Bloodroot - a story for 2020 in image and word

 

I

the way it pierces through

 

melting dusty pink to peapod green

leaf emerges embracing its bud

shielding from early spring chill

 

delicate grace

petals splaying open, quiet and soft

yin opening to yellow, soaking up the sun

 

leaves of snapping turtle skin

undulating matte splendor

feigning toughness, but succumbing to sunburn

 

how long the winter

cradled by Pachamama

awaiting the perfect moment

 

II

our winter has been long,

not since October

 

our winter has been persisting

deepening since

 

since social media — learn to fix a broken pencil, and watch a murder —

    network internet — connect with anyone, and lose connection —

        neoliberal economics — strive for efficiency, and lose your soul —

            nuclear destruction — win the battle, lose the war —

                internal combustion engine

— go faster, risk everything, everyone —

 

           colonialism — explore, and ruin what you find —

           imagined superiority — disillusion, disconnection —

 

domination —a fool’s errand.

 

                       

 

III

skin as thin as peach

flower ephemeral as a first crush

 

passing in the silence of night

giving way to the next

yet staying with you forever

 

forest duff grit

—perseverance—

generations linked together

built upon each    

—other—

 

pushing up through the mulch pile

no regard for what stands in the way

driving

            step by step

out of cool, dark repose

 

not through garbage, but through fertilizer,

            fuel

 

IV

brought to our knees

all our weaknesses laid bare

 

injustice to the earth

each other

—brother and sister all

plant, animal, fungus, bacteria, mineral, wind, water,

            and spirit

 

bleeding from our roots

we cry out in communal agony

 

“don’t let us return to normal!”

 

Let us begin again,

as in spring.

 

Towards the sun,

towards a new day.

A better, more just, more beautiful,

more loving way.       

 

V

we rise

 

Protect the Sacred

Protect the Sacred

Stand up for your beliefs,

Stand for the downtrodden, the forgotten

Stand for those without a voice, those we cannot hear

Stand for the animals and plants, for the soil and water, rocks and air

Stand strong and purposeful

Root your feet and do not give way, with the elegance and courage of the bison

Soar in the skies with your dreams

Fly above the small-minded

Fly above fear and violence, with your hopes and dreams to guide you

Alight where you can see across the wide wonderful Earth

Where you can see the love that flows through it all

Soar so high that justice and your mind are clear, where your heart is pure

Where you are one with the great spirit

Fly through the air with the power and keen eye of the eagle

Flow like water through life

Never to be defeated

Possibly held up, but never destroyed

Flow with your goal in mind and never forget

Nourish life with your very essence

Course over that which is filthy and cleanse it with your clarity

Strengthen the weak like ripples, and break down hate like a tidal wave

Be as water is, both creator and destroyer

Give birth to life, and help those that have passed to begin again

Bloom as a flower does

Let your petals unfurl towards the sun

Grow as tall as you can

Open yourself to the world with brilliance and clarity of purpose

Bring bright beauty, grace, and joy wherever you go

Be as the flowers are, and remember that life is ephemeral

One day, let yourself fall away, sweet and peacefully

Knowing that you are leaving this place richer than how you found it for your being

Protect the sacred in all that you do 

In all that you are

For you are it as well

And it, you

Two Young Musicians for a Future in Balance

A beautiful, strong voice far beyond her years, Takiya Blaney speaks for a revolution to improve our relationship with Mother Earth. Ta'Kaiya is from the First Nation tribe of Tla A'min in British Colombia, Canada. She has been active over the past four years as an activist, speaker, and musician. She has won a number of awards for her leadership and inspiring message as an environmental advocate and for honoring her culture and upholding the traditions of the First Nation peoples. 

Here is an example of her message as well as one of her songs at the end. 

This video has better sound for her voice, which is magically haunting.

To learn more about Ta'Kaiya Blaney

This young man has also been active for a number of years spreading a similar message. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez ask us all, especially the young people of his generation, to revolutionize our way of life to create a better future. He visions a future where humans are good stewards of the planet where we have clean healthy thriving ecosystems. He ask for climate action from individuals as well as decision makers like the United Nations General Assembly on Climate Change.

