THE FUTURE IS NOT ALL DOOMED - A Conversation with Carl Safina
In this age of climate change, species extinction and exponentially expanding human population, it's hard not to feel like we're doomed. So it's important that we find voices to listen to that offer some glimmers of hope. On this episode of Locus Focus we are joined again by writer and marine conservationist Carl Safina, who has witnessed as well as anyone, how much damage results from too many humans obsessed with using up every ounce of our planet's natural resources without concern for future generations. Yet Safina remains a voice of hope as he searches for examples of what is working. His writing offers models for how we can re-orient our values, visions and practices of living on the earth like we are part of its natural systems.
"Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding, it further elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection. Because the greatest thing a human being can experience is a sense of connection, this is a joyful coincidence. What we need to do is also what our souls yearn to do: connect, connect, connect. And because all things are linked, almost anything can unite us with almost everything. Even a fish suffices." Carl Safina—from Prelude to A View From Lazy Point
Carl Safina is a prominent ecologist and marine conservationist and president of Blue Ocean Institute, an environmental organization based in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. A winner of the prestigious Pew Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship and Guggenheim Fellowship, Safina has written five books — Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas; Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival; Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur; Nina Delmar: The Great Whale Rescue; The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World, and due out in April of 2011, A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout. Safina’s new TV series, Saving the Ocean, premiered on PBS in April 2011.
Follow more of Carl's adventures on his blog.