reconnecting with earth 6 bringing it down to earth

What are are next steps?  What are my next steps?  I will continue searching and implementing steps, even if small, each day.

From Genius of Nature by Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature:

On the spider web:
A spider makes silk (they make six kinds, and I'm talking about drag-line silk that frames the web) that is five times stronger, ounce for ounce, than steel.  It's resilient and tough -- a true miracle fiber.  Even more incredible, a spider uses flies and crickets as raw material and creates the fiber at body temperature (a life-friendly temperature), because the manufacturing plant is the spider's body.  Furthermore, the fiber is biodegradable, so the spider can eat the web to make more web."

About the prairie:

The original pre-Columbian prairie was composed of 99.9 per cent perennial plants, hundreds of species in four categories: cool season grasses, warm season grasses, legumes, and composites.  They held the soil, so not only didn't it bleed away, it was actually enriched over the years, and because the prairie was a mixture of species, it resisted pest attacks....Couldn't we redesign our agriculture in the prairie's image in this part of the world, and then look at other parts of the world and see what grows there naturally and follow that wisdom?

She cautions about our footfall.   She writes, We in the United States take up about thirty acres of bioproductive land and sea per capita right now, and there are only five acres per person available globally.

It is not that the earth cannot sustain the population, it is that greed and imbalanced production geared to a small minority steals from the remaining, both human and non-human.

 

The Earth Charter [see http://www.earthcharterus.org/] 

The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental ethical principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society in the 21st century. It seeks to inspire in all people a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the whole human family, the greater community of life, and future generations. It is a vision of hope and a call to action. The Earth Charter is a product of a decade-long, worldwide, cross cultural dialogue on common goals and shared values.

The Earth Charter is centrally concerned with the transition to sustainable ways of living and sustainable human development. Ecological integrity is one major theme. However, the Earth Charter recognizes that the goals of ecological protection, the eradication of poverty, equitable economic development, respect for human rights, democracy, and peace are interdependent and indivisible. It provides, therefore, a new, inclusive, integrated ethical framework to guide the transition to a sustainable future.

  With appreciation to the Northwest Earth Institute for compiling the discussion course

See www.nwei.org for more information of call 503-227-2807