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This is a link to the official NASA page. On here you will find up to date information on the Ozone layer. There are also some interesting facts on the page too!

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NASA Ozone Watch: Latest status of ozone

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This article discusses the influence climate change has on the coral reef ecosystem and the negative impacts it has on humans.

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When you think of the Great Barrier Reef, you probably think of its majestic beauty and its marine life - and perhaps that it's been on your vacation bucket list for a few years (ours too!).

At nearly 1,500 miles long, the reef is home to roughly 9,000 species of fish, mollusks, whales, sea turtles, and other marine life.

But did you know that it's in a great deal of trouble?

The Great Barrier Reef is under threat because of climate change

Climate change is one of the greatest threats to the future of the Great Barrier Reef for a few reasons. One is rising sea temperatures. Another is ocean acidification.

It's admittedly a mouthful, but ocean acidification is what happens when the extra CO2 in the atmosphere (think: fossil fuel emissions) dissolves into the oceans and becomes carbonic acid. The result: water becomes more acidic and a lot less friendly to marine life.

So as our oceans become warmer and more acidic, the Reef has suffered. Why? Many coral reefs - including the Great Barrier Reef - depend on the colorful algae that live throughout their nooks and crannies to survive. But when it becomes stressed by warmer and more acidic waters, coral expels this algae and turns white - a phenomenon known as "coral bleaching." Bleaching weakens the coral and it may begin to starve. Unless the coral has a chance to recover and the algae can return, it can die.

This can happen on a vast scale, in what's called a "mass bleaching event." In 2016, the Reef experienced a mass bleaching event that scientists say was made 175 times more likely by climate change. Another marine heat wave hit the Reef in 2017, bleaching even more corals.

Coral can recover from bleaching, but that doesn't always happen. In fact, about 30 percent of corals on the reef have died since the 2016 mass bleaching event. The fastest growers might take 10 to 15 years to recover, while the big, mature corals can take decades or centuries, according to Mark Eakin of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch.

Remember how we mentioned that the Reef is home to some 9,000 species of marine life? Each of those species has a job to do in the incredibly complex ecosystem the Reef supports. When sections start bleaching and dying off, food webs experience severe disruption. These disruptions have ripple effects that can reduce food supplies for the smallest crustacean all the way to larger fauna, like dolphins and whale sharks.

Bottom line: bleaching puts entire ecosystems at risk. Following the 2016 bleaching event, investigators found "complete ecosystem collapse" in some sections of the Reef with many kinds of fish all but gone, as just one indicator of many.

Climate models project that most of the world's reefs - including the Great Barrier Reef - could experience annual bleaching by 2050 if we don't take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally.

The Reef Affects the Economy in Australia, too

The danger of a dying reef goes far beyond losing natural wonder and ecosystems.

The Reef supports fisheries, contributes 6.4 billion to the Australian economy annually, helps employ more than 64,000 people, and brings tourists - over 2 million a year - from around the globe to see this World Heritage Site, especially in the Whitsunday Islands and Cairns regions.

The conclusion is obvious: if we're going to save the Great Barrier Reef, we must act on climate, and we must take action now. Not in 20 years or 10 years or even five. Now.

"Everybody thinks we've got to worry about saving the Great Barrier Reef for future generations," says Daniel Harrison, a research fellow at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science. "But we've got to worry about saving the reef for our generation."

WHAT CAN CHANGE THIS? YOU.

From June 5-7, 2019 Climate Reality will be hosting a training in Brisbane, Australia. Climate Reality Leaders are everyday people who decide to help lead the fight for climate solutions in their own nation and around the world.

Come to Brisbane and you'll spend three days working with former Vice President Al Gore and world-renowned scientists and communicators learning about the climate crisis and how together we can solve it.

Join us and gain the skills, knowledge, and network to shape public opinion, influence policy, and inspire your community to act at this critical time. Learn more now and apply to join us in Brisbane before April 18!

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Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef: It's in a Great Deal of Trouble

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When you think of the Great Barrier Reef, you probably think of its majestic beauty and its marine life - and perhaps that it's been on your vacation bucket list for a few years (ours too!). At nearly 1,500 miles long, the reef is home to roughly 9,000 species of fish, mollusks, whales, sea turtles, and other marine life.

