The Green Liberty Party

The political philosophy: “Earth is dying if we let it. Stop burning and cutting, or die. Without ecology there can be no economy. We must work less and live more. Live free and green.”

Human growth in population and industry, at the expense of ecosystems is destroying the natural world, causing mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and economic as well as biosphere collapse. The challenge facing humanity, the greatest challenge of all time, is to foster a political, social, and economic transformation that realigns the human project with its ecosystem habitat.

The corporate-owned American two-party duopoly has proven to be corrupt, unethical, and profoundly ecologically unsustainable. It is time for a political agenda that values all species and ecosystems and plans for the long-term well-being of humanity and all life. It is time for global political Earth revolution to sustain land, water, and air and to achieve universal human rights and economic fairness.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet

ECOLOGY CENTRAL

Earth is collapsing and dying. Humanity is systematically destroying the biodiversity, ecosystems, climate, and biosphere upon which all life depends. Earth's ecosystems continue to be plundered for profit as if air, land, water and oceans have no intrinsic value. Climate change is an important yet singular part of a more widespread collapse of the global biosphere – the thin mantle of life arrayed in ecosystems surrounding the planet – as industrial growth destroys nature for stuff.

There remains only a short time to stop the industrial growth machine from irreparably destroying the biosphere. There is NO replacement, no backup biosphere. Either the human family comes together now to cut emissions and protect ecosystems, or being may well end – certainly well-being.

The central tenets of a Green Liberty political philosophy affirm that abrupt climate change, global ecosystem loss, and biosphere collapse threaten the well-being of the entire human family and of all life. This crisis is only survivable if we drastically cut emissions and move at once to protect natural ecosystems. Continued exponential human and industrial growth at the expense of life-giving ecosystems can only end in ecological and social collapse. We have met ecocide, and it is us. Yet not even this ecocidal state of affairs excuses loss of humanity's inherent rights, freedom, and duties.

Earth's people want and deserve universal democracy, political liberty, economic justice, and sustained ecology for everyone, for the whole world, and they want it now. It is time for a monumental global political realignment as lovers of ecology and liberty unite to topple the ecocidal nanny state and corporate oligarchy, at the ballot box and marketplace when possible, otherwise in the streets.

The human industrial growth machine is systematically liquidating the ecosystems upon which all life depends. At its root, abrupt climate change is one of many crises, others including overpopulation, ecocidal industrial growth, ecosystem loss and diminishment (especially the oceans and old-growth forests), inequity amidst plenty, and failed human development that equates advancement with ecocide.

Without ecology there can be no economy. Either the human family together invests in ecosystems and renewable energy, or else abrupt climate change and ecological collapse kill us. Industrial economic growth as it has widely been practiced by large corporations and individuals alike destroys ecosystems, collapses climate and biosphere, and destroys habitat, murdering all life.

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Earth Is Dying, Yet Climate and Forest Movements Lack Urgency and Substance

Human industrial growth is systematically liquidating the natural ecosystems that are the habitat for humans and for all life. Earth is dying, one logged old-growth tree and tank of gasoline at a time, yet most environmental groups are shilling solutions that are inadequate and ill-conceived – such as logging old-growth forests to protect them. Nothing shows this better than Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network – in an age of mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and ecosystem collapse – wanting us to wipe our asses with toilet paper from "certified" old-growth forest pulp.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

A profound lack of understanding exists, even amid the supposedly radical environmental movement, of the seriousness of merging ecological crises. If Gaia – the Earth System or biosphere – is alive, as science has come to understand, then clearly she can die as key ecosystems are destroyed and biogeochemical processes fail. To survive, much less thrive, humanity must stop scraping Earth's land of life, spewing waste into our air and water, and claiming it can all be certified as sustainably done, while calling it "development."

Industrial growth's destruction of ecosystems is undermining the habitability of the planet, threatening the maintenance of conditions necessary for life, by destroying the ecosystems required for a living planet. As key ecosystems are lost, indications are humanity will soon be going extinct, quite possibly taking the biosphere and all life with us.

