Spirit in Action

Earth Day 2006 Organizers

A visit with the 3 primary organizers for the 2006 Earth Day Celebration in Owen Park.

Duration:: 59m
Broadcast on:: 28 May 2006
Audio Format:: mp3

I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from this struggle and weak from growing old. I have no voice but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give and make it the ragged and the morn. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue, through you I will be done. Fingers have I none to help I'm done. Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. I have no way to open people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner light. I'm privileged to have on Spirit in Action today, the three people who were the central focus for planning this year's Earth Day celebration held in Owen Park. The queen and princess of Earth Day is Sarah Schmidt, who works at Beaver Creek Reserve as she is the citizen science director at Beaver Creek. She was ably assisted by the two princes of Earth Day, Jim Phillips and Crispin Pierce. Jim is associate professor of chemistry at UW Eau Claire and Crispin Pierce is assistant professor of environmental public health at UW Eau Claire. This is the second year that the Earth Day celebration has been held at Owen Park. It's a relatively new rebirth of an idea that goes back a few decades. But this year's was a tremendous success in growth over previous years. These three people all participated in last year's organization along with a larger committee. They chose to streamline things, and with fewer people heading and assisted by lots of volunteers, they were able to make an amazing thing happen this year. Can you give me some idea of the full panoply of events that went on this year? Sarah? Well, to start off with, there was live music all day, very excellent live music, and then guest speakers dispersed throughout the day as well. I'm talking about important environmental issues in this area and also in the greater Wisconsin region. In addition to that, we had a lot of nonprofit and for-profit exhibitors, about 40 total. And then we had a whole tent dedicated to children's activities, which was sort of a change from last year. And so it was nice to have this one entire tent dedicated to stuff for kids. Good food and just lots of fun. Actually, it was really great also because the city foresters showed up and they planted an Elm Tree in Elm Park in honor of Earth Day 2006. Those are the main things that happened at Earth Day this year. Do we have any idea what the turnout was this year compared to last year? We're getting an estimate of approximately 600 people that showed up this year in comparison to approximately 200 last year, and there's no way to know for sure exactly how many people came, but we sort of based that off of food sales and things like that. We know one of the differences is that last year the temperature didn't rise much above 45 degrees, and so mainly it was just the polar bears or those with an extra inch of insulation on who were able to attend last year. So Sarah, you were kind of heading this up this year, particularly, and you were a vital part of last year's organization. What led you to get involved in the Earth Day celebration? Because I got the job at Beaver Creek as the citizen science director, and so by default I was involved in the planning committee, in college I was involved in planning a couple of special events, and so I really liked doing it, and so I came to a couple of meetings, and after a while I just said, "Alright, well this is what we're going to do." It was good, it was a good experience, but largely I just sort of stumbled into it, but I'm glad I did. You Sarah are in your mid-twenties. That means that you were born after the original Earth Day happened, almost a decade later. Jim, what led you to get involved in this as our thirty-something? One thing that inspired me was the 2003 celebration that was put on over at Rodin Gunpark, and that group tried to do this again in 2004 and ran out of steam for various administrative reasons, and my kids were really upset about it. They're like, "There's not going to be any Earth Day this year, that's a terrible thing," and I said, "Well, next year I'll make sure that we get something together and get it happening." Michelle Wachabek, who was Meg Marshall's assistant out at Beaver Creek Reserve, Meg Marshall was Sarah's predecessor out there, and they came to me with this idea of, "Hey, you were talking about an Earth Day festival, and Beaver Creek Reserve might be willing to put this on." Started talking to them, sent out an email, Crispin was part of the conservationists, and this current group warmed up, and originally we tried to link up with that 2003 group and work together, and not many of those folks made it through to us, just because I think they ran out of steam. At this point I think I understand why, it's a big job. So you know, for me it was really my kids were really, I mean, my six-year-old daughter was in tears when she heard there wasn't going to be an Earth Day celebration, and I said, "Okay, we'll get this done." I think, Jim, that you must have had some previous roots to get them to the original Earth Day. What was it that attracted you to take your kids to the 2003 Earth Day? Have you been involved in Earth Day celebrations and planning before? I'd never been involved in planning one, but where I went to college in Vermont, one of the great days of every spring is that they would have a big Earth Day celebration on the campus screen, faculty would speak about environmental issues, they would have a big tug of war, there would be live music, it was a fun day, and you got to learn something, you know, and again it was part celebration and part learning to appreciate the Earth and all the good things that go with it. And you know, ever since I moved here and got involved with the campus environmental group, I was always talking, "You know, does anybody ever do anything like this at Eau Claire?" And if not, we should start doing it, and there was a lot of the UWEC conservationists involved in that 2003 group. I was their advisor at the time, I was a little too busy to help out a lot, but I was sort of looking on from a distance, and so it was really those years when I was in college that made sort of a strong impression on me that this was the right thing to do to kind of spread the message, especially young people, with a component of celebration and just to be happy about the planet and to celebrate it. I have two more questions to follow up from Jim. One is, what college in Vermont were you going to that had this strong environmental focus, and the other one is, "You're a professor of chemistry, aren't the chemists the one who are supposed to be disboiling the environment?" The first question is easy. I went to Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, which is a college which has a very strong environmental focus and has