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After learning about David in module 6, I was inspired to read more about him and found this. This article is very inspiring and shows his personality and character through the interview. Reading it made me wish he were still alive today for maybe the future would be brighter and have more hope.

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As a wall of fog passed through the Golden Gate Bridge 1,000 feet below Anne and Dave Brower's Berkeley Hills home, the man writer John McPhee called "an emotionalist in an age of dangerous reason" was just hitting his stride. This time, it was Wall Street and Alan Greenspan. "We should revoke his right to use the word green' in his name until he learns what all this mindless growth is costing the Earth!" Brower declared. And off he went, in a rant befitting the most successful evangelist of the environmental movement.

David Ross Brower was born in 1912 and grew up in the hills of Berkeley when the Golden Gate described a water passage between San Francisco and Marin County, not a world-famous bridge. After dropping out of the University of California in 1931-he was more proud of this than of his 9 honorary degrees-he became a mountaineer, making 70 first ascents in Yosemite and the High Sierra. Much as he would do in the world of environmental politics later in his life, he found 19 new routes on the sheer granite walls of Yosemite. He was an instructor in the U.S. Mountain Troops in World War II, served as a combat-intelligence officer in the Italian campaigns, and earned the Bronze Star.

But it was his 65 years campaigning on behalf of the planet and its wild places and inhabitants that defined David Brower. As an editor, filmmaker, and writer for the Sierra Club, he broadened environmental awareness as few others have. As its first executive director (1952-1969), Brower helped transform the Sierra Club into a political force, and its membership grew from 2,000 to 77,000. He led the successful efforts to protect Colorado's Dinosaur National Monument, prevent the Grand Canyon from being dammed, and establish the National Wilderness Preservation System. His influence also helped add nine wild areas to the National Park system, from the Point Reyes National Seashore in California to New York's Fire Island and areas around Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He was the instigator of the Sierra Club Foundation, Friends of the Earth, and Earth Island Institute, and with Marion Edey, co-founded the League of Conservation Voters. Three times he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

During this late-summer interview, Dave was sitting in his dining room surrounded by photos taken by his friend Ansel Adams: Shiprock, Tenaya Lake, Yosemite Valley, and Aspens in New Mexico. Other shots, of the Grand Canyon, the Himalayas, Mono Lake, and Dave on a minaret in 1937, stood alongside posters and bumper stickers calling for restoring Glen Canyon and draining Lake Powell. I sensed a certain urgency in his voice. He had known that the cancer he was battling had returned and had mentioned to me that his time was limited.
BP: How were you introduced to wilderness?
DB: Through the reading of John Muir. Muir told me about wilderness. I liked the general idea about wilderness that he picked up from Thoreau. My first visit-that was very early...we didn't call it wilderness then-was in 1918, along Highway I-80, across the Sierra, on a one-lane dirt road. No road kill; you couldn't go fast enough.
BP: How has it inspired you?
DB: I look at wilderness to see what the world does when it is left to its own natural devices. There is not much of the world that has been left to its own devices. I've treasured places not exploited by technology and wheels.
BP: The Sierra Club's outings program was one of the earliest programs aimed at getting people into the backcountry for a real wilderness experience. Was it just a way to get out into the woods, or was there more to it?
DB: Too many of the places Muir loved were being lost because too few people knew about them. John Muir and William E. Colby, his very close associate, got the idea that if you wanted people to support wilderness, they needed to know what it is was like. There was no way to prevent Sierra meadows from being overgrazed and devastated by sheep, for instance, unless people saw the damage firsthand and also visited unspoiled meadows so as to evaluate the loss. So they started the outings in 1901, exposing people to wilderness, to help make people aware of it and give it some political clout. They were the world's first ecotourists.
BP: Did it work?
DB: John Muir was primarily interested in getting rid of the introduced sheep. They were his biggest worry-very destructive of meadows, watersheds, water itself. He wanted to get them out of the wilderness, and he drove the sheep out.
BP: What did you do to promote backpacking in the Sierra Club?
DB: I initiated the Sierra Club backpack trips because I'd been a backpacker myself in 1933 and 1934, for 2-month trips. Over 14 years, I personally led 4,000 people on more than a million person-miles (the cumulative miles hiked by all participants) of wilderness trails. We worked hard to keep our impact to a minimum. That was the challenge. It is still the challenge.
BP: What were the benefits that wilderness trips provided your family?
DB: It is part of the memory of every one of my four children, etched into them, all the many places where we have been. Exposure to the high country was part of their growing up and magic for every one of them. I never was growing up anyway. I kept enjoying it. To see them love it made sharing it with them very worthwhile.
BP: What is your thinking on the current state of backpacking and your prognosis for the future of wilderness preservation?
DB: That would be grim, very grim, unless we do something about growth, unless we improve the number of people working to protect the environment. Maurice Strong, who put together the United Nations Conference on the Environment in 1972 in Stockholm and the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, says that unless we change what we are doing, change our way of life, we have only 30 years left. But Wall Street, the big investors, they just don't want to hear that. They continue doing what they do, calling for more economic growth, not realizing what economic growth as we know it is costing the Earth. When will we pay back the Earth? Unless we change our attitudes and make change possible, it will not happen. So I find myself engaged in activities not nearly as enjoyable as backpacking. But in effect, if we want to save backpacking, we have to make some changes.
BP: What sort of changes?
DB: For example, I am very anxious to save the national parks from the National Park Service. I am anxious to save the forests from the Forest Service. It would be nice if we had a Forest Service. Instead, we have a timber service. I have had that bias since 1938. I think that it would be helpful if we could switch the timber operations into the Department of Commerce and reinstate the Forest Service to be concerned with the entire forest.... The Forest Service has control over a great deal of wilderness, and it is more concerned about (keeping out) human feet than how many bulldozers, chainsaws, and roads are in it. That's because it is a timber service.