Here he is in 2015, at age 15 speaking at the 

Xiuhtezcatl is also a talented musician and along with his little brother, Itzcuauhtl, perform their original hip hop music for a better future and relationship with the Earth. 

Another of their songs, at Bioneers.

And here he is, as a younger boy, speaking about how climate change is already affecting his home in Colorado. 

The pine beetles have wreaked havoc on western North America. Climate change has been a significant part of encouraging this destruction. This is a little more about that, from my project We are all in this together.

Mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) are native to western North America, covering a swath of land from Mexico to British Columbia. With a black exoskeleton, pine beetles only measure about half a centimeter long. Pine beetle’s first three life stages, egg, larva and pupa occur under the bark of a pine tree. During the last life stage, as an adult, they can be seen flying around in the air.

When a female pine beetle burrows into a new tree to lay her eggs, she exposes the tree to blue stain fungus. This fungus inhibits the tree’s natural defense mechanism against more beetles, as well as its ability to transport water and nutrients within the tree. When a tree is infected, pine beetle larva and blue stain fungus spread throughout the tree, eventually inhibiting the tree’s ability to take up water. Eventually the pine tree will die of thirst. From the time the fungus is introduced, it may only take a few weeks for a tree to be incapable of taking up water.

A native to North America, pine beetles are not new to their ecosystems and when conditions are right they infest a new tree, killing it, but continuing its own life cycle. With climate change large areas of pine beetle’s native habitat are warming, experiencing milder winters and hotter summers. This shift in weather affects both pine trees and pine beetles. Unusually warm seasons can stress a tree and make it less robust at fighting off parasites. On the other hand, warmer weather is beneficial for pine beetles, allowing them to reproduce with a higher success rate and giving them more time and opportunity to inhabit more trees. Pine beetles have in fact doubled their reproductive rate. They used to go through one life cycle in a year and can now complete two full cycles each year. In recent years the absence of cold snaps has allowed beetle populations to explode, causing an epidemic in forests dominated by or wholly made up of pine trees.

This explosion of pine beetle populations has resulted in allowing the beetles to expand into more northern territory.  As the beetles moved north, they caused a mass dying off of forests throughout 19 US states, British Columbia and Alberta. Destruction to the forests is on the order of 10 times worse than previously recorded. Around 80 million acres of pines have been decimated and left dead. These tracks of dead trees have repercussions on all other species in the area, including humans. Stands of dead trees cater to raging forest fires. Dead trees are also not as good at holding soil to prevent erosion, slowing water flow and absorbing snow melt into the earth. These forests, which are usually a carbon sink when their trees are healthy, may easily, become a carbon source by releasing stored CO₂ and furthering global warming.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you Ta'Kaiya and Xiuhtezcatl,

----------------

The Sound of Climate Change

This is just a re-post from https://vimeo.com/127083533. Check out the great video, like is on the bottom.

In 2013, the composition “A Song of Our Warming Planet” transformed 133 years of global temperature measurements into a haunting melody for the cello. Following its release, A Song of Our Warming Planet was featured by The New York Times, Slate, the Weather Channel, National Public Radio, io9, The Huffington Post and many others on its way to becoming a viral sensation and reaching audiences around the globe.

Now the co-creators, University of Minnesota undergraduate Daniel Crawford and geography professor Scott St. George, are back with a new composition that uses music to highlight the places where climate is changing most rapidly.

Based on surface temperature analysis from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the composition "Planetary Bands, Warming World" uses music to create a visceral encounter with more than a century’s worth of weather data collected across the northern half of the planet. (The specific dataset used as the foundation of the composition was the Combined Land-Surface Air and Sea-Surface Water Temperature Anomalies Zonal annual means.)

Crawford composed the piece featuring performance by students Julian Maddox, Jason Shu, Alastair Witherspoon and Nygel Witherspoon from the University of Minnesota’s School of Music.