a big environmental studies program. I get your second question quite a bit, and what I would immediately say is that if chemistry is part of the problem, then chemistry also has to be part of the solution, because if we're making strange chemicals and putting them in the environment, then it's going to take chemistry to understand the problems that are caused by that, you know, a lot of the environmental problems we have in this day and age to take place on a global scale, specifically ozone depletion and climate change, which are probably my two areas of specialty in that respect. It's really about chemical change on a global scale is really the beginning and the middle and the end of the problem, maybe not the end, but certainly it stems from a chemist's viewpoint is actually pretty insightful, especially on these large-scale problems. I wish it wasn't possible for a chemist to see global scale chemical change in the atmosphere and in the oceans, but unfortunately it is. Let's turn to you, Crispin. You were involved both years in the planning. Your environmental public health at the university, and I think you worked in related fields before you came here. Why are you particularly connected to Earth Day and to caring for the Earth? This gives me an opportunity to explore, teach, share the science that I learned, my students learned as part of environmental public health in a community, and we do have several wonderful communities here in Oakland. We have the university community, so I have students that are eager to learn and make a difference who are looking for a job. We have the social community. We see the same people over and over. I'll see Jim and Sarah maybe a couple of times, at least during the summer at advanced that we share, places that we celebrate downtown with the renewal of Phoenix Park, for example. Our kids are playing together in a central location. We all believe in things like smart growth. So with the opportunity to be a professional in environmental public health, I'm able to share what I've learned and learned in turn from my students at the university as we teach the kind of principles to talk about a sustainable environment. Jim and I will give guest lectures, for example, in each of those classes because Jim has a specialty in the chemical aspects and I have some specialty in the public health and environmental health aspects. So within the university, we have a wonderful community. We also have a community here in Eau Claire and in the Chippewa Valley in general of people who share a number of these same values. I'm just very excited to participate in both communities in this way. Do you have a historical connection with Earth Day celebrations, previous locations? Born and raised in Berkeley, California, I grew up with a global perspective. A perspective I certainly appreciate in wanting to pass on to my daughter of respect for the earth, of kind of acknowledgement of the kinds of things we've done and I don't think that the buck stops with Jim in terms of chemists doing damage to the environment, it starts also environmental health specialists. We have traditionally, as a profession, thought, we have to be very, very clean, we have to be very controlled in the way that we interact with the environment. I think people like Jim and I are getting a greater understanding of how chemistry and biology and environmental public health make a difference in how we can look towards sustainable models. So indeed, growing up in Berkeley and finding out about numerous points of view, kind of a sustainable point of view, really helped me in terms of adopting this kind of point of view, but also through my science, seeing that as we look for sustainable models of, as Jim mentioned, climate change, ways in which we can induce our emissions of carbon dioxide, we can preserve trees, we can look at sustainable models of agriculture. They all make sense to me, both as a scientist and somebody who grew up, I think, in a pretty open-minded environment. Before this round of Earth Day celebrations originated in Eau Claire, there was a yearly celebration. It was normally held out at A1 materials, which the sponsor was held out by their place. Any of you have a problem with that symbolism of Earth Day, Jim? I never attended any of those events firsthand, but my understanding was that there were speakers and symposia there that would talk about how hard rock mining was good for the environment, which, as a chemist and an environmentalist or something, I would take issue with, and that they would have bulldozer rides for the kids and push dirt around. I had some friends at work that were cynically referring to that as Earth-moving day, and these wouldn't be real environmentalist types like myself, but more sort of regular mainstream people that were, in some respects, kind of making fun of this in a real cynical way. Again, you might expect somebody like me to do that, but these were way more mainstream people that had this attitude. Jim, you use the phrase "real environmentalists." I'm not trying to pick knits here, I am truly trying to focus in on what makes a person environmentalist, what's important about it, what is important in the world view of a person to be an environmentalist, as opposed to someone who's into an Earth-moving day. Chris? Sure. I think a environmentalist is somebody who is in touch with some deep roots. Somebody who's really connected to his or her environment has an understanding of the way in which we interact with the environment, how the environment supports us. What you've thought about the kinds of difficult changes to see that Jim alluded to earlier in the atmosphere in the sea, somebody who has thought a little bit and become educated about the kinds of changes that are going on, and how he or she understands their own imprint. But I also believe for myself, I think for most people we call themselves environmentalist, there's a real spiritual connection. There's a sense of how I am connected to the Earth. I came from the Earth, I will die to the Earth. We were at the Green Energy Expo at the city's last weekend, and we were looking at an exhibit for how to get buried, and I was talking with my daughter, and we were talking about what happens, that all things die. I think her having an understanding that one day Daddy's going to die and go to the Earth and we talked about the bugs that are going to eat away at my body and how I will go back and replenish the Earth with my dying. I think that's that kind of spiritual connection that for me really is part of the definition of somebody who's an environmentalist. Sarah? In a very general sense, I think being an environmentalist requires having a greater sense of time and space rather than the here and now. We think that right now being here is the most important thing that's happening, and you often forget that there are six billion people going about their daily lives in the world. I think that's important to just not