The forest needs wholeness, in its thinking. It consists of many trees of many species and age groups. It needs water and saves water-p;it needs soil and it really needs the wild species that are associated with it. It needs its beauty. That's what turns me on. But the Forest Service doesn't care about this; they care about how you get the timber out.

We've lost a huge amount of forests in this country and globally. Forests are, in large part, the way the earth breathes. We have to become aware of what the wild forest is doing for us: It is releasing oxygen, storing carbon dioxide, taking care of water and soil and habitat, and giving us beauty. The marketplace doesn't count any of those things into its thinking. We must admire and credit nature's services.

Gretchen Daily, who teaches at Stanford, wrote a book called Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems, which everyone should read. The gist of the book comes from a separate economics study, which says that something like 34 trillion dollars of nature's services are used every year. There is no program to pay nature back. Before too long, nature will say your credit is no damn good. That is the part they need to remember about wilderness.
BP: Besides changing the mandate of the Forest Service, what else do you think should be done to improve the stewardship of U.S. recreational land?
DB: My bright idea is that we should take the BLM, rename it, and give it a new mission. As the National Lands Service, it would have to be concerned with not only public land, but also private land. People have to get the idea that land is not theirs. For the generations down the line, we can't trash (those lands) now-we owe it to the people who are not here yet, not to mention all the other species. The planet's too beautiful to screw up.

We need a new conservationism. It has to mean more than using up resources at a slower rate. We have to hang on to the things we cannot replace and restore nature as best we can.
BP: So what is it that keeps you motivated to keep fighting for change?
DB: I go back to a quote from Father Thomas Berry. He said, "Put the Bible on the shelf for 20 years and read the Earth." I've spent a great deal of time reading the Earth and have found that I am still a "gee whiz" kid. Even at my advanced age of 88.1, I'm still impressed with it.
BP: What are your favorite quotes about wilderness?
DB: "Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we yet know how to ask." That quote is by Nancy Newhall from This is the American Earth. "When man obliterates wilderness, he repudiates the life force, which put him on this planet in a bad way, and in a truly terrifying sense, he is on his own." That's from J.H. Rush. Thoreau said, "In wildness is the preservation of the world."

Without wilderness, the world is a cage.
BP: What groups do you think are on the cutting edge of wilderness preservation?
DB: Earth First!, The Sierra Club, California Wilderness Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Earth Island Institute, Conservation International.
BP: What do you read to stay abreast of preservation issues?
DB: I read Wild Earth; it is the best of the bunch, along with Earth First! News and the publications of the organizations I mentioned.
BP: How were you involved in the founding of the wilderness preservation movement in the United States?
DB: I became one of the principle lieutenants for Howard Zahniser when he was executive director of the Wilderness Society; I carried out his efforts over a period of many years.

