I saw a new film about the legendary environmentalist Aldo Leopold, his life and his legacy. The films name is Green Fire. It's bittersweet, gives you hope and makes you cry.

Here is a link to the site for the movie. http://www.greenfiremovie.com/

After the film, a few of us had a debate about the "Land Ethic" as it relates to environmental sustainability. Is the land ethic overarching everything we do, or is sustainability what we look to for our guidance? There were two camps, one was that environmental sustainability was the overarching concept while the land ethic was only a subset of environmental sustainability and the other was that the land ethic is the main idea for where environmental sustainability is created. I felt that the land ethic is the overarching guideline that we base our decisions on regarding environmental sustainability. The ethic gives us guidance to determine what is sustainable. We can't have environmental sustainability without a land ethic.

I pulled a couple of excerpts from Leopold's book

The Land Ethic

By Aldo Leopold,
from A Sand County Almanac, 1948

When god-like Odysseus returned from the wars in Troy, he hanged all on one rope a dozen slave-girls of his household, whom he suspected of misbehavior during his absence.
This hanging involved no question of propriety. The girls were property. The disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency, not of right and wrong.
Concepts of right and wrong were not lacking from Odysseus' Greece: witness the fidelity of his wife through the long years before at last his black-prowed galleys clove the wine-dark seas for home. The ethical structure of that day covered wives but had not yet been extended to human chattels. During the three thousand years which have since elapsed, ethical criteria have been extended to many fields of conduct, with corresponding shrinkages in those judged by expediency only.

Land Ethic

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly, not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic, of course, cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.

The Ethical Sequence

This extension of ethics, so far studied only by philosophers, is actually a process in ecological evolution. Its sequence may be described in ecological as well as in philosophic terms. An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic philosophically is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-operation. The ecologist calls fees symbioses. Politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which the original free-for-all competition has been replaced, in part, by co-operative mechanisms with ethical content.
The complexity of co-operative mechanisms has increased with population density, and with the efficiency of tools. It was simpler, for example, to define the anti-social uses sticks and stones in the days of the mastodons than of bullet and billboards in the age of motors.
The first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals; the Mosaic Decalogue is an example. Later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society. The Golden Rule tries to integrate the individual to society, democracy to integrate social organization to the individual.
There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but no obligations.
The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if I read the evidence correctly, an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity. It is the third step in a sequence. The first two have already been taken. Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief. I regard the present conservation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation.
An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological situations so new or intricate, or involving such deferred reactions, that the path of social expediency is not discernible to the average individual. Animal instincts are modes of guidance for the individual in meeting such situations. Ethics are possibly a kind of community instinct in-the-making.

We have been working on our vision statement and the mission for Million Green Communities. Here is what we have so far...

By providing the necessary education, leadership training and resource development in relation to natural resource sustainability, sustainable food development and consumption, human impacts on the environment and dependability on imported goods, Million Green Communities vows to create one million green communities with a goal of saving each community one million dollars through the process of becoming more sustainable.

I've been asked to be on the board of a new non-profit called 1 Million Green Communities. I'm excited to get back to one of my missions, to educate communities on sustainability. The idea is to build sustainable communities from cities and towns and help those communities have a more positive impact on the environment while saving them 1 million dollars in the process. We have a meeting this Saturday to discuss our non-profit status. My revised creed is "Through providing information on how one can reduce their carbon footprint and negative environmental impact, “ How Green Is It?” aspires to influence businesses, communities and individuals to become more aware of how they affect the environment and assist them in having a more positive impact on the environment."

Now if I can only figure out a way to be sustainable while contributing to the greater good ;)

Wikis help make the world a smaller place. Wikis and blogs enable people who don't normally have a voice to be heard and those who have a voice not to be edited. Unfortunately, there are times that it is used for propagating propaganda, but since it's an open forum it also allows for rebuttal. These types of forums allow for people to ban together, collaborate, or be combative and allow for healthy debate. They help people not to feel alone and may have helped to instigate the revolutions, or revolts, happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and other Arab nations.

How Green Is It?