As Crawford explains in the video, “Each instrument represents a specific part of the Northern Hemisphere. The cello matches the temperature of the equatorial zone. The viola tracks the mid latitudes. The two violins separately follow temperatures in the high latitudes and in the arctic.” The pitch of each note is tuned to the average annual temperature in each region, so low notes represent cold years and high notes represent warm years.

Crawford and St. George decided to focus on northern latitudes to highlight the exceptional rate of change in the Arctic. St. George says the duo plans to write music representing the southern half of the planet, too, but haven’t done so yet.

Through music, the composition bridges the divide between logic and emotion, St. George says. “We often think of the sciences and the arts as completely separate — almost like opposites, but using music to share these data is just as scientifically valid as plotting lines on a graph,” he says. “Listening to the violin climb almost the entire range of the instrument is incredibly effective at illustrating the magnitude of change — particularly in the Arctic which has warmed more than any other part of the planet.”

View The video!

A Blessing

A  really is a joy to spend hours with a good novel, but I often find my-self reading non-fiction. I love non-fiction and especially something related to science, the environment or art....of course! (I am quite predictable I suppose.) 

One of my favorite authors of all time is Edward Abbey, an author that writes in both genres eloquently, boldly and amusingly. He speaks truths without apology, describes human natures poignantly, and is able to describe the grand beauty of nature with his words. An advocate for the environment and freedom, he describes the power and importance of nature with the raw grit and honesty that most people shy away from.

At the moment I am reading The Fool's Progress, which is a semi-autobiographical novel by Abbey. This is the first time I have read Abbey in a few years, and it is good to be back with him. Reading his words again inspired me to share a few lines from this environmental artist, in his own right. 

The following is a quote which illustrates Abbey's perspective on life beautifully. A blessing to you all from Abbey (and me):

May your trails be crooked, 

winding, lonesome, dangerous, 

leading to the most amazing view. 

May your mountains 

rise into and above 

the clouds.

May your rivers flow without end, 

meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, 

past temples and castles and poets' towers 

into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, 

through miasmal and mysterious swamps 

and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles 

and grottos of endless stone, 

and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm 

where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, 

where deer walk across the white sand beaches, 

where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, 

where something strange 

and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you — beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

-Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey

Tricia Zimic

In delicate palettes and dynamic compositions, Tricia Zimic juxtaposes native wildlife with cityscapes to address how human society affects the natural environment. Zimic works in as a re-forester and make some of her art based on things she sees and experiences in the field. She works in porcelain sculpture as well as in oil paint. She researches the conservation status of her subject matter and then explores interesting ways of portraying them and their story. She shows a bobcat in the city, a salamander next to its beer can home, the battle between native and invasive species, and haunting images of toxic landscapes where our very survival is questioned. 

"To me, these pieces are as fragile as the true animals and remain a record of what we have with us today but may lose tomorrow." -Tricia Zimic

The Garden of Earthly Delights: As it is
A triptych: As it was, As it is, and As it will be

Zimic with The Garden of Earthly Delights
In the description of this piece:
"Years ago Chief Seattle said to his tribesmen ‘What is man without beasts? If all beasts were gone, men would die from loneliness of spirit.  For whatever happens to beasts soon happens to man.'"

UprisingAddressing the contentious debate over the presence of wolves in and around human development. Here the wolves are taking back their territory that we have taken from them.

Zimic working on a sculpture.

Flight or Fight
Depicting a fight between native species of New Jersey and alien invasives from Europe.

What is useful anyways?

Although I understand why it happens, I frequently find myself asking "why?" Why are humans so self centered? Why does nature have to benefit humans to be valuable to us? Why is the anthropocentric world view so common and socially acceptable? 

"Oh, it is just human nature." "All species worry about themselves first." "That's natural." 

Maybe to a certain respect it is natural, or at least makes sense on some primal level. It makes sense that someone will worry about their daughter more than an insect, and how a flower may cure their cancer more than a "useless" minnow swimming in a stream. But shouldn't what sets humans apart from other animals allow us to think more deeply and broadly about the value of nature?

