Writings by David Haenke dhaenke@webound.com
ORGANIZING A BIOREGIONAL CONGRESS: A HOW-TO MANUAL  (Originally written, c. 1987; revised/updated, January, 2003) In the course of helping bioregional, green, and other ecological groups and movements get started for about 25 years, beginning with the Ozark Area Community (Bioregional) Congress in 1977, I have some experience to share. This work has involved local, regional, national, and continental organizing. The total is probably on the order of 25-30 groups and organizations. Some are still going. Most are not. A Template for political Ecology http://www.nrec.org/haenke/poleco.html Preface from Dec., 2000: I have been working on this piece through various iterations for over 10 years. (Actually, more like 20.) Partly I send this out as a trial balloon...If the word "total" is offensive to too many, possibly invoking shades like "totalitarian", something which in reality my treatment here is utterly opposed to, since all through is woven "consensus", "eco-democracy", decentralism, etc., then all reference to "total" can be easily stricken. I just wanted to make a strong point about the necessary centrality and inclusiveness for a basis in ecological reality for any course of action that can actually work. Who knows, maybe there's a better word than "ecology"? Discernment does need to be made to clearly expand the meaning beyond the academic "science of ecology". The academic/scientific organization, The Ecological Society/USA, would refer to most everything I mention here as "applied ecology", actually not a bad term at all. Bioregionalism and Ecological Economics http://www.nrec.org/haenke/ecobioreg.html Gaia, Economics, Money, and Wealth According to scientist James Lovelock's Gaia Theory, the earth is a single living organism, one vast self-regulating, self-organizing, self-healing ecological body. This understand-ing underlies the necessary reconfiguration of all human systems, particularly economics. More than "Gaia Theory", I submit that this is "Gaia Reality", Earth reality. . . Forest Futures -- County Forest Money FD's http://www.nrec.org/synapse45/haenke45.html Where forests can grow, counties, or better yet, watersheds, could develop their own currency system based on substantial forest lands placed in public trust. The roots of this idea are not mine, but come from the work of Ralph Borsodi, Robert Swann, and Susan Witt. . . . Floor it you Moron! http://www.nrec.org/gatherings/g5/floorit.html Comin up with a good Metaphor for the Economy . . . OK. Here goes . . . How Many Fingers Do You See in Front of Your Face? Industrial Strength Coverup for at Least 46 Years Quote from the mass-publication, coffee-table book, The World We Live In, by the Editorial Staff of Life, and Lincoln Barnett, published in 1955, page 86: ". . . [F]or the last century temperatures have shown an upward trend. This has been particularly true in the last four decades, during which galciers have been in retreat all around the world. The reasons for this gradual warming of the earth cannot be defined with certainty. One suggested explanation is an increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Along with water vapor and ozone, carbon dioxide helps to trap the earth's heat within the greenhouse of the atmosphere and prevents it from radiating away into space. In the last half century the carbon dioxide ratio in the atmosphere has increased by 10%, a phenomenon which some attribute to expanding industry, pointing out that six billion tons of carbon dioxide pour from factory chimneys every year. Other authorities believe that a more important factor may the the decimation of forests, which consume great quantities of carbon dioxide, and the disturbance of the soil which exhales it."