forget that the here is not the most important thing, and the now is not the most important thing. There's an Iroquois, Native American tribes, Iroquois, their practice was that when they made a decision that decision was good if in seven generations it was good, and we don't do that now. So I think that's a huge way to think environmentally as well. Once we were lonely islands, divided by horizons, 100,000 tribes surviving scattered far and high. Hearing only stories, distant territories, peering out across the miles between our shorelines. Then harness nature's forces, straddled backs of forces, waging wars and crossing borders as are known. We bought and sold and traded, oceans were navigated, fades in twine by rails as roads and telephones and spray, crack the coat of fly, spoke fierce and alive, had the speed of light down now, speeding like a small town. A billion people downtown had a little sidewalk there, in earthtown, square. There, a German selling audience, filled with gasoline from the south east, to Australians to big Kenyan coffee in their giant shoes. Our routines of being mongrels, or the french fries at McDonald's, and the plays look strangely tiny when you see it from. There's music in the bar, limbers and guitars, bagpipes and sittas now, it's feeling like a small town, 6 billion people downtown, even babble kind of day, to earthtown, square. As each hour goes by, 10,000 more arrive, and the ding is louder on Main Street. Where you can watch downtown home, and wonder if we'll make room for everybody there. In earthtown, square, in earthtown, square, in earthtown, square, in earthtown, square, in earthtown. Jim? I think you hit on the key point when you use the word care. The common theme that you have amongst all environmentalists broadly defined is that they care about the planet and that they want to make it better one way or another and/or stop its degradation. One of the things that I've learned, both through being a scientist at UWC and through working in this community, is that what it means to be environmental or what environmentalism is is a very personal thing and different people have very different views on what is environmental. A chemist looks at the environment and sees chemical change and pollution and a conservation biologist sees habitat and habitat lost and a guy from an environmental public health sees the human contact and you might ask which one of those is it, well, and the answer is yes. I mean, we all have our own little realm that's important to us, but ultimately I think it's the word care. This first became apparent to me when I took a college course which was actually in religion where we talked about environmental degradation and it finally drove home to me that it was this spiritual connection that one has with the planet or lacks and that it's easy to degrade the planet when you don't see yourself as integrated in part of a larger system and that when there's a spiritual disconnect between people and the environment or people on the earth, that it's a lot easier to degrade. So I think the caring and the spiritual connection is probably the one common theme that runs through all different kinds of environmentalists, Sarah. Just the spin off of the caring thing. I went to hear Tia Nelson speak, Gayler Nelson's daughter, Tia Nelson, and one of the things she said at the end of her talk, and she didn't say this to the whole group, but she would talk to people individually after her addressed to the crowd and she said thanks for caring and she said that more than once. And I really liked that and I sort of took that away from that and I think it's important to just say thanks for caring to people. I think we probably do an injustice to people when we demonize them too much. I'm assuming there's all kinds of people who do not share my environmental views who have just balancing views that they see as more important. For instance, they may think I really need to protect my job. If I don't have food to feed my children, they're not even going to be able to worry about whether the ozone layer is going to be despairing and then leaving them exposed. So in your experiences and all three of you have face-to-face with the public, what are the issues that people seem to have that tear them away from being real environmentalist? Chris? Thanks for a good question, Mark. Some of the primary feeders that drive people that lack of that touch, lack of that caring, that spiritual connection really have to do with things that seem to be revolving around survival and people feel their job is threatened or their family is threatened, or the one their religion is threatened. I think sadly there's a lot of that kind of fear in our society these days driven in part by politics. Me too. If my family was threatened, I would stand up and fight in any way I thought necessary, but I don't need to do that. And there's rare, rare times in our society and our culture we need to fight that hard for things. And ultimately, as Sarah talked about the Iroquois, beliefs are many spiritual beliefs to talk about a sustainable Earth, a sustainable planet. Even the Old Testament and citations within New Testament talking about having dominion over the Earth, but that has been interpreted by a lot of environmentalists is caring for the Earth, looking terms of long-term, sustainable future. So my religion has to do with caring for the Earth. My family has to do with caring for the Earth. My job, and I know the sustainable future, has to do with caring for the Earth. So I think we stop and we let the rhetoric of Fox News and CNN go a little bit past our heads and we sit down and think about what the realities are. We find that the important values to us as a society, jobs, a family of sustainability of health really are imbued with care for the Earth. Sarah? I think just everyday drama gets in the way. I know, especially when you're talking about somebody who's sort of my age 20's-ish. I deal with peers and I try and talk to them. And what I'm hearing a lot is you've got to get the job to get the stuff to live happily. And that's just sort of how it is in our society, that's sort of what's ingrained in your head. And that's not everybody, of course, but I think we just get too caught up in the drama and the here and the now and it keeps us from those more important, larger questions that need to be addressed, larger issues that we need to deal with. Jim? I guess I'd have to admit my views on this are probably a little bit more cynical than my colleagues here. I think the root of the problem is materialism and people ultimately thinking more about themselves than anybody else and the root of that is who knows what, but I think that there's a major misconception in our society that fuels this and that is, in the words of David Orr, whose book I just read, called Earth and Mind, is making a distinction between maximum and optimum and American society is based on maximum and a more sustainable way of