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Old Forests, Kerala's Elephants, and the Biosphere

Proposing a planetary boundary for terrestrial ecosystem loss

By Dr. Glen Barry, December 16, 2012

Paper presented at the Kerala Law Academy International Law Conference on Conservation of Forests, Wildlife and Ecology, December 15-17, 2012

Full Paper: http://bit.ly/EIKeralaPaper

Theme - The Legal Regime and Measures for Conservation of Bio Diversity and Protection of Ecological Balance of Western Ghats

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." – Anne Frank

*Version 1.0, not yet peer reviewed, or final edits for publication in conference proceedings

Review Paper Abstract

Planetary boundary science continues the study of requirements to avoid ecosystem collapse and to achieve global ecological sustainability, by defining key thresholds in the Earth System's ecological conditions that threaten human well-being. Terrestrial ecosystems do not enter into the nine originally defined boundaries ranging from climate change to water availability, except peripherally through other boundaries such as land use and biodiversity. A rigorous research agenda is necessary to determine what quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystems are required across landscapes so as to sustain the biosphere. This includes a spatially explicit way of indicating what extent of a landscape, bioregion, continent and global Earth System must remain in the form of connected and intact core ecological areas and semi-natural agroecological buffers, in order to sustain local ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons. Connectivity of large ecosystem patches which remain the matrix for the landscape is a preeminent consideration. When ~60% of a natural ecosystem habitat remains, after just under 40% of the ecosystem has been destroyed, the landscape is said to percolate, and we see critical collapse of the "percolating cluster" – the dominant large habitat patch constituting the matrix of the landscape – into smaller, more distant habitat, in a sea of human development. This critical deterioration of habitat connectivity continues so that at or near 50% loss of a landscape or bioregon's natural vegetation, the natural habitat percolates from people within ecosystems, to natural islands surrounded by human works. This transition is likely to be similar at a continental and global scale.

A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed: that 60% of terrestrial ecosystems must be maintained across scales – with the boundary set at 66% as a precaution – as a safe space not only for humanity but for all life and to maintain the long-term viability of the biosphere. It is thought that loss and diminishment of terrestrial ecosystems aggregates from the local and regional scale, yet disrupts planetary process with this global scale threshold. It is hypothesized that ensuring natural ecosystems and their biogeochemical flows remain the context for human endeavors is a requirement to sustain the biosphere for the long term, and that fundamentally this requires large core ecological areas, and the critical connectivity of ecosystem processes and patterns, as the global and fractal landscape matrix. It is further proposed on the basis of ecology's percolation theory that two-thirds of the 66% of terrestrial ecosystems must be protected as ecological core areas (in total 44% of the global land mass as intact ecological cores, 22% as agroecological, agroforestry and managed forest buffers, and transition zones), to ensure the ecological integrity of the semi-natural agroecological landscapes, to maintain critical ecosystem connectivity across scales, and encompass semi-natural landscapes and bioregions within a matrix of intact nature to ensure that their own ecological patterns and processes are sustainable. Up to 50% of Earth's land surface has already been transformed from mostly wild to mostly anthropocentric, so the biosphere is likely to have already lost its global percolating cluster. If indeed bioregional and global scaled landscapes are similar to landscape and bioregional pattern, terrestrial ecosystem connectivity is already critically lacking, and the global ecosystem now exists as patches of nature within a sea of humanity. It is urgent to protect most of what remains and to begin reconstructing connected ecological landscape matrixes of intact ecosystems across scales, so that globally the biosphere can percolate back to connected nature as the provider of top-down context to human and all life.

To have meaning in guiding global ecological sustainability policy, these continental and global observations – and proposed 66% presence / 44% protected – planetary boundary for terrestrial ecosystem loss must be grounded in real-life landscape and bioregional conservation considerations. An example are efforts to achieve ecological sustainability, including maintaining continued viable populations of Asian elephants in the Western Ghats bioregion of India, particularly within Kerala state, as an umbrella species. The Asian elephant requires extensive and adequate natural habitat for its survival, and the Western monsoon depends upon forest-dependent pressure gradients – and thus the provision of both provides for water, clean air, soil, pollinators, and other ecosystem services for the region, nation, and biosphere. An initial expansive regional ecosystem mapping exercise that seeks to identify natural gradients in ecological importance has taken place in Kerala, but its largely top-down processes have faced organized socio-political resistance, it is not clear the scientifically valid mapping processes have enough understanding and support, and the legal structure is not in place to tie its requirements for local and regional sustainability to laws. As a real-world example, elephants moving across landscapes are emblematic and widely visible examples of the myriad types of flows that continue on a connected landscape, making life possible. It is suggested that as go the Western Ghats' and Kerala's Asian elephants and their habitat, so shall go the biosphere, and that it is crucial to build awareness that healthy ecosystems are essential to both local advancement and global sustainability. On the basis of taking such an ecosystem and landscape approach to the needs of Earth System sustainability, and given pernicious trends of ecosystem loss and decline, it is concluded that more attention is needed to prevent worst-case outcomes including biosphere collapse and a lifeless Earth, particularly because of abrupt climate change and ecosystem loss. A massive and global program to protect and restore natural ecosystems – funded by a carbon tax on fossil fuels – is presented as the sort of policy approach necessary at this time to avoid biosphere collapse. Humanity is now the major force shaping the biosphere, which, if current trends in ecological loss and diminishment continue, may collapse or die as a result.

