citing the possible impact on “social stability,” World Bank officials said.

And lastly again in America, hustling to keep up with the demand for power power power, instead of working to make the bug fixes necessary to change our addictions and escape the environmental fate we’re hurtling toward, the BUsh administration removes instead the last restraints on poisoning the water table, following the path toward mass desertification and disease so clearly lit up like a warning fire in China.

Read this for a hmmmm balancedish perspective, then read this from 2003 for context, and think about the blindness that destroys forests for coal and calls itself godly (people of faith who use torture or aren’t environmentalists make no sense to me and make me queasy.)

When I reach the mouth of the intermittent stream, I follow Lost Creek until I can see no signs of human intervention, not even the inevitable Bud Light can. I sit down on the bank, beneath the yellow glow of beeches and maples. Dark water glistens in the shallows below. Squirrels rustle through the leaves. Trees decay where they have fallen, providing shelter and food. A Carolina wren hops among the tangled branches. These days it is thought unfashionable, even backward, to talk about laws of nature or to read a philosophy, a morality, into the workings of the natural world. For 4,000 years, theologians and philosophers have debated whether an Intelligent Designer stands behind it all. I have nothing to contribute to that discussion. But this much seems clear: this forest certainly demonstrates an intelligence, one it has been honing for 290 million years. Its economy is a closed loop that transforms waste into food. In that alone it is superior to our human economy, where the end of the line is not nutrients but rather toxic industrial waste. Is there design behind this natural intelligence? I have no idea. But I will venture this: The forest knows what it’s doing.

Compare the two economies: the forest’s and ours. The sulfur dioxide that escapes from coal-burning power plants is responsible for acid rain, smog, respiratory infections, asthma, and lung disease. Due to acid rain and mine runoff, there is so much mercury in Kentucky streams that any pregnant woman who eats fish from them risks serious, lifelong harm to the fetus she carries. And this year, thanks in large part to coal burning, climatologists found record-high levels of climate-altering carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A forest, by contrast, can store twenty times more carbon than croplands or pastures. Its leaf litter slows erosion and adds organic matter to the soil. Its dense vegetation stops flooding. Its headwater streams purify creeks below it. A contiguous forest ensures species diversity. A forest, in short, does all of the things that the mining and burning of coal cannot – that is its intelligence.