Through providing information on how one can reduce their carbon footprint and negative environmental impact, “ How Green Is It?” aspires to influence businesses and individuals to become more aware of how they affect the environment and assist consumers in purchasing green goods and services.

Through providing information on how one can reduce their carbon footprint and negative environmental impact, “ How Green Is It?” aspires to influence businesses and individuals to become more aware of how they affect the environment and assist consumers in purchasing green goods and services.

I can't believe that it has been almost 6 years since I posted anything! I've since moved back to San Francisco and have been searching for my next adventure.

I want that adventure to involve the greater good, but what does that exactly mean?

I've created communities to help bring people together that have common needs, communities for supporting specific needs of an interest group, communities for networking in a specialized field, and communities that support the green movement. I've also created communities to support products and services. All my career and most of my life I've been getting involved with communities or creating communities that bring people together. I think any community can be for the greater good even if it's just to give people a purpose, or social outlet. These communities are becoming more necessary as technology removes a lot of human interaction. People are craving to be part of something and want a feeling of belonging. I want to take advantage of my skills and past experience, or passion, of bringing people together.

Blogging Code of Ethics

Blogs can be used for the common good or with malicious intent. There is a moral struggle going on with the blogosphere that the news distributors face as a constant battle. In some cases, the news distributors have gone to the extreme of too much filtering based on opinions, morality, and opportunity. The blogosphere is a new way to disseminate information without filters, but do we need to put up some filters to flush out the immoral, spam, and the illegal? Where do those filters begin and end? What is our moral duty?

How do we disseminate information from the blogosphere without filtering too much and without using the content to sway opinion or for malicious intent?

A Changing Market and The Educated Consumer

It’s human nature to strive for happiness and eliminate suffering. It’s a well-known tactic of marketers to play on the human need to find happiness and create champagnes that state they will invoke happiness if the consumer acquires their products. Some marketing takes advantage of societies attitude toward material possession and the myth that possession will create happiness when in turn possession really causes attachment to material things and potentially the addiction to purchasing products. This can lead to discontent because true happiness can only come from within. Getting consumers to want more by convincing them that the more they have the happier they will be, actually brings upon a larger feeling dissatisfaction and frustration. Will there be a new form of marketing where marketers form a trusting relationship with their patrons and create campaigns around the facts of the product, not the feelings or emotions that the product is trying to invoke?

People want to trust someone, believe that manufacturers are out for their best interests and are creating quality products. Some companies have achieved this successfully, Volvo, Toyota, Maytag, Sears Craftsman, Kelloggs and more.

There are two types of consumers, the educated consumer, who usually doesn’t fall prey to the emotional marketing tactics and the emotional consumer, the one who is looking for the product that will bring them happiness. Marketers need to address both of these types of consumers to be successful. If consumers have access to information, especially technology-savvy consumers, then why not give it to them in a way that's easy to read. They’re going to find it anyway. What if marketers supply the information to the consumer, exactly the same information that they would find on the Internet, but propagate it in a way that the marketer can control? Creating a structured delivery mechanism so the marketer then catalogs information, the same information that the consumer will find on the internet, in a way they can control the delivery. Advertising is changing. Consumers are more educated. They don’t fall for the hard sell and they want someone who will stand behind the product.

Many consumers who are technology savvy don’t watch commercials because of TiVO and the like. They do their research on the Internet and are the educated consumers. Why not help them find the information that they will find already. Set up a page where you can organize the content in a way that will display the same information they will find on the Internet, but display it in the best way possible for the marketer. Control how the consumer views the information, not only what they see, but how they see it. Thinking like an educated consumer I would think that most consumers would look for a product's shortcomings before looking for a product's benefits. Marketers can set up blogs and organize the content in a way that benefits them instead of letting the consumer find search for information based on what downfalls the products have.

The Yin and Yang of Weblogs.

