(Neil Holm)

Imagining a Different Way to Live

Wendell Berry defies easy description. His book jackets call him everything from social critic to farmer to conservationist, and he is all of these, though they do not contain him. He is a writer-poet, essayist, and novelist….Eugene Peterson names Berry one of the seven most important writers on spiritual theology for him, saying that Berry’s combination of “prophetic bite and Christian winsomeness … keeps our identity as followers of Jesus in sharp focus.” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/november/32.60.html

The Idea of a Local Economy by Wendell Berry

LET US BEGIN BY ASSUMING what appears to be true: that the so-called “environmental crisis” is now pretty well established as a fact of our age. The problems of pollution, species extinction, loss of wilderness, loss of farmland, loss of topsoil may still be ignored or scoffed at, but they are not denied. Concern for these problems has acquired a certain standing, a measure of discussability, in the media and in some scientific, academic, and religious institutions.

This is good, of course; obviously, we can¹t hope to solve these problems without an increase of public awareness and concern. But in an age burdened with “publicity,” we have to be aware also that as issues rise into popularity they rise also into the danger of oversimplification. To speak of this danger is especially necessary in confronting the destructiveness of our relationship to nature, which is the result, in the first place, of gross oversimplification. http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/archive_om/Berry/Local_Economy.html

The Truth? ‘Nuclear is Not the Answer’

Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming, says one of the world’s most celebrated climate change campaigners, former US vice-president Al Gore…”Even if you set aside the problem of long-term waste storage and the danger of operator accident and the vulnerability to terrorist attack, you still have two others that are more difficult,” he said… http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1116-01.htm

(From AAANZ Mailing, 20 November 2006. Used by permission)