Optimistic intertwingling

By Andrew Boswell

The musician Utah Phillips said "The earth is not dying - it is being killed - and the people who are killing it have names and addresses". A man who knows this more than most is best-selling environmental writer, Paul Hawken, who has been telling governments and business this hard truth for decades.

Yet he admits his new book Blessed Unrest is "inadvertently optimistic, I didn't intend it; optimism discovered me". Odd for a veteran of many battles with free-market fundamentalism and its consequences: environmental destruction, widening global social injustice and the destruction of indigenous people's natural resources, community and culture.

Subtitled How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, the book is the story of groups emerging across the planet working towards ecological sustainability and social justice.

Hawken is awed by the scale and speed of this movement's growth, and recounts how, for years, he has tried to estimate the number of such groups, with his research ever raising his counts upwards.

He now believes that there are between one and two million such groups, and is emphatic that they comprise not a 'movement of movements', but a single, powerful, non-ideological movement for the first time on earth. Diversity is its strength, but the movement as whole is converging in addressing interlinked, global, systemic problems.

Vietnamese Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes "the sound of the rising tide, you can not help hearing it if you have an attentive ear". And Hawken's book is a "deep listening" on this phenomenon that remains largely under the radar of politicians and the media.

His attentive ear brings to life this 'great underground' current of humanity that can be traced back to healers, priestesses, philosophers, monks, poets and artists. He meticulously explores its roots in women's suffrage, abolition, Gandhi's non-violence, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the civil rights movement, all the time making his reader aware of the wider interplay between environmentalism, social justice and indigenous rights.

In the global South, environmentalism is the movement of the poor and peasants lead campaigns against corporate hegemony for land reform and rights, food security, trade rights. Hawken rightly challenges northern environmentalists that "the only way we are going to put out the (environmental) fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus". Northern governments must heed these words too - climate change policies like the EU Biofuels directive that encourage deforestation, social disruption and resentment in the South are unacceptable.

Hawken paints his vision of the movement with two biological metaphors. First, he is capturing the taxonomic family network of this unnamed movement at the website wiserearth.org. Like 19th century botanical classifications, this links all the organisations and enables them to recognise, connect and collaborate in different ways. It also captures its decentralised diversity – "there is no centre, there is no one spokeperson". Cheap audio-visual conferencing and internet tools are enabling groups to intertwine, morph and come together much more powerfully – what Hawken calls 'intertwingling'.

The second metaphor is the movement as humanity's immune response that identifies what is not life affirming, and seeks to contain, neutralise or eliminate it. A whole chapter explores the potential and challenges of the movement through this allegory.

As Hawken warns "it's going to be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives in this century", and wrong moves now risk many centuries of chaotic climatic instability, and unsustainable pressures for land, water and resources. Meanwhile the increasing gap between rich and poor, world wide refugees now measured in hundreds of millions, and threats to the very future of indigenous peoples' culture, land, water and resources could lead to prolonged famine killing literally billions. James Lovelock has even concluded climate warming is a fatal 'fever' for the earth, Gaia.

This week, the antigenic BAA have ridiculed themselves in the face of climate campers gathering at Heathrow. This microcosm of the movement is demonstrating today that bottom-up community power can immunise top-down privilege power.

Events like Heathrow, and Seattle before, gives promise to Hawken's infectious optimism for the movement developing into the robust, global immune response needed to avert catastrophe. Daily, the movement's diversity is superseding the uniform and dominating ideologies of the past, and its inclusivity is drawing in many, including some corporates.

Hawken's book is a great way to find out more about this intertwingling movement that is growing rapidly from two centuries of social action, and millennia of human indigenous knowledge.

It wasn't necessary

By Marguerite Finn

Fifty-one years ago in 1956, a lone woman stood up in the hallowed halls of Oxford University and made an unscheduled and heartfelt speech. Her name was Elizabeth Anscombe. The occasion of her protest was a Convocation of all the colleges to vote on a controversial proposal to include less of the Greek New Testament in the Theology Degree and on a secondary issue of whether to offer President Harry S Truman an honorary degree, a decade after his decision to drop the world's first atomic bombs on the densely populated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The scene is described in Jonathan Glover's book Humanity – a Moral History of the Twentieth Century. "The House was preparing to snooze through the routine business before coming to the real reason for their presence, but suddenly and startlingly, Miss Anscombe arose and delivered an impassioned speech against the award of an Oxford degree to the ‘man who pressed the button of the bomb’. The Vice Chancellor called for a vote: she was in a minority of one."

Glover describes how "this speech elicited only the complete silence and impassivity of those present - not the slightest sign of approval or disapproval, not a murmur, not a rustle, not a change of countenance, but only utter imperturbability". Why? Did no one think that this courageous and powerful speech deserved the compliment of rational opposition?

