A call to action from Lazy Point

More Environmental Ethics on the radio, a Labor Day rebroadcast of Carl Safina's "On Point" interview with @tomashbrooknpr. His View From Lazy Point, one of my best summer reads, is both reassuring and alarming. A reminder that saving and savoring the world go hand in hand.

"The world still sings. Yet the warnings are wise. We have lost much, and we’re risking much more. Some risks, we see coming. But there are also certainties hurtling our way that we fail to notice. The dinosaurs failed to anticipate the meteoroid that extinguished them. But dinosaurs didn’t create their own calamity. Many others don’t deserve the calamities we’re creating.

We’re borrowing heavily from people not yet born. Meanwhile, the framework with which we run our lives and our world—our philosophy, ethics, religion, and economics—can’t seem to detect the risks we’re running. How could they? They’re ancient and medieval institutions, out of sync with what we’ve learned in the last century about how the world really works.

So, how to proceed? I’ve come to see that the geometry of human progress is an expanding circle of compassion. And that nature and human dignity require each other. And I believe that—if the word “sacred” means anything at all—the world exists as the one truly sacred place."

Conservationist Carl Safina’s Ecosystem Wake Up Call | On Point with Tom Ashbrook