Before that, in the 1920s, the Sierra Club had been in the doldrums on the issue of preservation. The Sierra Club had forgotten, it seems, what John Muir had to say about wilderness-it was advocating new roads in the Sierra. It took the conservative Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to straighten them out. The Commonwealth Club put on a conference "Should We Continue Building Roads in High Mountains?" around 1935, and the conservative members of the Club said, "No!" The National Park Service was so excited about roads that in the process of updating the National Park transportation system, instead of going to the environmental movement for help, the director of the NPS went to the American Automobile Association and came up with some spectacular ideas for more and more roads in the parks-very damaging roads that were not necessary. There's no need to go 70 miles per hour through a national park. I like 30 mph.
BP: Are you more optimistic or pessimistic today?
DB: Unless changes in the attitude of major corporations and big investors can be made, I have to give up on my optimism. I'm not beyond still trying to get them to change. I think it can be done, we just have to get more hands on deck.
BP: Any final words of advice?
DB: Persevere...that's where it's at.
Postscript:
Three months to the day after this interview, on November 5, 2000, David Brower passed away at sunset, surrounded by his four children and wife, Anne, in their home of 55 years. The day before, he filled out his absentee ballot for Ralph Nader, whom he'd publicly endorsed. When I last saw Dave in the hospital earlier that week, he was aggressively debating the merits of nuclear fission with his nurse intern, who had had the nerve of suggesting that fission was the solution to our energy crisis. Dave won that battle. To the very end, he remained indefatigable.

For more about David Brower and his legacy:

David Brower's personal Web site: www.wildnesswithin.com.

John McPhee's epic Brower biography: Encounters With The Archdruid (Noonday Press, 212-741-6900; $13).

The three volumes of his autobiography: Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run (New Society Publishers, 250-247-9737; $14.95). For Earth's Sake, The Life and Times of David Brower (1990), and Work in Progress (1991), both out of print, originally published by Gibbs Smith.

David Brower's final book, for children: Reading the Earth: A Story of Wildness (Berkeley Hills Books, 888-848-7303; $16).

Two of David Brower's classics (out of print): The Sierra Club Handbook (1947) and Going Light-with Backpack and Burro (1951, 1968).

All of the above in-print books are available from www.backpacker.com/bookstore.
Freelance journalist David Kupfer grew up backpacking in the Sierra Nevada on Sierra Club trips led by his family, and now lives near Santa Cruz, California. He met and became friends with Anne and Dave Brower in 1978.

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As a wall of fog passed through the Golden Gate Bridge 1,000 feet below Anne and Dave Brower's Berkeley Hills home, the man writer John McPhee called "an emotionalist in an age of dangerous reason" was just hitting his stride. This time, it was Wall Street and Alan Greenspan.

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These are some photos that show the harsh reality of the Dust Bowl. There is an explanation of the people and what is going on in each picture as well.

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These stark, heart-wrenching Dust Bowl pictures reveal both the vast scope and intimate despair of this tragic time.

You'll recognize the stare. You've likely seen it in Dorothea Lange's iconic photo of a California migrant mother (see slide three above). And as you look through other Dust Bowl pictures, you'll see that stare again and again.

It's an ineffable look at once vacant and intent, stoic and poignant, broken and resolved -- the quintessential thousand-yard stare.

And if any group should summon such a stare, it's those who lived through the Dust Bowl, the worst manmade ecological disaster in American history.

Throughout most of the 1930s and into the early 1940s, the Dust Bowl turned much of what's now known as the American heartland into a virtual wasteland.

For nearly a decade, approximately 100 million acres centered around the panhandles of both Oklahoma and Texas endured devastating drought made even more catastrophic by the harmful farming practices that had taken hold in the region the decade before.

Because the region's arid grasslands received very little rainfall, its natural grasses played an essential part in both holding what little moisture there was in the soil and holding the soil itself down on the ground during periods of intense wind storms.

