Free Skool - What's Old is New Again

This week I attended a lecture that provided some great insight on the corporate side of sustainability, and shed some light on whether or not they actually do care about their operations in that sense, or if it’s just a new P.R craze. Dr. Blair Feltmate who spoke for almost 2 hours on “The History of Sustainability: What’s Old Is New Again” touched on the three pioneers of the “environmental movement” that we strive to conform to today.

What’s interesting is that I have had never really learned much about the “Fathers of Environmentalism”. And even though Dr. Feltmate was quick to point out that the three men he was about to discuss were certainly not the be-all end-all of “eco pioneers” he felt that it was important for any environmentalist to know the history behind their motivation, their causes, and their future hopes and goals. It struck me funny – how many of us really know who first understood or fore-thought what was to come in our natural world? Isn’t that a crucial topic for any and all varied environmentalist to know; how are we to know what path we’re on otherwise, and if we’ve made any difference at all since then? Like Dr. Feltmate said, economists have studied Adam Smith, philosophers have studied Plato, and every physicist understand Eistein’s concepts. We need to understand our past to know where we’re going, or where we should be going, and I don’t know if many of us who care about the environment do. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t. But as our publication, Halifax Retro, stands for, we have to start somewhere right? There's no right time to start, or "best" way to figure these things out and to proceed as quickly as we'd like. We have to start now, and we have to start exposing ourselves as much as we can to these truths. It's all a learning process, and even though I hadn't thought that much about the origins of the movement beyond the 1960's counterculture efforts, this is just another component to putting the peices together in my own mind, so I can maybe convey it to others. Motivation for changing your views and lifestyles comes from knowledge, after all.

For those of you in the same boat as myself:

 George Perkins Marsh “The Father of Environmentalism”
 Aldo Leopold “The Father of Preservation”
 John Muir “The Father of Conservation”


Very interesting stuff! There’s a lot to learn on each of them, but you can read more by clicking on their names above. I know I’ll be looking more into the history of environmentalism as a whole. It’s so true – if this all started so long ago, how is our progress? What have we done since then? How much further do we have to go? So many questions! Note to self -- This would make a fantastic essay or article!

I have more lectures and classes to attend outside of work as well. I’m on the ledge of a great development process. More on that in the next post.

Keep Bizzy!