living would be based on what's optimum and that is, you know, from economics, economics can mean growth by default and Americans have this faith that economic growth is good. All growth is good, unrestrained growth is even better, more growth is better, bigger pie, more for everybody, but I think if we were to think about economics and its more academic definition, which is a system by which goods and services are delivered to the people in hopefully an inequitable manner that that would be closer to optimum and I just think that the American dream unfortunately gets in the way of seeing this clearly. You all talked in one way or another about the here and now versus the big picture. I heard an interesting reverse take on it about 20 years ago when James Watt was the Secretary of Interior at that point. He was trying to sell off national parks and when asked don't we have to keep this for future generations, he said no because Jesus is coming again soon and there's going to be no need to have the parks in the future. We might as well get rid of him and take advantage of it right now. So he was going beyond the immediate now to here's the big picture as he perceived it. Any reactions to that kind of worldview? Jim. I certainly wouldn't want to be the person that had to face Jesus after we sold off all the national parks. In Quakers we say that friend speaks my mind. Crispin you may even remember when that hollow blue hit the news. I think it's a sad situation. There's certainly room for those kinds of voices in our society but there's room for other voices, ways in which we can say that that really isn't the kind of view that most people in this country share that we don't need to plan for Armageddon, need to plan for a sustainable future. Obviously the three of you put a significant amount of energy into making Earth Day celebration happen this year. What did you hope would come of this celebration? What ways do you hope that it changes or directs the world? Jim. There's two basic things for me. One answer is that I would like to see Earth Day recognized as a regular holiday in which the community gets together to celebrate just like we get together for the Fourth of July and just like we get together for Labor Day and Memorial Day and Earth Day should be on par with those kinds of things that are public holidays. Christmas, Thanksgiving, things like that are things maybe we spend more with our families. The other thing, and maybe this was really idealistic in my part, is that in the last five years or so in this community I have really seen the progressive community start to rise to the surface and that a lot of us have always been around here. We all used to know who each other were and we would talk to each other but now we're getting really public. You're seeing visibility events, we see a daily peace rally, things like this where people are starting to stand up or a certain set of values which hasn't been prevalent in this community. And Earth Day is really a friendly sort of mainstream take on this where you bring the whole community together, it's right near downtown Eau Claire and we're really trying to network with local businesses and things like this and get them involved in it and really try to couple the spiritual values that go along with this into the sort of changing nature of the city that values its downtown and the spirituality and the environmentalism and the economics and the sort of changing face of this community I think are all coupled into this and we'd like to be part of that bigger picture and I think we are. Chrisman, I'm going to let Sarah speak. So there, I think what I'd like to see us do better is see more of the general public down there not just sort of those of us who already care but try to figure out ways to attract those who maybe care but they don't quite know it yet and somehow get them down there so that you can plant the seed of okay well if you if you already recycle maybe you should consider composting too just little things like that so I think we need to try and reach that crowd for future earth days. Chrisman, I like very much what Sarah said I think it makes a lot of sense and really there's a lot in us that is already environmentalists. We have people who love to hunt, love to fish here in Wisconsin really appreciate the outdoors. People who want to have trees near the houses, people want their kids to be healthy. People who don't want to have these little signs on their lawn that say pesticides applied no kids need play here, I think we have a lot of shared environmental values. Jim alluded to a number of them while people really care about the downtown community care about just local food and about the downtown cinema about the children's museum people who really see this as a viable and growing community so I share Sarah's aspirations. I think that to discover a little bit more about the environmentalists in all of us kind of a curious thing did happen at Earth Day for me. One of my colleagues from the school of nursing was staffing our first aid booth and she was concerned about the tree trimming that happened in her neighborhood. Well Todd Koala who's the new city arborist was there so I invited her to complain to Todd. Todd's an environmentalist in a way too he cares for our urban forestry but also has responsibilities for keeping the power lines clear so the two of them had a good conversation. Both environmentalists both caring about our environment and so to make those connections to expand those connections are really I think goals we all have for making Earth even more inclusive and broadening its appeal to the entire community. I wanted to jump in and second Jim's notion that Earth Day should be a primary holiday. I'm aware for me that it has a special place in my connection to the entirety of life in a way that some other holidays do not and that I'm also for changing my life energy so that I give more energy to the holidays that speak of my values. Speaking of that relationship to the big ideas to what some people call God I'm wondering if I can encourage you to maybe not engage in theological debate here but to just share some ideas that you have of how we relate to one another to other species to other plants animals the earth what concept you have of how we are connected why we're connected are we just simply specks of dust occupying similar place and space or is there some meaning beyond that that you see that connects all of us. Chris? Mark I see God every day and I take a wall in the backyard my six-year-old daughter in the backyard we see God every day we see the nats that were buzzing around the building where I work and we talked about that they'll be they'll be passed on in 24 hours she asked where the nats go she asked where the cat that died in our arms went and we buried the cat so for me God is very very present in the trees and the decomposing body and the ants and my beautiful six-year-old daughter and when I get to dance