J.J. Buckfart* communications * environment * leadership * science *

I just finished previewing the documentary, “Dirt! the movie.”

The FoReST Laboratory at Lakehead University is having a public showing on Tuesday May 18 at 7 pm.

The documentary features discussions by a number of thought leaders such as David Orr whose book greatly influenced my view on environmental education a few years ago. Another though leader the documentary features is Gary Vanynerchuk of Wine Library TV. You have to check this guy out. He’s a brilliant wine guy and brilliant biz dev guy as well. In the documentary he talks briefly about soils and their relationship to grapes and wine.

I’ll be emceeing the night and will be joined by local gardening author Graham Saunders and the FoReST Lab’s soil manager Joel Symonds.

Hosted by: Lakehead University Centre for Analytical Services, FoReST Laboratory
Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Location: ATAC 1001, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay campus
Cost: Free

I really like some of the Brita ads. They tap into the environmental sensibilities many people have. The first time I saw this spot, I thought they were selling a health product. The reveal at 15 seconds give the missing piece of information and the expected ahh-haa moment.

Check this following ad out. It points out a flaw in Brita’s reasoning. I think you will like it.

Tomorrow is Earth Day, and in Ontario the law banning the cosmetic use of pesticides comes into effect.

As a licensed commercial pesticide applicator in Ontario, I thought it might be a good idea to I read over a few fact sheets outlining the new Ontario pesticide law. Also, there is some good information on the Ministry of Environment’s website.  I am pleased for the most part with the law. In a nutshell the new law denies the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes. So that means herbicides can not be used on your lawns for dandelions.

This law will give regulators some more “teeth” when dealing with pesticide application abuses. I know in parts of the province, pesticides are overused and many pesticide applications are really not necessary. I think a few dandelions are cute… but only a few.

While I was working for Cornell University Cooperative Extension a few years back, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Frank Rossi aka the Turf Guy at Cornell. He developed a great resource that outlines how to care for your lawn without the use of pesticides. You could also download the PDF and wall paper your garden shed with these great lawn care tips.

Source: http://www.bugsyinfo.com/siteassist_images/whatis.jpg

Source: gallup.com

According to a Gallup report released last week, there is an increase in people who believe global warming is exagerated. I wonder what has caused this trend. Any ideas?

Source: flickr.com, Michael Holden

God communicates an important principle to the nation of Israel. While the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, God miraculously provides provisions for them. As God provides, he places an important limitation. The Israelites must not take more than they need for that day. It’s like God is saying, “You need to rely on me. You mustn’t forget who is providing for you.” The Israelites follow their emerging pattern of disobedience found throughout the Torah. They disobey God’s edict not to be pack-rats and find out the hard way the results of their disobedience.

I think this principle – taking only what you need, taking only what God permits – is a good principle. From this story, I get the sense that God doesn’t want people to be greedy. A principle that naturally can lead to more sustainable consumption; taking only what we need.

Jesus’ teachings echo this principle as well. Jesus tells the story of a rich man who was enamored with collecting more and more stuff. Little does the rich man know that his accumulations are in vane, as his life will be taken from him.

In financial terms, capital can be described as any source of profit while interest can be described as a sum paid or charged for the use or borrowing of money (or perhaps capital – I know I am stretching this a bit).

Why is it so hard for us to not live only on the interest of nature’s bounty. In the 1990s we saw Canadian Atlantic fish stocks crash. We were dipping into nature’s capital, not nature’s interest. As we gobbled up the capital of the cod fish stocks, our actions caused what some call a negative a cascading effect.

For the inaugural post of “Writers on the Environment,” I had the opportunity to pose a few questions to Scot McKnight. Scot is a widely-recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. He is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University (Chicago, Illinois). A popular and witty speaker, Dr. McKnight has given interviews on radios across the US, has appeared on television, and is regularly asked to speak in local churches and educational events throughout the USA, Canada, Denmark and South Africa. Scot obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (1986). Scot also is an prolific blogger. Henry, one of my collegues at Redwood once said that it would be cool to take a course from Scot. Then he paused and said, I sort of already am by following his blog.