However, during the 1920s, farmers of the Great Plains had plowed away much of this grass in order to make room for crops, thus making this land even more sensitive to both drought and windstorms. And when both of those struck in the mid-1930s, the region's fate was sealed.

The land turned desolate and the sky went dark as "black blizzards" (dust storms) flared up day in and day out. It was something like a biblical plague.

And thus it's entirely fitting that it caused a tremendous exodus. Between 1930 and 1940, approximately 3.5 million desperately poor Americans abandoned their now barren farms in the Plains states and headed for greener pastures, largely in California.

However, while as much as 75 percent of the topsoil had blown away in the region these migrants abandoned, the Great Depression made it such that California's pastures weren't actually all that much greener.

Nevertheless, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt stepped in with a myriad of aid programs whose efforts ranged from planting trees to block wind and hold soil to distributing food to the hungry to teaching farmers dryland techniques to prevent an episode like this from ever happening again.

Thankfully, in the decades since, nothing quite like it ever has. Today, we're left with the photographs of Dorothea Lange and a few others to provide an up-close look at this one-of-a-kind American tragedy.

See some of those who lived through it, their thousand-yard stares, and the ghostly landscapes they traveled through in the Dust Bowl pictures above.
After viewing these Dust Bowl pictures, have a look at 24 Great Depression photos that reveal the trauma experienced across America in the 1930s.

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47 Haunting Images Of The Dust Bowl That Turned The American Heartland Into A Wasteland

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You'll recognize the stare. You've likely seen it in Dorothea Lange's iconic photo of a California migrant mother (see slide three above). And as you look through other Dust Bowl pictures, you'll see that stare again and again. It's an ineffable look at once vacant and intent, stoic and poignant, broken and resolved -- the quintessential thousand-yard stare.

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This article lists the common determinants of an environmentalist and conservationist and explains how we can give environmentalists a better, not so negative rep.

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This article explains the influence Leopold left in the scientific and conservation community.

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In 1988 I traced that "life journey" in a biography, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work. One did not have to be especially prophetic to see that Leopold's legacy would not only remain relevant to conservation, but would continue to evolve in important new ways. Leopold's passion for wild places, for vibrant human landscapes and communities, for sound economies rooted in ecological realities, and for adventure and exploration crossed the sensitive fault lines of modern environmentalism and political ideology. Leopold anticipated our attention to global-scale human impacts on what he called "the land"-the soil, water, atmosphere, oceans, plants, animals, and people-even while being focused on the local and particular. He had useful and incisive things to say about many urgent, specific concerns (such as watershed function or the ecological function of fire), about great themes (such as the broad history of human-land interactions), and about the connections among them. Devoted to positive and progressive reform, he was also a pragmatist with deep understanding of human dilemmas and the impediments to change. In the heyday of an environmental movement and an emerging anti-environmental backlash-both often in the news, but usually lacking in historical perspective-I found Leopold's story to be powerfully grounded and grounding. It provided connections across generations, perspectives, and landscapes. It exposed forgotten foundations and offered continuity amid complexity.

In examining Leopold's life and work, I had the advantage of building upon decades of environmental scholarship, commentary, and criticism. In the decades following Leopold's passing in 1948, a generation of writers-including such voices as Lewis Mumford, Joseph Wood Krutch, Rachel Carson, Wallace Stegner, Peter Matthiessen, Sigurd Olson, Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, N. Scott Momaday, Edward Abbey, and Annie Dillard-had risen up to speak for and from the American land. They gathered the "cultural harvest" from the land that Leopold had anticipated.[2]

Moreover, whole new fields of study were emerging to inform the task. In the sciences, the boundaries of established disciplines and natural resource management specialties (forestry, fisheries and wildlife management, range management, etc.) dimmed as new and more integrated fields gained ground: conservation biology, restoration ecology, sustainable agriculture, landscape ecology, and ecological economics.[3] Social scientists began to examine in new ways the intimate connections among culture, communities, economies, and the natural world. Environmental ethics, environmental history, and a burgeoning literature of place started to explore the vital spaces between traditional academic domains.