Weblogs remove generation gaps, country boundaries, prejudices, some socioeconomic boundaries while opening up an entirely new way of communicating and gathering information. They enable the raw transfer of data and opinions. People can use these blogs for communicating, gathering raw information and re-purpose the information in unlimited ways. They can use it for forming or influencing opinions, gathering market research, populating targeted portals, collaborating, fact-finding and so much more. The possibilities are endless. The most difficult areas of blog content management are the vast amounts of information, rapidly increasing the magnitude of information and an endless way to organize, repurpose and distribute that information. How to use this information is completely open to interpretation and hopefully will stay that way free from regulations and restrictions.

Some issues as blogs mature will develop around people using Blogs as a way to propagate information whether it’s entirely truthful or folklore. Developing propaganda on this medium is easy to do and whether it’s used as spam, or to influence the naive it’s unfortunately sometimes part of human nature to push something as far as possible without using integrity and with a disregard for what’s moral and good. The Yin and Yang of Blogs.

Tibet

The high plateaus, protruding mountains and mammoth temples poised against the vast landscape captured my gaze and dwarfed my being. Tibetan flags and rock piles posed on every peak. The people of Tibet were curious, joyful, warm and friendly. They expressed themselves by smiling and waving, children shared their candy and gum. Walking down the street it wasn’t uncommon for a monk to walk silent alongside you or children attempt to communicate. It was natural for a child to grab your hand, giggle, and walk with you.

In the old world the farms, homes, and businesses were impeccable buildings made from mud and straw whitewashed and trimmed with bright colors and Tibetan prayer flags. The towns built by the Chinese were stark in contrast built in the architectural style of form follows function with a splash of neon from the 40’s and 50’s.

This magical place is captured in my photographs. I hope they bring you as much joy viewing them as I received in taking them.

Nepal

The craggy rocks, towering peaks, and raging rivers are a steady complement to the rugged people of Nepal. The towns and villages, made from the abundance of natural resources, flimsy plywood and corrugated steel, are dwarfed by the scenery. People from all over the world converge to explore the towns and villages or bask in the vast wilderness. You're reminded of your mortality at every turn whether it’s gasping for air while trekking at 16,000 feet, viewing the memorials, cast in the shadow of Everest, of people that died trying to reach the top of the highest mountain in the world, or awakening suddenly to the feeling that your drowning at 17,000 feet.

New York... 

What more can I say? The people, the culture and the diversity.

Red Square

“Capitalism,” was repeated several times by the man on the podium as he raised his hand furiously into the air. I could only understand one word, but the crowd’s applause told me that they were in agreement. It was my last day in Moscow, the only day I had to see the city. I walked through the city center to catch a glimpse of the Kremlin and Red Square before I had to fly to London that afternoon.

Earlier, when I asked for directions, the woman at the hotel informed me that there was a communist rally in Red Square. As I came upon the city center I was drawn to the faces of the people who were not embracing capitalism, in a country where capitalism is flourishing. They gathered together in commonality but didn’t seem to be fighting for anything. There was little excitement in the crowd’s mood. They were quiet and composed. What I found in the faces was solemn remorse. Faces embracing the past as a patriot embraces the familiar, not because it is something decent, but maybe because it was something familiar.

Pictures of old leaders and war relics dangled on strings around their necks or otherwise displayed by the demonstrators. It quickly became apparent that any thread of passion displayed was for celebrating the past. The future was upon them and the energy exuded from the crowd was not going to change it. The rally was meant to inspire and generate enthusiasm for communism, but it was more of remembrance or a memorial and a way to find solace amidst the change. People politely listening to speakers showed their patriotism by wearing old uniforms, carrying flags and displaying mementos.

On the other side of the square, they were celebrating a holiday, the anniversary of the day that the Soviet Union defeated Germany in World War II. D-day.

Moscow

The words were enormous and full of unfamiliar characters, on the documents that were sent to me for my trip to Moscow. The only English was on the document with the official stamp, “Visa Coupon.” I didn't know how to read Russian and it was so far from any Latin based language there was no way to guess what the words meant.

I was careful to take the documents in my hand luggage when I left for my trip.