Full Paper: http://bit.ly/EIKeralaPaper

Mr. President: Earth Does Not Have Forever

EARTH MEANDERS: Mr. President: Earth Does Not Have Forever

With under a month remaining before the U.S. Presidential election, it is not clear whether either candidate will address abrupt climate change and global ecosystem collapse, and related rollbacks of civil liberties and a state of drone-based perma-war. Clearly President Obama's general rhetoric on the environment is more promising, and Governor Romney is avowedly anti-nature, but the President's record on the environment is weak, and we are running out of time to stop abrupt climate change. Unless I hear specific policies from the President on climate, civil liberties, and drone warfare – I will not be voting for him – instead writing in "None of the Above".

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. – George Orwell

Ecocide is jobs. God is hate. Fairness is socialism. Science is lying. Education be dumb. Goodness is climate change. Truth is money. Ignorance is strength. – Romney and Republicans

Drones are love. Waiting is hope. Ecosystems are resources. Rhetoric is action. Justice is murder. Climate change is votes. Obama is god-like. War is peace. – Obama and Democrats


By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk


Listening to the US Presidential election, you wouldn't know Earth faces ecological emergencies including abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse in water, forests, and food. The United States and world are less free, green and peaceful places – largely because human growth has met ecological limits. Ongoing rollbacks of human rights and civil liberties, as well as the state of perma-war waged by drones terrorizing entire populations, is a direct result of environmental decline caused by industrial growth and the resulting scramble for oil and other resources in a globalized world.

The human family faces its greatest planetary emergency ever as Earth, humanity and all life are poised upon the precipice of total ecological, social and economic collapse. Earth's biosphere – the thin mantle of life from underground, through terrestrial ecosystems, to the top of the atmosphere – is being destroyed. Fisheries, soils, the atmosphere, forests, wetlands, water, oceans, food and other ecosystems are uniformly in decline or simply gone. Global ecological crises are destroying conditions necessary for a habitable Earth, and our descent into resource anarchy has begun.

Global change and ecological science are clear that we are near or have surpassed planetary boundaries required to maintain a livable Earth. We know with certainty that endless growth on a finite planet is impossible. Humanity powers down, abandons growth for a steady state economy, learns to live more simply – but well – and share, or the existence of all life, including our own, is threatened.

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This I Know to Be Ecological Truth

EARTH MEANDERS: This I Know to Be Ecological Truth

Abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse, caused by human industrial growth at expense of ecology, are poised to utterly destroy our one shared biosphere, and thus virtually all life including humanity.
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole." – Malcolm X

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Earth is an ancient organism, alive for 3.5 billion years. Only a few hundred years ago the disease of industrial capitalist growth arose, and is killing her by destroying her ecosystems. The current dominant economic paradigm mistakes ecosystem habitats – which are necessary for life – for disposable resources to be logged, mined, and burnt. Ancient, naturally evolved ecosystems are being stripped of life, largely for growth in throw-away consumer junk. As a result, water, soil, climate, and food systems are failing.

Human history can be summarized as the rich screwing the poor, stealing their work's surplus, while trashing ecosystems, at the point of a gun. For millennium, as human civilization developed, destroying ecosystems has been embraced as normal and desirable, particularly for agriculture. Over-population – going from 1.5 to 7 billion inequitable super-consumers in 125 years – has surpassed planetary ecological boundaries.

It has been routinely claimed that growth and liquidating natural habitat is progress and advancement, when in fact ecosystem loss is ecocide, and is killing us all. Ecosystem collapse is already here for one billion people globally without enough food, another billion lacking water, two billion living on less than $2 per day, and those subsisting on industrially over-developed and climate changed lands. Austerity in over-developed countries is in fact largely caused by ecosystem collapse, as jobs and easy growth from once-off harvesting of ecosystems ends. Without intact, healthy ecosystems, this is all our futures.