there's just many ways in which we see God and have a very visceral and complete experience of God. Sarah? Sarah I'm still struggling with this one and not because I don't believe in some Supreme Being or something greater than us I think that I've come to the conclusion that the time that I feel most close to my spiritual self and this might sound cliche but it truly is when I have time to sit alone and think and the time when that happens and the time when it's most productive is when I'm backpacking because you're alone and there's nobody around and there's no disruptions and you're sitting outside and it doesn't really get any better than that and so it's a really good time to reflect and I think that's when I feel closest to those types of things but when I say I'm struggling it's just I haven't quite found my niche yet but I'm okay with that. I think just basically it's important to care and to have a greater sense of just like I said this greater idea of the here and now or the greater than the here and now and think beyond that and then just look out for fellow people take care of them. I learned this interesting definition of community relatively recently. It's sort of all the Leopold's take on community and that is community is not just people. If you ask people what a community is they're going to start out probably by telling you it's a gathering of people blah blah blah. This is a very radical notion but thinking of community not as just us as people but other animals, plants and not just animals and plants but what about the soil bacteria? What about the bacteria that live in our bodies and what not and yes it's very radical and very sort of difficult for a lot of people to grasp but it makes sense to me. Jim's ready. Spirituality in the traditional Christian sense has always been a little difficult for me mainly due to some marginal experiences growing up and maybe going off to college to be a scientist and getting into that as a naive 18 year old thinking that you're learning the truth and that science is the truth and has all the answers and it takes a few years to get past that. Where I really sort of found my spirituality in the literal sense is when I learned more about Eastern philosophies and the key thing in those is the connectedness the way everything is a big web and everything gains its essence from its relationship to everything else. When this really hit home for me when it came to environmentalism was how this train of thought applies to ecological thinking in communities and how all the creatures in a community are related to each other and gain their life energy from the relationship to everything else and they don't necessarily have this on their own essentially selflessness. It's legal but even extend this to the rocks and all the non-living things and you know as a chemist you know I can see all the molecules out there and how they sort of all connect with one another and how the energy flows through everything. To me it's just a holistic worldview and being connected to nature as a human being just fits right into that whole picture. My spiritual beliefs were really honed through being out in the woods and looking around and saying how I connect to everything whether I'm just walking around or whether I'm trying to convince a trout that my fly is real to a certain extent and a lot of the improvisational music that I've played it's the same kind of thing where all the instruments come together to make a whole and not any one of them sort of works in and of itself and I think viewing yourself as part of the natural community that way is only natural once I've come to that way of thinking. There's a street in Rivertown and on that street is Mary's house by the house of the deep ravine and running there is a magic street laughing over the sand and rocks it runs a length of Mary's block, another mile to the river side and a thousand more to the ocean wide. Now down to that ravine one day by the water Mary lay put her hand in the shallow stream and Mary had a magic dream. She imagined that inside her stirred all the waters of the earth every puddle every creak and every one of the seven seas. She could feel the fishes roar in her face and her toes and in her chest the Gulf of the north. Now ever since her dream that day people say that Mary's change but they sympathize when they suppose it must be strange to be the ocean. She senses when the salmon swim in hurricanes lick her skin, Asia tickles her left arm and the moon above tucks her heart. Her front is day, her back is night she recollects the dawn of life tidal waves run up her spine and lightning tingles when it strikes and she can feel the fishes roar in her face and in her chest the Gulf of the north. And all this happens so it seems because of Mary's magic stream but some will say that lakes and wells and even rain can cast a spell and every water drop you ask. Tails a tale of oceans vast so careful when you take a drink as this magic in the kitchen I've definitely heard some people who refer to themselves as Christians maybe fundamentalist Christians who disparage people who kind of worship earth goddess type ways of thinking. Have you had to deal with that kind of tension in your lives the people who said well if you're religious you're not supposed to worship the earth you're supposed to worship God and do you have to deal with that out at Dever Creek for instance Sarah or do you have students who come in Crispin who say I can't think these thoughts because they run into my religious beliefs that the universe is people centered and therefore the universe has to revolve around the earth the earth can't be spinning through space. You know at the university we stay away from opinion it's not something we teach we teach science we teach basic philosophy we teach a liberal arts education we ask students to try on different points of view so I will present my students the facts on global warming for example or sea level change loss of species and I'll allow them to begin to see where their values fit and how this fits or doesn't fit with their values I am excited though Mark that recently there have been groups of evangelical Christians who see global warming for example as real threat to human value the people are now starting to die through spread of disease and loss of habitat loss of farms where they work lost of their communities so I'm really quite excited to see part of the Christian evangelical community look at the environment as something that protects and supports people and so religion can also do that to care for God's creation so I'm excited to see some of those voices now come from very traditional Christian communities. Jim? You know I've seen remarkably little of the sort of adverse viewpoint regarding staunch Christian beliefs at the university. I might be a little bit more forward than Christman in my classes when I teach a class on climate I'll go through the science when we get to the end and say okay