Miss Anscombe's central claim was that killing innocent people as a means to an end is always murder. She accepted that, in the circumstances, dropping the atomic bomb probably saved many lives, but pointed out that the circumstances included the Allies’ demand for unconditional surrender and their disregard of Japan's known desire for a negotiated peace. Professor Anscombe became possibly the greatest English moral philosopher of her generation. She died in 2001 aged 81 years.

On 6 August 2007, the 62nd anniversary of the dropping on the bomb on Hiroshima we must, unlike the dozing Oxford dons in 1956, confront the question of why that bomb was dropped, to ensure that it never happens again – whatever the circumstances.

We know the criteria used in the decision to drop the bomb focussed less on the target’s 'military significance' and more on the fact that:

• it was a location that had not suffered any damage so that the impact of the atomic bombs could be accurately assessed;


• it was a target large enough accurately to judge the impact of the atomic bomb.

As well as defying international and humanitarian law, this method of decision-making – far away in the comfort zones of Washington and Los Alamos - meant that for the scientists, politicians and military personnel involved in the bomb, sympathy was inhibited by distance. They were only faintly aware of the people who were to be burnt, blinded, blistered, shrivelled, irradiated and killed. Distance does not just reduce sympathy. It also reduces the feeling of responsibility.

There were some dissenting voices around President Truman. General Dwight Eisenhower questioned the justification of using the bomb on two grounds: "First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country to be the first to use such a weapon". A leading physicist, Leo Szilard, argued that its military use might make it difficult to resist following the precedent. We know that Robert Oppenheimer had doubts when he uttered his immortal words: "Now I am become Death – the Destroyer of Worlds."

But they failed to persuade President Truman – and those two bombs killed over a third of a million people both adults and children, in a hell we can not adequately imagine.

Now the Bush Administration is proposing a new weapons programme, the 'Reliable Replacement Warhead' (RRW) aimed at building a new generation of 'improved' nuclear warheads. Congress has voted $20 million towards the programme - with projected spending in billions. This is in direct defiance of the spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and bears out Albert Einstein's prescient comment: "nuclear weapons have changed everything – except our modes of thought". It does little for America's credibility abroad: if the most powerful nation in the world cannot live by these rules, then why should other nations.

Here in Norwich we can do our bit to ensure that the lessons of Hiroshima are never forgotten: there will be an Interfaith Gathering to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to cherish all life on Saturday 4 August 2006 at 7pm in the Friends Meeting House, Upper Goat Lane, Norwich.

Iraq: time to go?

By Liam Carroll

The number of British troops in Iraq has come down from 9,000, to just 5,500 in the Basra province. Their tasks include training Iraqi forces, securing the Iraq/Iran border, securing supply routes, conducting operations against extremist groups, and supporting the Iraqi army when requested. All this while the British army is stretched to the limit in Afghanistan and peacekeeping operations elsewhere.

But could a timetable or immediate withdrawal of British troops be dangerous for Britain and for Iraq?

The Iraq Commission is an independent, cross-party body that has produced recommendations on the future of Britain's role in Iraq and ways to stabilise the region. The Commission was brought together by the Foreign Policy Centre. Its final report was featured on Channel 4 on July 14. Its hearings and its full final report can be heard and read on the Channel 4 website.

Withdrawals depend on the prevailing security situation, and the key risk is that insurgents could intensify attacks on UK troops, and hasten, delay or disrupt their departure when UK withdrawal is signaled.

The report says the UK should run down security operations and focus on completing the training of the Iraqi forces to lower this risk. Once they demonstrate competence, security responsibility should be handed over to them. UK forces should act only in self defence or on request of Iraqi authorities. Forces involved only in training then could be withdrawn as it is completed.

The UK has a more important role, in the UN Security Council and the EU. We have diplomatic relations with all Iraq's neighbours, a historical involvement with the region and expertise through the Northern Ireland peace process. The report suggests that the UK could use its influence to form a Contact Group under the UN, to manage peace negotiations with Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the EU and USA. A wider circle must include the Arab League, Gulf Co-operation Council, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, also China, India and Russia.

They should press all Iraqi factions to participate, and confirm that al Q'aida serves no Iraqi interest. The aim should be establishment of a regional organisation of Iraq and its neighbour states, legal commitments to non-interference, economic co-operation and confidence-building, and an international treaty recognising the territorial integrity of Iraq. Participants need to make clear that none, including the US, seek a permanent military presence in Iraq.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown could also seek appointment of a high level UN envoy to ensure Iraqis make rapid political progress on federal-regional relations, fair sharing of oil revenues, disarmament of militias, minority rights and human rights. The envoy would report to the Secretary General, in partnership with the Iraqi government, based on the existing democratic constitution of Iraq.

