A2 - Wednesday, February 16, 1983 - North Shore News

the word
language.

“ecology”

In retrospect, that was
quite a turning point.
No when we use
words like conservation or
resource management or

- wildlife, we are expressing a
rough understanding of the
science of ecology.

Nearly all of us-are aware
that we exist as part of a

- Piclogical system that has-to-
be preserved if we are to
reserve ourselves. Nature

entered our

_ and

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

IT SEEMS to me it has been about 15 years since

common

previously almost com-
pletely unknown im the

western world. Nobody on -

Texada Island, for instance,
was fooled for a moment by
assurances their paradise
wouldn't be lost when the
garbage scows arrived.
Lhave seen for myself how
the application of money

the tides of pollution. In
Tokyo, the sulphur dioxide

.-will- -can--turn. --

whales during the Falklands
war.

about how our attitudes

toward nature are based on
deep-seated religious
conditioning. As these at-

titudes change, it is

inevitable that our religious
beliefs should undergo some
kind of shift as well.

Murray Bookchin, author
of mumerous essays on
ecology, argues that a true
ecological consciousness

-invelves--nothing--less than

the “ ‘respiritualization of the
natural world.” In other

isn't seen any more as being
utterly separate from human
activity.

We all know now that if
the oxygen balance of the
world changes, we'll run out
of breath.

That might seem awfully
obvious today. But it wasn’t
so obvious just a short time
ago. There has been a
revolution in people's

i of nature and
our relationship to the
physical world.

We all know the ozone
layer is in danger. We all
know that acid rain is caused
somehow by smoke stacks.
We know what oil spills do.
We have a pretty good idea
of the effects of radioactive
poisoning. We’ve seen what
happens when ditches are
sprayed with DDT.

All this accumulated
experience gives us a level of
ecological awareness

CANADA'S LARGEST

levels have been brought
under control. It cost $24
billion, but the Japanese
have brought back the clean
skies of their ancestors.

In England you can swim
in the Thames. The Killer
Smogs have been driven
from London. Even in Los
Angeles, where a major air
inversion disaster was
predicted by the 1980s, the
smog season has been
growing shorter since 1974,
due to such innovations as
vapor-recovery nozzles at
gas stations.

This is not to say that the
ecological crisis is over.
With tropical forests being
felted at the rate of 50 acres
a minute, it may be that the
crisis has scarcely begun. |

Ecological awareness has
become -- however dimly — a
part of the political thought
of our time. Witness the

concern “over penguins and

SELECTION OF REBOUNDERS
AND TRAMPOLINES

words, nature must be seen
again as being sacred. And
treated accordingly.

Christianity has frequently
been accused of having
fostered a mood of in-
difference towards nature
which permitted unfettered
industrial exploitation.

Yet a belief-system is in
the head of the believer.
Check out the second
chapter of Genesis, where
“the Lord God took the man
and put him into the garden
of Eden to dress it and to
keep it.” Sounds like an
ecological manifesto.

Perhaps as long ago as
30,000 years, native North
American people “had
devised a belief that God
and Nature were the same.
When they walked, they
walked gently.

It may well be, in one of
the those amazing cyclical
strokes of history, that we

1388 Main St.
North Van
980-4118

are coming back in the 20th
Century to an identical under-
standing! God and Nature
are one.
Certainly,

-this is the

STORE ALT

implication of ecology.
Systems flow into systems,
and between the ultimate
system and the smallest
system, there is: actually no

division. Therefore, we are a

part of nature as much as

nature is a part of us, and

everything is divine.
Hallelujah!

het / FABRIC

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