here we are it's a moral decision what are your morals we've just confronted the science okay there's some uncertainty in the science here's here's what you get from science now it's time to make a judgment and you need to weigh your values to make the judgment and you need to nurture your values to make that judgment you know I'll be very upfront about it I've never encountered any resistance then I've never endorsed any particular value system to counter that but I've said you know now it's time for you to be an educated person and one of the things you need to do as an educated person is to develop that value system and be ready to use it. What is that value system based on that is to say do you just pick your values out of the air or where did they derive from I ask this in part because one of the big questions for me is if we kill another species let's say we you know exterminate this species of whale or we do get rid of this species of fish or maybe we kill all of the mosquitoes in the world I know that there are implications to our life that is to say when you kill one species it affects another species it affects a habitat and pretty soon it affects us but if people weren't on the earth if there weren't people here at all would it still matter if a species was wiped out is there some value that transcends the benefit of homo sapiens? Jim? I guess I'd pick up on Sarah's theme from before and divert to Leopold here who said you know absolutely the mosquitoes have value the rocks have value the land itself has inherent value and I just think that for me it's just like you wouldn't harm another person or anything else that it's just a matter of expanding your circle of those things which deserve an ethical treatment and for me it only seems natural to treat all things equal living and non-living at least as much as possible I mean that's an ideal to strive for anyway does that mean it's the same moral question whether you eat a cow or whether you eat a person? I suppose not but certainly I do think that whether you're eating a cow or not is a moral question that you should answer I mean I had a hamburger for dinner tonight but you know when I talk to my kids about this I make sure that you know they understand what they're eating and that you need to understand your impact and that if you're going to eat animals that it's not something that came in a package at the grocery store that this was a living thing and if you can't accept that then you shouldn't be doing it like I said I'm okay I hunt animals and catch fish and eat them but I think there's a certain amount of remorse that goes with that I just think just doing it blindly and saying that didn't matter it was just a grouse and I just ate it is kind of shallow when I'm out in the woods hunting I view it is this deeply spiritual experience where I'm out there connecting with nature and you know I get to be a predator for a few hours and it's very rare that I actually ever get anything so the moral dilemma is very minimal in my sense but me at see this being part of the process you know in some people saying wait a second you're in a environmentalist and you'll go out and hunt but I think harvesting game isn't anywhere near as much of a detriment as agriculture is and with all due respect to the farmers out there I think you know everybody's going to weigh their impact and almost everything we do has an impact of one form or another and I think it's easy to get hung up on the impact that you have on an individual you know if you chop down that tree to make paper or you shoot the animal to eat it that there you see in a specific individual loss of life but I think in the more holistic sense you know driving our car and using a lot of disposable stuff is probably more detrimental in the bigger picture but a lot harder to see takes a lot more effort to sort of view the impact of that. Crispin I think we see those kind of values in Franklin pets is what I think of using an example of having berry our little kitty. I think people can relate to that animals that within their house the cats and dogs we have dartanian my big big hundred pound guy who licks everybody to death we relate to that in a very clear way we care for those animals. I think the kind of extension of that loving and caring and seeing the connectedness is what really environmentalism is all about so at a very personal level the kind of pets we have in our house at a broader level that Jim talked about the trees the species we hunt and fish and even broader way like the way Jim put it we're talking about having effects on all the organisms in the world loss of species every 20 minutes and to really evaluate how we feel about that what difference that makes if that's truly where we want to go what impact we have all essential questions. Crispin you just mentioned about loss of species I had a question posed to me and I'm hoping someone here can answer it. We can talk about the fact that dinosaurs died off in essence that there's major species that have been exterminated in the past. I'm trying to think of one that we could name a significant species that has been exterminated in the last 50 years. The logo for the state in which I was born in California at Grissombearer is extinct. A flag that's flown in California all over the state that species of Grissombearer is extinct yep it's a very sad story. Species that represented kind of the frontier of the Old West is no longer with us I think it's a very sad statement. Sarah this is probably kind of funny answer but I think of the passenger pigeon right away because it's a good example of this super abundant species that people talked about that would fly in flocks overhead and block the sun and people just felt the need to kill kill kill until they were gone but that's one that I think of right away because it was sort of ingrained as a kid when they're teaching about species extinction it's kind of the poster bird if you will of the extinct species. Jim as I sat and tried to think of an answer to this unfortunately all I could think of were a lot of success stories where a lot of animals were pushed to the brink of extinction we have sort of maintained that or averted a disaster. Unfortunately a lot of the species that are going extinct are for lack of a better term maybe minor things that we don't notice in other words if the bald eagle went extinct everybody noticed right away because it's a top dog predator and a lot of these species that are going extinct seem insignificant but the key thing I think that people don't understand if I can just make a purely scientific comment here was that the more species that we have on the planet the more resiliency and stability there is for life as a whole and for each species we lose the world as a whole or at least the animal and plant communities become more fragile and as those communities become more fragile the whole system becomes more fragile so the things that seem insignificant are by