Will this restore stability to Iraq and the Middle East? As the economy improved in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, unemployment fell, and violence abated. James Wolfensohn (former president of the World Bank) told the Iraq Commission the long term answer to conflict is giving young people of Iraq hope and the opportunity to work.

The UN recognises that the security situation is not uniform across Iraq, and that some areas are much more accessible than others for humanitarian aid. The UK already could sponsor a trade mission to Kurdish provinces of Iraq, now pacified.

The UK should increase funding to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, to address the humanitarian needs of 2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan, which such countries cannot support. We should also provide more funding to Unicef, who need $42 million to support vulnerable women and children in Iraq, Jordan and Syria, with education, health, water and sanitation. Further, Britain must accept a significant number of refugees from Iraq who face death threats for working for UK forces.

Once order is restored in Iraq, the economic benefits of peace can take root. Progress on national reconciliation, security, health and education systems of the poorest regions may depend on fair distribution of oil revenues - Iraq's primary national resource.

Government should take the commission and its report seriously. It could offer Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Gordon Brown, at least a starting place, for developing a much needed strategy for complete withdrawal from Iraq as Britain moves on from the Blair era.

David Roberts of Norwich United Nations Association (UNA) helped with valuable research for this column.

We need nature and nature needs us

By Jacqui McCarney

These days, everything comes with a 'green' label - green housing, green holidays, green businesses, green transport, green electricity, green communities, green fashion, everything will soon have a green tag. Everything, except our minds; this very private, inner environment – the world of personal anxieties, sorrow and joy is separate and autonomous. Well not any more! Psychology too is going green. Ecopsychology is a new, rapidly growing field, including therapeutic practitioners, which dramatically opens up our concept of the mind and allows the world, and especially the natural world in.

The natural world is a vast subject, literally, bigger than the earth encompassing the whole universe, and despite human illusions of a separate man made world, everything, even our apparently artificial, technologically saturated urban areas have been built from the earth’s resources. Ecopsychology has the potential to be endlessly wide ranging, but at its core, is the idea that we humans have an inherent empathetic attachment to the natural world.

This love of nature is expressed most clearly by our landscape artists and nature poets. But more ordinarily, it is expressed by the countless rambling groups, and campers - perhaps more evocatively by the ordinary people, united in battles against developers to protect some of the last magical natural corners in their communities. From these small grassroots groups to those trying to protect worldwide tropical rainforests, the environmental movement has come to be the largest, most densely organised political cause in human history.

And now, Harvard zoologist, E O Wilson, has come up with a scientific explanation that lends weight to ecopsychologists and the environmentalists. He raised the possibility that humans possess a capacity called 'biophilia' defined as "the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms". His hypothesis has generated considerable behavioural research and, if true, it will become an integral part of mental health and all healing therapies will need to include ecotherapy.

If biophilia is a fundamental human need, what are the effects on children, who within two generations are increasingly alienated from nature? Richard Louw spent ten years interviewing parents and children and pairs these anecdotes with a growing body of research that shows that children given early and ongoing positive exposure to nature thrive in intellectual, spiritual and physical ways that "shut in peers" do not. His book, Last Child in the Woods argues that children desperately need to play outdoors in woods and that our sterile rejection of nature is harming them physically and psychologically. He blames many of the new childhood maladies including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on the drastic reduction of free imaginative play in nature and suggests that today's children suffer from 'nature deficit disorder' that is "increased feelings of stress, trouble paying attention, feelings of not being rooted in the world".

Louw believes that it is not just children who suffer from this disorder, but that families too can show symptoms, he says - "so can communities, so can whole cities. Really what I’m talking about is a disorder of society – and children are victimised by it".

Its looks very much like, we humans, need regular, ongoing contact with the natural world if we are to be healthy, happy and sane - but instead of nature therapy, we give ourselves 'retail therapy'. Al Gore says that we are addicted to the consumption of the earth itself.

In our 'throw–away' society we have yet to understand that there is no 'away' – plastics and chemicals end up in the human foetus, breast milk, and circulating in our bodies as well as in the bodies of polar bears and blackbirds. Our high consumption habit is destroying our habitat and the crisis of global warming might be our ultimate blow against nature.

The practising alcoholic holds up appearances at all costs and pretends that everything is normal. Similarly, our society's 'business as usual' stance enables the car industry to keep churning out polluting cars, television to run adverts for them and for us to continue to buy them.

While we know that our behaviour is potentially suicidal we seem unable to stop. Environmentalists attack our 'greed', but the ecopsychologist's diagnosis is a more complex one of addiction - looking at the underlying pathologies of addiction and how to heal them.

Ecopsychologist Mary-Jane Rust, originally from Alysham, says "acknowledging our addiction is the first step in healing. Ecopsychology is also the study of nature as healer – spending time in wild places as well as gardens and parks brings us back into balance again making us realise the important things in life".