Subject: Re: SPEECH: Code of Ethics for Agriculturalists (fwd)
From: [email-masked] (Tom Hodges)
Date: 24 May 1994 19:46:40 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

A most impressive talk.  Thanks to Gabriel.

1. We need to regard the biosphere (including us) as an organism. Anything
hurting one part hurts all of it.  Humanity is the most potent part 
of the biosphere, we have the power to wreck it or to manage and nurture 
it but not to isolate ourselves from it as we are part of it.

2. We need to transform our social, ethical, economic structure gradually,
in a practical way, so we don't break it as we change it.  A major 
collapse of our economic structure might be the greatest ecological 
disaster we can imagine short of full scale nuclear war as hundred 
of millions or billions of people struggled to scratch survival from 
the remains of the biosphere.  But we also need to get moving so it 
doesn't break while we discuss.

3. The Baha'i Faith makes an interesting point: that many of the problems/
crises afflicting humanity cannot be addressed without acknowledging 
the essential unity of all humans and perhaps of all life.

4. May I suggest that detailed discussion of this monumental subject 
would be most appropriate on sustag-l (Principles of Sustainable 
Agriculture) which was created for just this sort of mix of scientific, 
technical, economic, metaphysical considerations.  I will be posting 
this and the original note on that list.

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Tom Hodges

Tom Hodges           Cropping Systems Modeler      ___   ___
USDA-ARS                                          /   \_/   \
Rt. 2, Box 2953-A    Telephone: 509-786-2226     |           |
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USA                                               potato tuber
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...photosynthesis makes the world go around...  Mr. Potato Head