no means insignificant. I was just wondering if the three of you would be willing to share a little of your religious spiritual background in particular I want to know if there's something in your background which upheld encouraged your spiritual religious devotion to the earth the caring that effort you speak about or if there's something that was lacking in that religious environment such that you had to leave it because it could no longer encompass the bigger heart that you were feeling. Sarah? Well I was raised Catholic and my old family practices Catholicism I even went to a couple of sort of Bible camp retreats in high school so I feel like I gave it a good go you know I so I feel like I really really thoroughly explored that religion and ultimately I came to the conclusion and I think probably in college just through the more I learned the less I felt like I could fit in that particular religion and by no means am I saying anything negative about that particular religion at all because my entire family is Catholic and it's interesting and I've gotten into discussions with my family about it they never try and change my mind nor do they argue with me but it's just a sort of sharing of ideas and I think they can respect what I've come to so I think for me it just didn't work like I said I'm still trying to find my niche or what it is that I believe in but I think sort of my education in science and being a biologist didn't jive with that particular belief system for me a friend of mine once said look there's a bajillion ways to get from here to there or there being heaven or what some people call heaven or whatever you want to call it and the bottom line is as long as you're a good person along the way then there's no reason to give people a hard time for what they believe. Jim? You know my background in formal religion is extremely limited I was raised in a Piscopalian family my family stopped going to church when I was seven years old. Religion really did not play a major part in my family life growing up at all and then again going off to study science and college and sort of being naive about that it didn't seem like those kinds of things had a place in my life and you know probably discovered them in hindsight through pursuing the scientific and musical sides of things where you start to study science and you realize that well when you get in there deep enough into physics while all the answers aren't there and it starts to get closer to theology than you think it does all the post-modern views of science all start from a mechanistic worldview which through logic and purely non-spiritual things get led around to this holistic worldview you know in biology taxonomy from the 19th century becomes ecology in the 20th century and in physics classical physics of the 18th century you know becomes quantum physics which has very unknowable spiritual parts to it in the 20th century these are the things that maybe opened my mind to spirituality and that was at this point where I actually started taking then courses in college and religion so you know maybe my whole experience is backwards in this respect. Crispin. I think I may feel the same kind of I don't want to put words in your mouth you know but awkwardness or discomfort I had a very similar background with the process of upbringing until I was about seven years old and things didn't fit. I had to imagine a face of God and a Jesus Christ of apostles of Mary and Mary Maglin and all the images and it truly became an issue of faith and it didn't fit for me as Sarah had mentioned also I started becoming involved with education and finding out more about science finding more about the environment about biology and biochemistry and about environmental health. It became alive really in the middle of my life in my 30s I started to see the connectedness I started to see the ways I could experience God firsthand and that became very real so I don't know that I would say nature is my religion per se but certainly it's a way in which I feel connected and can have an active day-to-day experience of religion in seeing how things change seeing how I can make a difference seeing how my beautiful dog grows up seeing how the wildlife pond we dug two days ago is starting to have little skater bugs the ways in which I see things happen it becomes very very real for me and so I believe that is a fundamental principle of my faith. I'm pretty sure for all three of you that your devotion to caring for the earth does not end with planning and putting on the earth day celebration. I know a couple things about you but I want to invite you to jump in and say how are you living out and making a difference caring for the world how are you building this bigger sense of connection in the world. Crispin I wanted to ask you there was an ordinance that you helped participate in getting passed can you tell us a little bit about that. I'm really excited about this ordinance it's a provision to the weed ordinance that allows people to choose to plant native grasses, forbs and shrubs as opposed to lawns. Lawns are very very expensive environmentally economically it's about 400 dollars an acre to maintain. There's a lot of noise and pollution a lot of problems so now the city of Eau Claire has an option for people who like myself want to plant a beautiful native prairie landscape it's going to be small it's going to look a little messy for the first year or two but it gives all of us an opportunity to have a lower maintenance and very beautiful yard some need to support butterflies and well mosquitoes the first year but the second year and mosquitoes are taken care of by other species provide bird habitat we got in the yard now my daughter identifies the chickadees and the song sparrows for me so this kind of opportunity not only is it ecologically sound but it's really motivated by the city they don't want to have to keep giving people citations for not cutting their lawns above seven inches so it makes sense economically environmentally and as a culture we have more options. In the ordinance that was passed is there a permit process you have to go through or will the city just recognize that the things that are growing in your yard are acceptable leaves. Well there's been some training of city staff which I think are doing a wonderful job so if there's a complaint by neighbor the city staff will come by and take a look at if they believe that there is a violation of the ordinance if grasses are longer than seven inches and really aren't being cared for they will contact the homeowner at that point the homeowner needs to make a case say well I am transitioning over to my native grasses and this is what I'm doing to do that upon that review the violation will be lifted. The city is certainly not interested in giving a free pass to folks that just don't want to mow their lawns so certainly that will continue to be enforced but for people who really are looking to provide a better habitat