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Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan Spoke of Child Sex Tourism in Costa Rica

Congressman Pocan (left) boasted of traveling to Costa Rica for
Child Sex Tourism

Update: I Remain Unbowed

I was present as State Representative Mark Pocan publicly regaled close associates at length with stories of traveling to Costa Rica for sex with young boys

Personal Essay by Dr. Glen Barry

July 26, 2012

For much of the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Being the state capitol, as I reconnected with Andy Janssen, an old high school friend that works there, occasionally I socialized with state political big-wigs. One was my state assemblyman Mr. Mark Pocan – now running for Congress from Wisconsin’s second district. Over the course of several years I hung-out and drank in local bars with Mr. Pocan a few dozen times, and became a good acquaintance and fledgling – albeit infrequent – member at that time of his inner circle. I like the charismatic, progressive man immensely. Sadly, however, he revealed to others and me that he had traveled to Costa Rica to have sex with children.

In 2002 or thereabouts, Mr. Pocan publicly regaled half a dozen of his close associates and me with a story of having recently traveled to Costa Rica for the explicit purpose of seeking out sex with underage boys. We were at the local Democratic Party watering hole – drinking on a weekend like we had done many times before. Mr. Pocan told the story of traveling to Costa Rica for sex tourism with boys with great gusto. He included numerous and graphic details regarding how the Gulf coast of Costa Rica was full of children from poor fishing villages – described at length as being firm, young, and willing – that would congregate at local hotels, and for a few dollars go with you to your room for a night of sex.

It was a larger group than normal, and there were numerous other people there, close associates of Mr. Pocan, any one of whom should be able to confirm my account, if they can be appealed upon to speak truthfully. None appeared shocked, or even disturbed, at this raucous story of sexual misconduct. It seemed routine, the norm. There was much laughing and banter as apparently this sort of torrid story was not an unusual topic of conversation amongst the group. Again, Mr. Pocan said clearly he had explicitly traveled to Costa Rica for sexual tourism, and had in fact paid for sex with young boys, making him a child sex tourist.

The next time I drank with Mr. Pocan and his entourage, I made a fleeting comment regarding the story to Mr. Pocan in front of his then partner. Mr. Pocan later pulled me aside and told me bluntly that if I spoke of the matter again I was not welcome in his company. I chose to never socialize with Mr. Pocan and his entourage again. Soon I graduated with a PhD, and moved away from Madison for several years to protect the world’s rainforests. We have a close mutual friend, remained in loose contact as facebook friends on his initiative, and last year as I prepared to return to the area, Mr. Pocan provided a reference for one job application. I have recently moved back to Madison, and have had random, friendly, yet distant contact with Mr. Pocan on a couple occasions.

So what has changed? Why come forward now? I don’t feel like I have any choice but to do so. I like Mark. But he told me he had traveled overseas to a poor, struggling country, to sexually abuse children, and I can’t let that go unreported.  Mr. Pocan is running for Congress, and his campaign heralds his work protecting victims of rape. I can’t sit by as I know the person who is most likely to be my next Congressman is – by his own admission to me – a child rapist, as kids can never consent to sex with adults.

Coming after my recent diatribe against Governor Scott Walker’s poor character displayed in college, it appears that I am – at least with these two individuals – a sort of Forrest Gump of Wisconsin politics. In both instances I have not sought out publicity or any advantage, but have felt a strong sense that knowing what I know – based upon first-hand information – that I had the responsibility to do the right thing, and communicate the best I could what I personally knew to be true.

I am not a Democrat or a Republican, have little interest in state politics, and know virtually nothing about his opponents. I have absolutely no reason to lie, or to want to needlessly bring this upon others or myself. My only reasons are a commitment to keeping children safe from sexual predators, and being unable to live with a bad conscience.

I have tried hard to live a moral, ethical life committed to high standards of personal conduct, and to issues of global concern larger than myself. This has meant tremendous sacrifice to the cause of global ecological sustainability and the welfare of the human family. As I have reached middle-age, I have successfully dealt with my personal issues – particularly having been the victim of childhood sexual abuse, and its decades long cover-up – which have been epidemic in my family. I was successfully groomed to keep childhood sexual abuse secret, which I have only just overcome.