Scientists, scholars, writers, and conservation practitioners in all these fields recognize a kinship with Aldo Leopold. Leopold was one who understood, on both practical and theoretical grounds, the hazards of rigid disciplinary thinking. "All the sciences and arts are taught as if they were separate," he once wrote. "They are separate only in the classroom. Step out on the campus and they are immediately fused. Land ecology is putting the sciences and arts together for the purpose of understanding our environment."[4] That boldness in fusing fields of knowledge was characteristic of Leopold. Increasingly we appreciate how necessary this is, not only to enrich our understanding, but to solve our problems, sustain our economies, fulfill our responsibilities, express our hopes, and deepen our joys.

By striving, as he memorably put it, to "think like a mountain," Leopold altered the course of conservation history. We can see his continuing influence in the trends that have reshaped conservation thought, science, policy, and practice since the biography was first published:

The critique of wilderness. Since the 1980s biologists, historians, philosophers, geographers, and others have strongly challenged, on various grounds, long-established ideas about the definition, nature, and value of wilderness. Lively debates have focused especially on the definition of wilderness as pristine space, separate (and separable) from historical, cultural, and ecological realities. Amid the smoke, there has been some cleansing flame. This critique has yielded a more subtle understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political context of wilderness; of the evolving role of native peoples worldwide in shaping landscapes and ecosystems over the millennia; of the varied values associated with wildlands at all scales; and of the role of protected areas as a conservation strategy. It has also called into question one of Leopold's core concerns as a conservationist. Leopold has long been recognized as one of America's foremost champions of "wild things" and wild places. The postmodern critique of wilderness has brought more careful scrutiny of the evolution in Leopold's wilderness ideas and advocacy, highlighting especially his integration of wilderness within a comprehensive conservation vision.[7]

Private land conservation. "The thing to be prevented," Leopold wrote in 1934, "is destructive private land-use of any and all kinds. The thing to be encouraged is the use of private land in such a way as to combine the public and private interest to the greatest possible degree."[9] Through the 1960s and 1970s the environmental movement focused strongly on issues involving public lands, while neglecting the challenge of private land conservation. Over the last two decades that has changed. Around the country conservationists have fostered "smart growth" programs, a robust land trust movement, and other efforts to protect and restore "working" farms, rangelands, and forests. In 1996 the USDA's Soil Conservation Service was rechristened the Natural Resource Conservation Service, with a strengthened mandate to help the nation's private landowners in becoming better land stewards.[10] The challenge of conserving private land is plainly monumental and sobering; nonetheless, the reclaiming of this aspect of conservation history has been one of the key achievements of the last several decades.

Food, agriculture, and conservation. Closely tied to the theme of private land conservation is the surge of interest in organic, sustainable, and local (including urban) food production. Many of the forces driving the dominant industrial agricultural model first gained traction in the years following World War II, as war-spawned technologies, demographic trends, economic incentives, and government programs changed the face of farming and ranching.[11] Leopold lived just long enough to see the impact of those gathering forces. He warned in 1945 that the "tremendous momentum of industrialization" on the farm, left unchecked, would "[generate] new insecurities, economic and ecological, in place of those it was meant to abolish. In its extreme form, it is humanly desolate and economically unstable."[12] The intimate connections among land, food, health, security, and community have now come into focus again. They will continue to reshape conservation and agriculture into the indefinite future.

Ecological restoration. In his introduction to A Sand County Almanac, Leopold stated, "On this sand farm in Wisconsin, first worn out and then abandoned by our bigger-and-better society, we try to rebuild, with shovel and axe, what we are losing elsewhere."[13] It was the most personal of Leopold's career-long efforts to restore natural things: game and wildlife populations, watersheds, forests and rangelands, prairies and wetlands, diversity and beauty, ecosystem function and land health. Beginning in the 1934, Leopold and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison pioneered a new dimension of conservation: ecological restoration. Especially since the 1970s, the science and practice of restoration have spread to institutions, agencies, and ecosystems worldwide, providing conservationists with a broader range of tools and an active complement to the preservation and sustainable use of land.