are going to do some native plantings this is an opportunity to work with the city to provide a more beautiful natural landscape. What are you doing out there at Beaver Creek Sarah besides planning Earth Day? The overall slogan for Beaver Creek Reserve generally speaking is connecting people's nature and I see that done on a daily basis in spring because we have busloads of kids come out there every day and our naturalists do a wonderful job working with those children doing activities outdoors and teaching them why animals do the certain things that they do so I think just generally that's Beaver Creek Reserve's slogan but the citizen science center specifically what we do is we sort of act as a connection between professionals at the university at the DNR where the connection between those folks and then your average citizen who wants to get involved and do something and how about and I have some amazing volunteers that are dedicating a huge chunk of their summer to do stream monitoring for example the monitoring that they're doing is actually they're collecting data that can be utilized by the DNR for example it's really a fulfilling thing to be doing because you're getting people out there and they're getting out in the field and they're collecting valuable data but at the same time they're reporting back and saying it's really amazing to watch how a stream changes over five months you go out once a month from May to September and the amount of change that happens in those five months is really incredible and so people are finding their own connections or rekindling connections that they once had with nature Jim I think of the most pragmatic sense one of the things I've tried to do is really get some courses going in environmental chemistry at UWC which were non-existent before I got there I was pretty adamant about getting them started and lo and behold I had two or three colleagues that immediately jumped off the bench and said hey I want to do this too I think that's particularly significant because you know chemistry is a real strong program at UWC and really well respected but the sort of underlying political feel of the program when I got there was the chemical industry is great everything the chemical industry does is great the oil companies are great we're all great yay to the American Chemical Society and that's changing a lot and it's changed a lot in my department I think that's a productive thing probably the biggest pragmatic contribution I make to this is through my job as an educator and trying to get students to think about this you know in terms of my personal actions I would say that in terms of being environmentalist I would still characterize myself as in something of a state of recovery and that you know and this is why I tell people in my classes the first important thing here is that you understand what your impacts are and that just like when you're about to go on a diet these changes that you need to make in your lifestyle to stabilize the climate or whatever are not easy choices to make but the first thing you need to do is identify the changes you need to make and then work on them and feel a little guilt when you're not doing such a good job of working on them so in that respect especially being interested in climate I still don't walk to work every day and I still turn up my furnace when I'm cold and I still mow my lawn although I don't put chemicals on my lawn Crispin you know and try to do the best thing I can but I think what I'm getting at here is I would encourage everybody out there to avoid the pressure of perfectionism among a lot of the environmentalists I know there's a bit of an extremism out there that says okay now you're environmentalists you never eat meat you never drive you never do anything bad and I just you know we need to be not judge model of other people and more importantly not judge mental of ourselves and try to improve ourselves a little bit every day and do the best job we can and not be so hard on us when we decide okay we drove an extra few miles the key thing is accepting the fact that driving those gesture miles was a bad decision and be a little bit more patient with yourself when it comes to sort of turning that around and doing it so again as an environmental next year too Sarah the answer is most definitely yes we're actually having a meeting in a couple weeks here to go over what was good what we could improve on from this last earth day maybe even get a timeline together for earth day 2007 yep we'll be there Jim absolutely it was a lot easier to do the second time than it was the first time and if there's anybody out there that's interested in helping with next year's earth day celebration because we can always use more people that are willing to take something on and organize it and there are facets of this event that we'd really like to add to it that Sarah and Chris Ben and I do not have the stamina to take on ourselves so you know how to reach us either at the university or through wise radio or wherever track us down and we'd love to have your help actually it'd probably help if we did have a website and or email that people could direct themselves to so Jim how would they get and hold of you find the chemistry department homepage at uwec.edu go to faculty and find Jim Phillips and there's a link to my email Sarah are you reachable yes and my email is sara@beavercreekreserve.org so that sara s-a-r-a at beavercreekreserve which is all one word dot o-r-g christman did you want to stay anonymous no i'd love to have contact with folks and as Jim said we would love to have more and more people at this event i'm reachable through the environmental public health program web page at the university of wisconsin oclair my email address is piercech p-i-e-r-c-e-c-h at uwec.edu thanks to all three of you for making sure that this really high quality earth day celebration happened this year thank you for guaranteeing it into the future i think you're making a difference for the world definitely for our kids and definitely for the city of oclair thank you for having us mark thank you mark it's a pleasure to be here thanks mark you've been listening to a spirit in action interview with the organizers of this year's 2006 earth day celebration in owen park sara schmidt christman pierce and jim phillips you can hear this interview again via my website northern spirit radio dot org where you also find additional information about the program and links about this and other programs music featured on this program has included two songs by peter mayor earthtown square and ocean mary the theme music for spirit in action is i have no hands but yours by carol johnson thank you for listening i welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit you can email me at helps meet at usa dot net may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action i have no peace to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness you [MUSIC PLAYING]