This is a painful essay to write at many levels. I have agonized and sought out the counsel of several regarding this ethical dilemma. Many told me not to write this essay. Yet, as I pondered, I would recall how no one was my champion as I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse by powerful adults. I failed by not reporting Mr. Pocan’s disclosure immediately after it occurred, or any time over the years subsequently. I hate to come forward with these truthful claims now, but I have no choice. It is the ethical thing to do, and I am no Sandusky protector. This is no last minute revelation, as I have come forward with a full three and a half months before the general election.

If anything I am guilty of being enamored by power, of wanting to ingratiate myself with powerful people because of my own insecurities. Now I simply can’t stand by and knowingly watch as a child sex tourist becomes the next Congressperson – which oftentimes ends up being for life – representing the great city of Madison and surrounding areas. I am sure I will be pilloried by the politically correct – yet at times ethically challenged – progressive Madison scene for coming out against their favorite son. And I am fine with that, as my progressivism and commitment to truth go beyond posturing, to doing the right thing, even when difficult and personally challenging.

Truth matters. I have to be consistent – if I call out Governor Walker on personal knowledge of corruption and acting as a fascist while in college, I must call out State Representative Pocan on child sexual exploitation. I agree with Pocan nearly across the board on political issues. He is a solid and committed Progressive. But you can’t be having sex with kids. Not even if you travel out of America to find poor ones, who have no voice.

I apologize for not coming forward earlier. Mark’s public admission has been reported to the Madison police and other appropriate authorities. I have absolutely nothing to gain by going public with this matter, yet quite a lot to lose as I am sure Representative Pocan’s campaign will lash out, and make all sorts of vile false claims to protect his candidacy.

My only satisfaction is that even when frightened, I have done the right thing and reported childhood sexual abuse; belatedly – and with shaking hands as I write – but nonetheless.

Inside I am a hurt little boy that was sexually abused, grew up in an environment where this went on repeatedly to others, and was abandoned by family and friends as I sought to recover. As I have healed, the issue of keeping childhood innocence safe from sexual predators has become profoundly important to me. I have zero tolerance for childhood sexual abuse, and want it to stop. That will only happen if people speak of the matter and come forward when they know of abuses.

Mr. Pocan is an admitted – amongst friends even a boastful – sexual abuser of children, and is not fit to be a U.S. Congressperson. This isn’t a gay, straight thing. It is a not getting away with raping poor foreign kids as a tourist – because you are an entitled powerful politician – thing. Again, I am sorry for not having come forward earlier.

###

Dr. Glen Barry is an internationally recognized environmental advocate, scientist, writer and technology expert. He is well-known within the environmental community as a leading global ecological visionary, public intellectual, and environmental policy critic. Dr. Barry's work as the President and Founder of Ecological Internet - the Earth's largest biocentric ecological advocacy web portals - was recently recognized as one of " 25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" by the Utne Reader. 

U.S. Abrupt Climate Change 2012: Where Will You Be the Day Earth’s Death Became Unavoidable?

EARTH MEANDERS: U.S. Abrupt Climate Change 2012: Where Will You Be the Day Earth’s Death Became Unavoidable?

The world’s and especially America’s environment has gone mad during the summer of 2012. Abrupt climate change is clearly upon us, and life-giving ecosystems are visibly failing, portending doom for our shared biosphere, all life, and humanity. Given overshoot of ecological boundaries, and failure to pursue concerted national and global sustainable development and ecological sustainability policy, 2012 may well be the year Earth’s death through collapse of its one shared biosphere becomes inevitable.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Abrupt Climate Change Is Now

Fundamentally the meaning of life is ecosystems [search]. Without a healthy, intact, diverse and operational environment - humanity and all life simply cannot exist. As a result of the human ecocidal system of industrial growth, local ecosystems are being destroyed globally for insatiable human consumption. Life of every sort – including Gaia, the Earth system herself – is dying.

Earth's biosphere - the thin mantle of life from underground to the top of the atmosphere, which self-regulates the Earth System to keep it habitable - is collapsing. Ecological science knows this with certainty – in disciplines including planetary boundaries, limits to growth, global change and ecology. If nothing is done, massive social and ecological collapse is imminent, and the end of biological being is possible. Earth is burning and the human family is essentially doing nothing.

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