The greening of religion and philosophy. In "The Land Ethic" Leopold observed ruefully that "no important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. The proof that conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it."[16] It is no longer unusual for philosophers, ethicists, and theologians to address the moral and ethical dimensions of our environmental challenges and human-nature relationships. The last two decades have been a time of vibrant scholarship and reflection, as students within a wide array of faith communities and philosophical schools have reexamined the ecological insights of their traditions. Philosophy and religion have now "heard of" conservation, while many conservationists have come to listen differently to the language of belief and philosophical inquiry.[17]

Sustainability and resilience. Since the 1980s, sustainability-however awkward the term-has served to bind together the many intersecting social and environmental issues of our day, from climate change, energy, and biodiversity loss to population growth, global poverty, and public health. The term is, in a sense, a proxy. We needed a word to convey the idea of connection in the world among multiple needs and concerns. It indicates that we are still striving, as Leopold did, to "[put] the sciences and arts together for the purpose of understanding our environment." And resilience has come to signify our commitment to making those connections healthier. It in fact adheres very closely to Leopold's definition of land health as "a state of vigorous self-renewal" within our comingled human and natural communities.[19]

These many trends have been converging in ways that are fundamentally reconfiguring traditional conservation and environmentalism. For some, this is a long-unfulfilled hope and a long-overdue need, especially in the face of mounting environmental woes. For others, these changes may be vaguely threatening-as, in fact, they are to any simple notion of what conservation was, is, and will become. Aldo Leopold's story shows that, in reality, many of these trends have deep historical roots whose shoots are only now greening up. "Conservation," Leopold wrote in 1940, "viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land."[20] That new relationship is far from being fully developed. But it continues, vigorously, to unfold.

Leopold remains a unique link between Progressive-era conservation, modern environmentalism, and the still-emerging successor to these movements. This suggests another theme: Leopold's lifelong search for common ground in conservation. In Leopold's time as in ours, the forces of self-interest, parochialism, specialization, and crass materialism served to divvy up the land and its values, to pit one generation against the next, to distract us tragically from shared commitment to the common good. In a 1939 article, "The Farmer as a Conservationist," Leopold pithily skewered the attitude that had brought on the Depression and the Dust Bowl. Of his times Leopold wrote, "Everybody worried about getting his share; nobody worried about doing his bit." History, it seems, has brought us around the circle once more.

The quest to build a more durable and self-renewing relationship between people and land is the paramount challenge for this generation, and for as many generations as we care to look into the future. That challenge contains within it the other, multiple challenges we face involving energy, climate, the oceans, biodiversity, water, food, human health, and the creation of a healthful economy. With his distinctive mix of pragmatism and idealism, Leopold recognized that "we shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive."[21] Aldo Leopold's is a human story, of one who strove. By knowing his story, we can see deeper into conservation's story. By knowing conservation's story, we gird ourselves for the work ahead.

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Leopold's Evolving Legacy: Key Trends in Conservation Ideas, Science, and Practice | Center for Humans & Nature

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In his influential essay "The Land Ethic," completed in the final year of his life, Aldo Leopold summarized the lessons he had learned across four decades as a conservation scientist, advocate, practitioner, and teacher. Leopold argued that the next phase of human ethical development must include expanding our sphere of moral concern to encompass the land.

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Since we had to write about our one ecological identities this week I decided to find an article about the topic. This piece helps you discover your beliefs and values when it comes to the environment and conservation :)

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Over the years I have often thought about my identity and what I am choosing to identify with, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I was guided to the work of Mitchell Tomashow and encouraged to explore my ecological identity. We are getting deep this week, so take a deep breath and jump in with me! The water is perfect for exploring!

Ecological identity work is valuable for anyone choosing to engage with others on environmental topics, ideas, processes, action, teaching, or anyone wanting to get at a deeper personal understanding of their own environmental values. Thomashow describes exploring ecological identity as becoming a "reflective environmentalist" on a search to "recover and reclaim the importance of nature in one's personal development." Delving into ecological identity helps people "understand their motivations and aspirations, to clearly articulate their environmental values, and know how to apply them to professional and personal decisions."

I thought all that sounds pretty important for those teaching children how to reconnect with the natural world. So exploring my own ecological identity was extremely helpful in understanding what in my past shaped the way I relate to the natural world today, how I apply my ethics to my work of helping others connect with nature, and how my ecological identity effects the choices I make professionally and in my personal life. One of the first things we do in my teacher workshops is an ecological identity eye opening activity adapted from Thomashow's course called "Trees of Environmentalism." I think this activity really gets you thinking, in a fun and creative way, about how your roots affect your fruits when it comes to environmentally engaged lifestyles and actions.