In the Thomson Weiterstadt, Germany office I spoke with Rainer and he told me of going to Moscow for the first time and having his entry arranged for him by Kodak. When he arrived in Moscow there were no arrangements made. He had no visa and was detained and almost deported. Kodak had to arrange a way for him to stay in Moscow without a visa. It was then that I thought, “Well, I’m glad I have my visa”.

The day I left for Moscow I waited in the long line at the airport. When I approached the counter the woman asked me where I was going. When I responded “Moscow” she asked to see my visa and I produced the papers I had in my possession. She noticed the dates on the papers didn’t match my ticket and said that I may have to change my return flight. I asked if it was possible to extend my visa while I was in Russia? She said she didn’t know and phoned the authorities. She informed me that there was a time when Russia would purposely produce visas with a date that was shorter than the duration of the stay and this, she said, was so they could charge you more for a visa extension while you were in their country. She then said the person on the phone was confident that it would be easy to extend my visa while I was in Moscow.

When I arrived in Moscow I entered the line for passport control. I approached the man behind the glass, gave him my passport and asked how I would extend my visa. He paused while he looked at something on the computer. He asked to see my visa, took my papers and studied them carefully. He looked at the computer and then at the line of people waiting and back at the computer again. He left the booth and walked over to a man behind a raised desk. The desk was so tall that the border agent had to crank his neck straight up to see the man leaning forward peering down over the top of the desk. He came back over to the booth and asked me to follow him. We walked over to a bench perched against a dark gray concrete wall and he asked me to wait there. The lighting was dull florescent and It was some time before the man that was behind the raised desk stepped down and walked over. He said the documents I had were, “how you say an invitation to come to Russia.” He continued to ask me why I didn’t have a visa. I told him I thought that was a visa. He said, "stay there and I will send your documents upstairs."

A man in a dark suit came through one of the locked doors. He asked, "is there was someone who is meeting you at the airport?"

"There should be a man with a Thomson sign that was to take me to my hotel," I replied.

I looked up and asked if there was a phone that I could use. The man behind the raised desk said no. I noticed some payphones down the hall. I went to them, put my credit card in the slot but nothing happened. I pressed “0” several times and there was dead static coming from the receiver. There were no slots for coins. I tried the same on the other payphone and it was the same scenario. I asked again if there was a phone I could use and the man behind the raised desk told me the phone he has doesn’t get an outside line. I asked him how to use the payphone and he told me I needed a phone card. I asked how I get a phone card and he didn’t answer me.

I asked if there was any way to make a call without a phone card. No. I said there has to be a way I can make a phone call, his response was “the woman who works the phones no work on Saturday.”

The man sitting next to me offered his mobile phone. I tried calling the one number I had for Alla, the Thomson representative in Moscow. When I dialed I heard a long message in Russian. I wanted to try to phone Rainer, but the man with the phone was taken away.

I asked the man behind the raised desk if I could use his mobile phone and offered to pay him. He asked for the telephone number, dialed the number and handed me the phone. Rainer picked up, but he couldn’t hear me. I tried a couple of other times and never got through. The network wouldn’t let me leave a voice mail. Soon after the mobile phone failures, a man in the dark suit came through the locked door with a man carrying a Thomson sign. He had Alla on his mobile phone. She was angry that something like this could happen. I told her no one told me what to do with the documents and that I thought they were my Visa. She said that she thought I was an experienced traveler and I told her that I’ve never been to Russia.

I had applied for several visas and every time it was different. One wanted 2 copies of my passport and I received a paper document with an embossed stamp, others were as easy as standing in a line at the destination airport and getting a sticker in my passport and one I had to send my physical passport to the consulate. She continued to say that all the information was sent to Germany to get my visa. I said I was asked to send in a copy of my passport to the Thomson office in Weiterstadt to get my visa, which is what I had done. I told her that I received several documents in the mail including the Visa coupon.

