Editorial - A Deeper Shade of Green?

Abstract

As I reflect on my own presence at the birth of the Electronic Green Journal, formerly the Green Library Journal, I note how my view of greenness has grown, or at least changed shape. My idea of was clearly and in fact sprung from the recently formed ALA Task Force on Environment. We aimed to focus much needed attention on the state of our environment, both locally and globally, and believe me, we are still far from where we should be in addressing this need. I have written a few commentaries in the past year on the need to at least balance the incredible media emphasis on economic and financial data with an equal dose of environmental data, but that has largely fallen on deaf ears. We must press on, regardless. The word holds many different meanings for folks here and around the world. Clearly there are hues or shades of green, too. Many people, for example, look at the Green Party or Green Movement as an environmental movement that supports the work of groups like Greenpeace, or Sierra Club, or Earth Island Institute, and so forth. In the early 1990s my research into greenness led me to travel to the Clearinghouse of the Green Party, when it was located in Kansas City, to look through their files on the various local green groups active around the country. What I found initially was that of the green groups in the United States had come to support what they called the Green's Key To my enlightenment, I noticed that only one of the values revolved specifically around the environment: Ecological Wisdom. The other values, as you can see from the sidebar, go beyond what most people think of as green. I now see these values as the foundation for sustainability, another word that like green means different things to different people. I would argue that MOST of the people who are dedicated to preserving and restoring the environment to a healthier one for of us would adhere to most if not of the GREENS' Ten Key Values. I stress this not to suggest that anyone align themselves with the Green Party, (though in journalistic honesty, you should know that in 2000 I collected signatures for ballot access for the Green Party in Michigan and even ran as a candidate for local office as a Green) rather I stress this because we need to think the world together, not apart. We have for the preponderance of our formal education studied the world in bits and pieces-call them academic disciplines. Rarely have we tried like all the king's horses and the king's men to put it back together again. We who have fought for clean air and recycling and preserving wilderness have too often not thought the world together. We separate out the short-term from the long-term, the environmental from the social, the economic from the spiritual. The fact remains that that which is alive is interdependent. One of the best kept secrets of recent years is the emergence of a world effort to develop a shared ethical framework for dealing with the interdependencies across this globe of many ecosystems and cultures. The Earth Charter was discussed at the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. While it was not formally adopted, you can see from its worldwide list of endorsers that it has a global support base. In fact the process for its development was global and grassroots. Like the Ten Key Values of the Greens, the Earth Charter offers a vision of what a sustainable planet might hold for each of us. Its 16 principles are imbedded in a base of care and respect. The four organizing concepts are: Respect and Care for the Community of Life Ecological Integrity Social and Economic Justice Democracy, Nonviolence and Peace We need to continue to make visible the important and essential elements of our ecological health and how our actions are putting our planet's ability to sustain human life at risk to current and future generations. …