Once you come to understand your own ecological identity, you can begin to discover how your "personal values are reflected in the historical and political emergence of contemporary environmentalism." As a teacher or parent you may think that's too academic or irrelevant for those working with children, but it is actually incredibly valuable. When you teach for ecological literacy, you are stepping up and taking a role in the contemporary environmental movement as well as becoming a progressive educator. When you plant a garden and teach children how to grow their own fruits and vegetables, you are taking a stand in the realm of food politics and agribusiness. When you connect children with place through hands-on nature exploration you are planting seeds for a life long love of nature and a desire to protect that with which the child has bonded.

Ecological identity and ecological literacy are two of the most valuable interdisciplinary threads you can be teaching in our modern world-and perhaps two of the longest reaching. Educator David Orr describes ecoliteracy as requiring a "more demanding capacity to observe nature with insight, a merger of landscape and mindscape." Tomashow expands that into ecological identity work and believes that it "is complementary and parallel to ecological literacy." Thomashow highlights that, "ecological literacy creates and educational argument for teaching sustainability, ecological identity develops psychospiritual support for sustainable communities and psyches, with specific learning activities to support both goals." In turn, this perfectly supports the Nature-Study advocates' emphasis of the importance of balancing both science and sentiment when teaching about the environment. Bingo.

Orr encourages us to educate in the art of living where we are, and Thomashow asks us to connect to environmental challenges and issues through reflective learning. We must understand our place and our relationship to and within that place ourselves if we are to help students do the same. In this work, I discovered how much of an early childhood influence my grandparents had on the way I live today-from growing a portion of my own food to the practices of living simply and consciously. I also gained clarity as to the ways that social action and involvement in food justice work manifested as a response to frustration with consumer culture starting in adolescence. As an adult I have discovered ways to merge these major influences into a productive and helpful service through the aid of progressive education methodologies, ecopsychology, the arts, and the Nature-Study movement.

The sea grape tree is the tree I identified with for my "Tree of Environmentalism" work.

Before engaging in ecological identity work, I was almost going about this work blindly; responding and reacting from knowledge of issues and movements, but fueled by emotion over insight. Now I come to my work focused, informed, and engaged. I know my roots and I use that deep understanding to nourish my fruits! So in tomorrow's Wonder Wednesday post I am offering you the fun and insightful "Tree of Environmentalism" ecological identity acitvity. I know you will glean as much from it as I did, making yourself a stronger, more effective educator for ecological literacy. I can't wait to hear what you discover!!

What environmental topic are you most passionate about today?

What root do you think that fruit is nourished by?

Be sure to get the Tree of Environmentalism activity on tomorrow's Wonder Wednesday post! Don't miss any Wonder Wednesday activities! Have them delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for the monthly newsletter at the bottom of the Wings homepage! You will also get a free nature journal video tutorial special for when you sign-up!

Mitchell Tomashow was a professor and Doctoral director at Antioch New England University for 30 years and president of Unity College before becoming Director of the Second Nature Presidential Fellows Program in 2011. The quotes from this post are taken from his book Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist, MIT Press: 1996.

Download a powerpoint from a lecture by Thomashow at NYU on campus sustainability and ecological identity here.

David Orr is a professor and founder of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College and a board member for the Center for Ecoliteracy. Orr quotes in this post are from his book Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World, SUNY Press: 1996.

Check out these articles by Orr written for the CEL.

Here is my full rendition. The multi trunk aspect of the sea grape fits with the multiple facets of my work and life metaphorically, while the fact that it grows on the beach represents me more literally.

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Where do You Find Your Ecological Identity? - Wings, Worms and Wonder

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Over the years I have often thought about my identity and what I am choosing to identify with, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I was guided to the work of Mitchell Tomashow and encouraged to explore my ecological identity.

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Here is a brief summary of the history of conservation and how the idea and definition of wilderness has changed since the 1800's.

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When Frederick Jackson Turner announced in 1893 that "the American character did not spring full-blown from the Mayflower," but that "it came out of the forests and gained new strength each time it touched a frontier," his speech punctuated nearly three centuries of examinations into the American wilderness.