I can't help wondering why our consciousness, our understanding of how the world works, and our ability to flourish on this earth rather than just survive doesn't leave room in the human mind to appreciate and value all living things for their innate worth. Let things live for their own sake. Attempt to protect living things for their own right to live. Do we really need more than we already have, more space, more water, more forests, more resources? Or can we understand that our ingenuity is all we need to be perfectly satisfied with what we have and still continue to raise our standard of living in order to leave plenty of space and resources for other life. 

We have all we need in intellectual capitol to live amazing and beautiful lives today without taking away from other living things. Yet, somehow, we still have to convince people to care about the natural world only through describing how the natural word will benefit them in some tangible and utilitarian way. 

Below is an article from New York Times blogger Richard Conniff addressing just this issue. I really appreciate this article and the questions that it brings up. For my last project, that involved raising awareness about 50 species affected by climate change, I thought about this a lot. I chose some species that conjure up sympathy from people, such as the panda bear and the holy cocoa tree. Since I feel pretty passionate about all living things being equally important in the unbelievable complex network that is the biosphere, I consciously chose other species that people usually don't recognize like zooplankton, chytrid fungus, and pine beetles. 

With regards to environmental art, the idea of how to frame environmental conservation and how to get people's attention are central to how to be effective. What do you want your main message to be? Do you want to "market" the environment in order to "sell it better?" Or, do you want to be more raw, crunchy and lean towards deep ecology? Maybe the inherent worthiness of nature doesn't quite sell as well to society. 

Life on earth and all her interconnections are too complex for us to fully understand. Who are we to judge what is important and more worthy of life? Given that we all evolved here together shouldn't the miracle that life is, be enough?

Useless Creatures
By Richard Conniff

September 13, 2014

This article contains no useful information. Zero. Nada. Nothing. If usefulness is your criterion for reading, thank you very much for your time and goodbye, we have nothing more to say. The truth is that I am bored to tears by usefulness. I am bored, more precisely, of pretending usefulness is the thing that really matters.

I mostly write about wildlife. So here is how it typically happens for me: A study comes out indicating that species x, y and z are in imminent danger of extinction, or that some major bioregion of the planet is being sucked down into the abyss. And it’s my job to convince people that they should care, even as they are racing to catch the 7:10 train, or wondering if they’ll be able to pay this month’s (or last month’s) rent.

My usual strategy is to trot out a list of ways even the most obscure species can prove unexpectedly, yes, useful. The first effective treatment that turned H.I.V. from a death sentence into a manageable condition? Inspired by the biochemistry of a nondescript Caribbean sponge. The ACE inhibitors that are currently among our most effective treatments for cardiovascular disease (and which have lately been proposed as a treatment for Ebola)? Developed by studying the venom of the fer-de-lance, a deadly snake found from Mexico to northern South America. The new medical bandage that’s gentle enough for the delicate skin of newborns and the elderly? Modeled on the silk of spider webs.

Every time I begin this line of argument, though, I get the queasy feeling that I am perpetuating a fallacy. It’s not that I’m telling lies; these examples are entirely real. But given, for instance, that three-quarters of our farm crops depend on insect pollinators, or that more than 2.6 billion people rely directly on seafood for protein, it seems a little obvious to be reminding people that wildlife can be useful, or, more to the point, that human survival depends on wildlife. Without saying so out loud, the argument also implies that animals matter only because they benefit humans, or because just possibly, at some unknowable point in the future, they might benefit humans.

You don’t have to look too far to see how silly this can get. In truth, I don’t have to look at all, because university press offices fill my inbox with examples every day: The Harvard scientists who hope their study of cuttlefish skin will “inspire improved protective camouflage for soldiers on the battlefield.” The Berkeley team that thinks studying the genetics of blubber-eating polar bears could help us learn to live with our bacon-wrapped, wide-load lifestyle. And the wonderful folks at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, who believe “Squid sucker ring teeth material could aid reconstructive surgery, serve as eco-packaging.” (And you thought they were good only for calamari.)