What follows is a brief email conversation I recently had with Scot.
~~~

The Blue Parakeet is an easy yet provocative read. I highly recommend it.

JJ: For starters, how did you come up with the name for your new book, The Blue Parakeet?

SM: One summer morning I was reading on my back porch when I noticed the flash of a blue bird in the hedge row in our back yard. As a bird watcher I was immediately interested since the color of blue I observed was not common. So, I watched and eventually I saw that the bird was a neighbor’s blue parakeet. What disappointed my bird watching skills – after all, who cares if one can spot a pet! — interested another element of bird watching: the rest of the birds in the neighborhood were terrorized by this blue parakeet. This led to my watching how the birds responded to a “stranger” in their midst, and this led me to ponder – because I was reading the story of Jephthah in Judges – how we treat many passages in the Bible as “blue parakeets.” They scare us. My contention is that by paying attention to blue parakeet passages in the Bible – strange ones that don’t fit our patterns of thought – we learn a lot about how we read the Bible.

JJ: In your writing, (including The Blue Parakeet), you often talk about how people possess God’s image-albeit a “cracked” image. (The original Greek word used for “image of God is “Eikon”.) As Eikons become more and more Christ-like, they become restored in their relationships with God, with self, with others, and the world. (A great discussion on this is found in Scot’s book “A Community Called Atonement.”) Can you unpack how a person’s relationship with the world changes as he or she becomes more Christ-like?

SM: God called Adam and Eve, the first Eikons, before they were “cracked,” to steward the Garden as God’s representatives in this world. So an integral element of our Eikonic status is to care for God’s world – to nurture it, to expand it, to love it, to care for it, to protect it, to enjoy it, and to see it as a manifestation of God’s care and presence. The world is in some senses “eikonic” as an expression of God’s goodness and power and majesty and glory.

JJ: Can you think of one or two “Blue Parakeets” that the church possesses related to how we view or steward the environment?

SM: Trees. Seals. Oceans and bodies of water. The atmosphere and global warming. Even more: governments and communities are part of the “world” we are called to steward and nurture. Psalm 19 ought to remind us over and over again of what the World can be when we steward this world as God wants us to.

JJ: In addition to Psalm 19 and Genesis 1-3, are there any other passages you would suggest we study to better understand God’s heart for an ‘eikonic’ approach to creation care?

SM: Romans 8 and Revelation 20-22; Romans 8 says God will “redeem” all creation and release from its bondage to decay – death. Rev 20-22, perhaps with some overlays from theological development, reveals that God’s ultimate design is for a re-made and re-stored earth and Jerusalem and City filled with humans who work and play and worship and pray.

JJ: Thanks Scot.
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If you live in the Thunder Bay area and want to discuss The Blue Parakeet, Redwood Park Church is starting up a monthly book discussion group led by Doug. The first discussion is on February 10th at the Opportunities Centre. Check out the church’s calendar for other upcoming dates. This is a difficult book to find right now (almost as difficult as Wii Fit), so even if you haven’t read the book, I would encourage you to come out anyway while your back-ordered book comes in.

One of my two composters. Photo taken January 30, 2009.

It’s a sad day, both my composters are nearly full and there’s still a bunch of sub-freezing winter ahead of us. Not much happens in compost heaps when the temperatures drop below freezing.

You might be surprised that a family of three would nearly fill two composters mid-winter. We’ll here’s the secret. All that lovely stuff in my composter is not ours. Each week a team of dedicated volunteers and I provided food to families in need at the Redwood Park Opportunities Centre. Local grocers donate to us perfectly good veggies and fruit that cannot be sold. It’s amazing how fussy consumers are. A tiny blemish or bruise and the apple -or whatever- cannot be sold.

As we sort through the produce at the Opportunities Centre, the stuff that is actually fit for the compost heap, makes it to one of my two backyard composters. That is until now.

In the fall, I rake up the leaves from the huge elm tree in our backyard and store the leaves in our shed. I then add the leaves as needed to the composters. The secret to good composting is having the right ratio of carbon to nitrogen. Rotten produce has a lot of nitrogen. Brown leaves have a lot of carbon. Too much carbon and your heap won’t do much. Too much nitrogen and you have a very nasty smelling heap.

As a side note. Here’s some funny comments from my facebook friends about the above picture.

Randy at 14:18, on 30 January.
looks like dinner was colourful!

Linda at 20:19, on 30 January.
Looks delicious…NOT!

William at 22:27, on 30 January.
YUMMMY!!! Canadian stew!!

I just started reading Jacques Cousteau’s biographical book “The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus.” What an amazing story so far – shark attacks, poisoned air tanks, a narrow escape from an attack by indigenous people in S. America and an antarctic storm that almost made the Calypso inoperable. I am only a quarter through the book.

What is absolutely striking to me is how Cousteau risked his life on a number of occasions in order to follow his passion to explore the oceans. There is a whole section on how his team managed risk, and I think I will talk about that theme in another post. I think churches, businesses, etc. and learn a few things about risk from this explorer.

When equipment didn’t exist to allow Cousteau to explore, he and his teams would develop and test the needed equipment – sometimes nearly killing themselves. From the book, I learned that Cousteau and his team were the folks who first developed the regulator that makes modern-day SCUBA possible.

As I read, it struck me, “What if the church lived out our passion for God the same way Cousteau lived out his passion for underwater exploration? What if we became as passionate as Christ did, to make this world a better place seeing people’s lives changed for the better?”

We’ve become complacent. I don’t think we have fully allowed our passions to translate into any appreciable action. We don’t take risks often enough. Or perhaps even more discouraging (I hope I am wrong), we don’t have deep motivating passions for God; we don’t have deep motivating passions for seeking lives change for the better, we don’t have deep motivating passions for making the world a better place.

I think we the Church can learn a thing for two from this passionate captain of the Calypso.

Henry over at ElementalCM posted about how a Christian group is raising awareness about climate change by dressing kids up in animal costumes and boarding a modern-day ark. I like the idea. Check it out.

The ancient Hebrew prophets were not future tellers per se. They would often give warnings to God’s people, encouraging them to change behaviour. If not taken seriously, the people would experience grave consequence; they would reap what they sowed. The principle of reaping and sowing runs throughout the New Testament Scriptures as well.

The Lorax, originally written in 1972 by Dr. Seuss holds a prophetic punch over 30 years later. A little guy named  Once-ler discovers he can create a product called a Thneed from the mystical Truffula tree. Once-lers greed drives him to over-harvest the Truffula tree to extinction. Throughout the story the Lorax repeatedly warns Once-ler of the destruction he’s causing. The reoccurring refrain, “I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees.” (Kind of like the Hebrew prophets “I am a prophet who speaks for the Lord.”) Throughout the story, Once-ler has chances to stop before the last tree is cut, but he continues and his enterprise becomes extinct with the last Truffula being chopped.

The story ends with Once-ler giving a small boy the last Truffula seed, and these words,
“Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it freash air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax
and all of his friends
may come back.”

Earlier today, my three year-old daughter and I watched the animated version of the Lorax on youtube. She had many questions as we watched. Like, “Who’s that guy? Why are they cutting trees? What’s a thneed? Where’s my soy milk?”

If you’ve never seen it, take the 25 or so minutes and watch it now. After you get past the groovy ’60s sound track its pretty good.

CLICK HERE for wikipedia’s entry on The Lorax