Daryl's Journal

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to the Largo Library. Found some new books by F. Paul Wilson. Went to the Sunshine Races. Fun night. Taped the Saturday night Nascar race. Will watch the race tomorrow on Sunday.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

186. Land: My people, the Terena people, live in western Brazil near the Bolivian border, where the amazon really starts.

187. Many of the farmers who have moved into our territory use their land for cattle raising.

188. It is because of this and the sugar cane plantations that most of our trees, our forests, and our land have gone.

189. As children we would often go hunting and we always used to fine deer, wild pigs, and tapirs in the forest nearby.

190. Now they are very scarce.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Worked at home. Primary tasks were e-mail to Bill Stenger, review if ISP customers and a Tio2 survey.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

181. Crises have both positive and negative characteristics.

182. They can represent a threat to the status quo but at the same time can be seen as a symptom that something is wrong.

183. They thus represent an opportunity to correct an imbalance and move on to a new level of organization.

184. This reflected in the Chinese character “ji” indicating both a critical point, and an opportunity.

185. “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside is available.. a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose”.  Fred Hoyle (1948)

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to Orlando to have lunch with Fred Stewart/Color Wheel. Lots of rain. later that evening I listened to Irish music.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

176. To achieve a breakthrough, we must learn a tough lessen.

177. While it is often all right to adapt through small steps, improving an established course through “fine tuning”. there are times when one must do an “about turn”, and take more drastic corrective action.

178. The tale of the French schoolchildren and their experimental frog is salutary.

179. they took the frog and dropped it into a saucepan of boiling water, whereupon the frog skipped right out– instant rejection of an environment that proved distinctly unsuitable.

180. But when the schoolchildren dropped the frog into a saucepan of cold water, and slowly heated it up, the frog swam round and round, adapting itself to the rising heat… until it quietly boiled to death.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to the Tampa office. Another hectic day. Brainstormed upcoming session with Bill Stenger/DuPont. Oakland Athletics going for 20th win in a row.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

171. Out of crisis can come advance, provided the impetus of change does not “overshoot” into catastrophe.

172. On past occasions, there have been thousands of years, even millions, for the corrective workings of the biosphere to adapt and adjust to new stresses.

173. This time, there are just a few decades, far too short a period for Gaia to work its restorative course, unless it is done with the symbiotic support of humankind.

174. If we can match up to the crisis, Gaia may well move forward into an unprecedented period of development– development in its proper broad sense, embracing development of Earth’s resources and of humanity’s capacity for caring.

175. If, however, we fail, Homo sapiens, could eventually be discarded as an evolutionary blind-alley.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to the Tampa office. Crazy day with several e-mails to Greg Hertenberger/ISP. Our business in Miami is under attack. Kay and Yvonne started bowling at Sunrise.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

166. But unlike the cancer cell, we are coming to realize the nature of what we are doing.

167. Can we learn fast enough, act soon enough?

168. This is not the first time that the Earth’s community has encountered crisis.

169. Gaia has even benefited from periodic upheavals.

170. Were it not for the dramatic demise of the dinosaurs, there would have been scant opportunity for mammals to become preeminent– with all that has meant for the supreme mammal, Homo sapiens.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to the Largo Library. Met Kay at Hop’s for lunch. Went to the races. Rained out. Watched a Beautiful Mind with Kay.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

151. Not surprisingly, this overtaxing of the Earth’s ecosystem leads to breakdown of other sorts.

152. As more people seek greater amounts of declining resources, conflicts erupt: more people have been killed through military conflagrations since World War II than all the soldiers in that war. 

153. In fact, it is a breakdown in our social systems, our economic structures, and our political m3chanisms that generate the greatest threat of all.

154. The shadow over planet Earth will never be deeper and darker than when it is lengthened by a mushroom cloud.

155. The Final Test: Humanity, this sudden new evolutionary development which has had impact upon the planet, now threatens not only its own survival but that of many parts of the biosphere itself.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to the Tampa office. Back home by 1:15 PM. Writing call reports regarding trip to Miami. I love my spacious home office. Kay and I went to the Holiday Inn for food, beer and video games. Baseball strike averted. Tampa Bay Buccaneers won their final exhibition game.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

146. In the ocean, we ravage one fishery after another.

147. We cause dolphins, seals, and other marine animals to follow the sad track of the great whales.

148. We pollute the seas, just as we poison lakes and rivers in virtually every part of the world.

149. We use the skies as a dustbin, and we desecrate our landscapes with growing piles of refuse, some of it toxic.

150. In the atmosphere, we disrupt the carbon dioxide balance, triggering climatic dislocations that will upset agriculture worldwide.

What Happened Today? Mark and I called on Associated Paint, Pintex and Union Chemical. Rough flight from fort Lauderdale to Tampa. Kay, Yvonne and Jen expanded my office. Looks great!

GAIA- Planetary Management:

141. Soil, one of the most precious of all resources, is washed or blown away in billions of tons every year.

142. To compound this tragedy, large tracts of productive cropland are paved over each year, or “developed”.

143. Deserts expand, or rather degraded lands are tacked on to them, at a rate threatening a third of all arable land in the next 75 years.

144. Forests in the tropics are chopped down with a zest that will leave a little by the middle of the next century.

145.  As the forests fall, species in their millions lose their habitats, many of them disappearing for ever.