I don’t entirely blame the scientists. Their research often depends on taxpayer funding, and their dreams are haunted by the ghost of United States Senator William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award. That award garnered headlines by ridiculing outlandish-seeming items in the federal budget, and animal behavior studies were a juicy target. So now people doing that kind of research all feel obliged to imply that they are two steps away from a cure for the common cold. No basic research here, Senator, sir, no idle curiosity. Useful “R” Us. (They also delight in pointing out that one of Mr. Proxmire’s targets — a $250,000 investigation into the sex life of the screwworm fly — has yielded $20 billion in benefits to American cattle farmers by enabling control of a major insect pest.)

Improbably, wildlife conservationists now also often hear the call of the useful. Along with a large contingent of eco-finance bureaucrats, they try to save threatened habitats by reminding nearby communities of all the benefits they derive from keeping these habitats intact. Forests, meadows and marshes prevent floods, supply clean water, provide habitat for species that pollinate crops, put oxygen into the atmosphere and take carbon out, and otherwise make themselves useful. In some cases, conservation groups or other interested parties actually put down cash for these ecosystem services — paying countries, for instance, to maintain forests as a form of carbon sequestration. The argument, in essence, is that we can persuade people to save nature by making it possible for them to sell it. They can take nature to the bank, or at least to the local grocery. They can monetize it. (The new revised version of Genesis now says, “God made the wild animals according to their kinds, and he said, ‘Let them be fungible.’ ”)

I understand the logic, or at least the desperation, that drives conservationists to this horrible idea. It may seem like the only way to keep what’s left of the natural world from being plowed under by unstoppable human expansion and by our insatiable appetite for what appears to be useful. But usefulness is precisely the argument other people put forward to justify destroying or displacing wildlife, and they generally bring a larger and more persuasive kind of green to the argument. Nothing you can say about 100 acres in the New Jersey Meadowlands will ever add up for a politician who thinks a new shopping mall will mean more jobs for local voters (and contributions to his campaign war chest). Nothing you can say about the value of rhinos for ecotourism in South Africa will ever matter to a wildlife trafficker who can sell their horns for $30,000 a pound in Vietnam.

Finally, there is the unavoidable problem that most wildlife species — honey badgers, blobfish, blue-footed boobies, red-tailed hawks, monarch butterflies, hellbenders — are always going to be “useless,” or occasionally annoying, from a human perspective. And even when they do turn out, by some quirk, to be useful, that’s typically incidental to what makes them interesting. Cuttlefish do not fascinate because their skin may suggest new forms of military camouflage, but because of the fantastic light shows that sometimes play across their flanks. Spider web silk doesn’t intrigue because somebody can turn it into bandages, but because of the astonishing things spiders can do with it — stringing a line across a stream and running trotlines down the surface to catch water striders, for instance, or (in the case of the species named mastophora dizzydeani) flinging a ball of silk on a thread like a spitball to snag moths out of the air.

Wildlife is and should be useless in the same way art, music, poetry and even sports are useless. They are useless in the sense that they do nothing more than raise our spirits, make us laugh or cry, frighten, disturb and delight us. They connect us not just to what’s weird, different, other, but to a world where we humans do not matter nearly as much as we like to think.

And that should be enough.

Midway: a film by Chris Jordan

MIDWAY

Both elegy and warning, Midway explores the interconnectedness of species, with the albatross on Midway as mirror of our humanity.

                                                                              -Chris Jordan

Watch the trailer, beautiful and heartbreaking. 

This needs to be seen: http://vimeo.com/25563376

http://www.midwayfilm.com/

A Couple Noteworthy Kickstarters

Over the past few months I have spent just a little time (okay, a little more than a little...) on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/) and I wanted to share two particularly interesting projects that I found there. As of today, they are both fully funded with time to spare!