As we continued speaking she told me that the driver had made an arraignment with the customs office. She informed me that I could pay $350.00 in cash without a receipt or record of payment and I can stay for 3 days. I asked if there was any way to extend that for the entire week and she started getting very flustered. She told me this was the deal the driver had made. The driver took the phone from me and hung up. I asked him if there was any way to extend the visit for a week. No answer. Alla was back on the phone. I asked her if Thomson was going to reimburse me for the money and she didn’t know. I didn’t feel comfortable with that and said if they can’t extend it then there is no reason to take their offer. I couldn’t pay because I didn’t have that kind of cash on me. The driver took the phone away from me. I tried to speak with the man in the dark suit who very impatient. I asked if I could extend my stay for a week. He didn’t answer me. The driver and the man exchanged several words turned and walked through the locked door.

I asked the man behind the raised desk what was happening and he said I will be deported and I will have to spend the night here. When I asked him if I could go to the hotel he said you have to stay here and pointed to where I was sitting clarifying his statement. I looked around at the dimly lit area with bare concrete walls and dark concrete floors. There were several benches all with 4 scarcely padded seats.

The man behind the raised desk asked me to follow him. I followed him to the other side of the passport control where there were the same benches, desks and passport windows. He asked me for my ticket.

Several others were sitting on the benches across from me against the far wall, all of them male, dark-complexioned and in there 20’s and 30’s.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how awful it would be to spend the night here. There was no way I was going to spend the night here.

I looked in the office where the man had gone with my ticket. I asked what was happening. A woman said there was a flight at 6am tomorrow. She handed my ticket back to me. I asked if there were any flights I could take tonight. “No flights.” I noticed that there were still several flights listed on the Arrival screen above my head. I looked for a departure screen, but there was nothing. I asked if I could get on another flight and pointed to the arrival screen. No answer. I asked if there was someone who spoke English… “Only a little,” I asked about another airline and pointed to the screen again. I asked about going anywhere, and started mentioning other cities, London, Paris? They said “The Lufthansa office was closed and won’t be open until tomorrow,” I said I would pay to fly tonight and showed them some cash. One of the women came to the door with a list of flights. There was a flight to Frankfurt in 1 1/2 hrs. on Aeroflot Russian airlines. She said I could use the pay phone. I said I didn’t have a phone card. A man sitting on the bench offered me a phone card. The woman told me I could go to the transportation desk. Another woman took me upstairs, through a locked door, out into the terminal and pointed down the hall. I took a deep breath and walked down the hall.

I walked back and forth looking for the transportation desk. I asked someone where the transportation desk was and they pointed down the hall. I walked down the hall and saw nothing. I asked another and they pointed down the hall the other way. Written on a small sign were the words, "transfer desk," but there was no one there. Next to the desk was a door, written on that door was, "transfer lounge," I asked in the lounge. They said to go to the transfer desk and wait. I said no one was there. They didn’t answer me. I waited. I knocked on the staff only door and no one answered. Someone walked out with a coat on and I pointed to the desk. They said to wait. I went to another staff office and opened the door. “can you help me?” They said no. There was a shift change and I would have to wait until the person came to the desk. I walked back to the transfer desk. There was a woman behind the desk and several tourists in front of the desk. I had 1 hr and 15 minutes before the flight. A woman with a big luggage cart was trying to push her way in front of me. I stood firmly on the ground. I thought to myself, I could knock all these people over and push my way through. Visions of police arresting me entered my mind. I waited.

I explained to the woman what happened and asked if I could get on the next flight to Frankfurt. She looked on her computer and took me back to the Transfer Lounge where the woman could help me. She started booking the flight. It would be $400.00. I didn’t have that much cash, so another woman took my credit card and went to the passport office to get my passport than to the reservation counter outside the terminal to purchase the ticket. She came back without a ticket. I needed to be at the desk to purchase the ticket with a credit card, but I wasn’t allowed to go outside the terminal. She asked me about my bank card and code. I gave it to her. She came back and said the bank said I had exceeded my limit. I gave her all my cash and said use what you need to and take as little as possible out of the bank. More time passed. She came back with a ticket and several receipts from the money transfers. I asked about my suitcase. They said there isn’t time to send it with me and they would put it on the Lufthansa flight tomorrow morning. We ran out of the door and to the gate for boarding.

More to come on how I got my visa and what really happened to my suitcase…