The first project is called Eli Skipp weaves representations of her brother's RNA. Eli Skipp, the artist, is representing the RNA of her brother and the cane toad (Bufo marinus) with frame-loom weaving. She represents each base in the RNA (adenine, guanine, cytocine, and thymine) with different colors (red, yellow, blue, and green) in the weaving.

The comparison between her brother, a life-long lover of toads, and Bufo marinus she describes as being for private reasons, but that it is really speaking to the two halves of sides of her brother, and that they are both in fact him. This is interesting to me with respects of our connections to nature, whether you think of spirit animals, affinity with a certain type of animal, or the evolutionary memory of being one with nature. I digress.

Philosophy aside, I really appreciate this project for another reason as well. Skipp has found a really interesting way of representing scientific data through art. The RNA data simply dictates the colors in a weave. What does this do to the meaning of the weaving? Does it help people relate better to science, or does it make them more curious about it? Upon seeing the brother's RNA aside the toad's RNA will the similarities or differences be more obvious? Will it make it tangibly obvious what is the difference, or lack there of, between being a human and being a toad? I am curious to see this project completed. As a work in progress I think it has significant potential.

Skipp has other interesting projects and art as well. To find out more check out her blog and website:
http://eliskipp.com/blog/
http://skipp.us/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skipp/eli-skipp-weaves-representations-of-her-brothers-r?ref=home_spotlight

The second project that I would like to share with you is called The Bicycle Diaries: My 21,000-mile Ride for the Climate. David Kroodsma has a masters degree in interdisciplinary environmental science and now works as a data journalist and a climate consultant/researcher. More to the point, Kroodsma went on a 21,000 miles journey, on a bike!

I have had dreams of doing things like this, walking to the Amazon or Alaska or Africa, but the closest I have come is various car trips collectively of about 15,000 miles (not the same). But what really sets Kroodsma's trip apart from my various adventures, and most other people's, is his mission. His strong concern about climate change fueled Kroodsma to center his trip on the idea of researching and teaching about climate change in the places he visited. He sought out interesting people and gave talks along the way, he researched how climate change affects the places we traveled through, and along the way, he gained a new perspective on how climate change is a global issue.

So, upon pedaling from San Francisco to Tierra del Fuego, what did he do? He wrote a book of course! I am jealous of his journey and inspired by his technique. What better way to connect with people, share knowledge, do the dirty work, connect with our southern neighbors who are far too often annexed by our politics, have fun, and bring back and then share his gained knowledge.

Kudos for fun and inspiring!

P.S.
His next trip is going to be across Asia!

http://rideforclimate.com/blog/
http://kroodsma.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2080478170/the-bicycle-diaries-my-21000-mile-ride-for-the-cli?ref=live

Sarah Hatton and Bees

Over the past weekend A very dear friend of mine came to visit me. We had a wonderful time together staying up late and having a three hour breakfast at the kitchen table. At one point I was telling her about my We are all in this together project. Her eyes got wide and she sat up straight in her chair patiently waiting for me to finish my sentence. “Can you paint a honey bee?!” she asked me with apparent excitement.

“…ummm well, maybe, is it related?” I answered. Despite anyone’s passion, I want to stick to my theme of climate change.

“Yes!” she replied. She went on to tell me a great and very local reason why the honey bee would be perfect for my project. My friend is a new and avid bee-keeper and loves to talk to anyone about them who will listen. Her passion is not held by her alone.

Bees are integral and essential to plant pollination around the world. Along with other animals such as butterflies, moths, other insects, bats, and birds, bees have co-evolved with flowering plants. In many cases the plants rely on the these creatures for pollination and reproduction. The symbiotic relationship is a beautiful one, but it is also extremely fragile, prone to upsets at even the smallest of changes.  

Over the past decade or so, the accounts of colony collapse disorder have increased in North America and Europe sparking environmental, social and economic concern. The phenomenon itself, which is a when the worker bees of a colony suddenly disappear, is not new, but its increased frequency is a cause for concern. There are a few possible causes of colony collapse disorder including pathogens, fungus, mites, and malnutrition. Many experts, including the European Food Safety Authority, are attributing the recent increase in colony collapse on the use of modern pesticides. 

This issue is complex and still being studied to be fully understood. One person who picked up on this multidimensional and international issue is Sarah Hatton. A visual artist who predominantly works in paint, branched out to create her body of work called "Bees". 

Here is the statement of "Bees" from Hatton herself:

The link between neonicotinoid pesticides and the worldwide decline of bee populations is a crisis that cannot be ignored.

I have arranged thousands of dead honeybees in mathematical patterns symbolically linked to monoculture crops, such as the Fibonacci spiral found in the seed head of the sunflower.

The viewer experiences the vertigo of this lifeless swarm, a dizzying optical illusion that echoes the bees’ loss of ability to navigate due to the toxins locked within the very source of their sustenance.

Sarah Hatton in front of her Bee work

Hatton's Bee piece

Hatton's Bee piece

Hatton's Bee piece

Bees from Hatton's piece

We are all in this together: My next project

This is my Kickstarter for my next project. 

Check it out, pass it along, and support in any way you can! 

I only have 30 days to raise my goal so I can make this a reality, please help!

Mazatl

Hello and welcome back!
On this gloriously sunny summer morning I would like to introduce, or revisit you to Mazatl. A Mexican resident, Mazatl is a print maker, illustrator and painter. How work is beautiful and charged with social, political and environmental justice themes. His work is unapologetic and unrelenting, with the goal of justice and a better future.

This is probably my favorite piece of his. Strong colors, strong composition, and strong message. Short, sweet, and to the point. Not afraid of getting right to the point and in your face. This is a possible scene from the not-too-distant future. Sad but true.

Justicia Climatica (Climate Justice)
Four color Silkscreen print
27" x 16"

But I also really like this series about extinction. For those of you who might not know, current day extinction rates, globally, are 10-100 and possibly as much as 1000 times the background extinction rate. To put this even more bluntly, Earth has experienced five mass extinctions, the last of which killed off the dinosaurs. Today's extinction rates could be an indicator that we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction.

Extincion 1
One color Relief Block Print
14" x 25"

Extincion 3
One color Relief Block Print
14" x 25"

The following is an interesting piece. Both social and environmental, it addresses the United Nations Programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD, http://www.un-redd.org/) . The program has been extremely controversial since the beginning. The basic idea is as follows: Forests have a huge Carbon storing and sequestering potential. When forests are cut down and destroyed, the stored Carbon is released into the atmosphere and contributes global warming through the intensification of the greenhouse effect. Many developing countries around the world use their forests as important revenue sources. The REDD program pays partner countries to maintain and protect their forests rather than cut them down. The idea is that if these countries can be compensated for maintaining their forest instead of cutting them down, it will minimize the global warming effects from destroying them

There are many good arguments both for and against the program, and personally I am still on the fence. It is extremely hard to make sure that the program is executed responsibly and correctly, but if it were it could have a lot of positive potential. There are a few aspects in particular that make the program particularly difficult to implement without unintended consequences. Here are just a few:

-Defining an appropriate deforestation baseline. How do you measure if deforestation is increading in a country if the amount deforested changes every year. Do you put your base line at last years rates? 10 years ago? 

-There is also the problem of the payments. Who benefits from the payments? Are the funneled through the central government, which could be a problem in politically corrupt countries? Do the payments trickle down to the locals, who most need the revenue from the forests? 

-Then there is the problem of actually monetarily valuing the forests. Paying for Carbon sequestration is new and there are still many kinks to iron out. The general idea is to pay for tons of Carbon sequestering potential/area measurement. But this leaves out many other values of the forest such as the ecosystem services it provides, climate change mitigation potential (i.e. Maintaining forests means maintaining more stable rain systems which are needed for crop production. Do you value future lives lost from drought and starvation in developing countries? etc)

-If that weren't challenging enough, there is the morality of putting a price on nature. There are some environmentalists and others who deeply believe that the environment is priceless and that it is simply an act of commodification to try to put a price on it. While others believe that since the forests are already receiving a price (lumber and other products) that we must work within the system of trade and commerce to even begin addressing the issue of deforestation and reducing Carbon emissions. 

The commodification of nature is the central, and obvious, issue addressed in NO REDD.  I agree that no amount of money can truly describe the value of forests, and that they are priceless. They are the lungs of the earth, supplying ecosystem services like clean water and clean air, they provide weather and water system regulation, they include habitats and ecosystems teaming with extremely valuable biodiversity, and they have a spiritual value for many that I will not try to describe here. While pricing forests are incredibly complex and possibly impossible, I believe there is value in trying. We are working in a broken system. Forests are being destroyed and their products sold on the market. If standing on the moral ground of how wrong it is to destroy the forests fails, as it appears is the case, is it truly a crime to try for a better system? Dropping REDD seems to me throwing away an attempt for good for lack of the perfect. The program is not perfect, and there are unintended consequences, but I believe that it is a step in the right direction. It is hard to play a game when the players are on different fields and speak different languages.  

Collaboration with Melanie Cervantes
NO REDD
22" x 34"

Here is one last piece by Mazatl. It is more social than environmental, as if these things could be separated. I love the call for collaboration, unification, and standing up for justice. Although not dead, the 99% movement receives much less press these days in the US than it did in the beginning. Despite the lack of press, there are still many throughout the world fighting for justice and a more fair system. 

One characteristic of Mazatl's work that I value most highly is his breadth. Almost across the bored social, political and environmental issues are inextricably linked. Far too often do I see and hear people and programs that try to address these issue separately, trying to fix the symptom rather than the root cause. 

Art and Biodiversity Partnership and Biodiversity Loss

"The Art and Biodiversity Partnership brings together artists, scientists, conservation experts, students and the public to raise awareness of the links between Art and Biodiversity. We want to encourage action through the arts and to widen awareness of the current biodiversity crisis, stimulating discussions and positive responses to this rising crisis. At the same time, we want to contribute in bridging the divide between art and science, looking at new paths of interdisciplinary cooperation." 
                                                                                                --http://artandbiodiversity.org/

The Art and Biodiversity Partnership is based in Norfolk, England, on the east coast, north of London. Their collaborators are an interesting group, truly straddling the art and biodiversity line including: the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, the University of East Anglia School of Biological Sciences, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the Norfolk Biodiversity Partnership, and artists. 

They work on a themes of Invasive Alien Species, Climate Change, Habitat Loss, Over-exploitation, and Pollution, a well rounded, and generally agreed upon comprehensive list when thinking about threats to biodiversity. They also list a few projects that they address, such as a summer camp and a basketry exhibit. 

There isn't too much specific information about what they are working on and doing other than the four projects listed on their website. I am not sure if this is because they are a new organization or haven't updated their website in a while. With the sweeping topic of biodiversity loss, there is definitely no lack of inspiration. 

Despite the lack of more specifics, I love that this organization exists. We are in a biodiversity crisis and most people do not even know. There is so much information out there about this topic, but the short of it is that we are in a biodiversity crisis, it is driven by anthropogenic forces including climate change, and biodiversity loss is bad for the environment and bad for us too. But don't take my word for it: The United Nations Secratary General Ban Ki-moon: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36052#.Ub9qTPmyDb8 or http://www.globalissues.org/article/171/loss-of-biodiversity-and-extinctions or https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/28-6
And, just for clarification Biodiversity is the diversity of living things on the cellular, species, and ecosystem levels. 

IUCN 2010

I am personally involved in biodiversity loss in my own art, which started with my Global Amphibian Decline Series, but if anyone is looking for inspiration and/or an important issue to work on, here it is.

Convention on Biological Diversity: http://www.cbd.int/
IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature: http://www.iucn.org/
United Nations Decade of Biodiversity: https://www.cbd.int/2011-2020/
European Commission: Nature & Biodiversity: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/index_en.htm
Biodiversity is not a ranking issue with the United States Environmental Protection Agency.