This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. It's lonely. It's small. It's isolated, and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it. Clearly, the highest loyalty we should have is not to our own country … our own religion … our hometown or even to ourselves. It should be to, number two, the family of man, and number one, the planet at large. This is our home, and this is all we've got.— SCOTT CARPENTER, Astronaut for NASA's project Mercury.
ECO-TOPOGRAPHICS: CO-CREATING A PERSONAL SUSTAINABLE VISION
What germinated EcoTopographics? Fifteen years ago, Shadow Creek development, Lakewood, New York, was surveyed and excavated to construct forty houses. The soil and habitat were bulldozed, folded under, or scraped clean and trucked to landfills. Blacktopped roads, utilities, and sold signs symbolized new owners! The voiding of natural habitats represented a new beginning. (see preface and preface images). Would homeowners co-create sustainability?
As Gandhi said, "be the change that you wish to see in the world." James Colby planted over 300 trees, bushes, and grass to shade, cool, and beautify his home. Today, earthen beds, water gardens, and flora hold water, restore habitat, and provide lush carbon sinks. Rain barrels supply water for plants next to Colby's home. Roof-water is channeled to wash over lawns and into beds before traveling to retaining ponds. Energy-efficient plantation shutters cover all windows. Lisa Colby is planting daylily and bee balm, and germinating lupine to vivify flower beds and "brook-scape" areas. Propagating indigenous flora and culling invasive species are priorities. Solar panels provide 100% of the family's electricity and charge a Prius Prime, Plug-in Hybrid. Green steps, one at a time, take place, year after year. As these actions become integral parts of everyday life, they represent a "sociobiological" shift.
Eight years ago, Colby's green living became the subject for this documentary project; their newly fashioned environment supports local habitat, wildlife, and Chautauqua Lake watershed. In the end, demonstrating "Care for Our Common Home."
All ecosystems, large and small, are like threads or intricate patterns within a biospheric tapestry; each element or part is interconnected and vital to the whole. Earth has lost too many threads, and the physical/ethereal lattices are falling apart. Earth's ecosystems are out of sync with nature and Nature, and with humanity. No matter your worldview (theistic evolution, creation science, intelligent design, or big-bang theory), the bottom line: the “larger human family” must consciously collaborate and cooperate to co-create a well-ordered planet.
Colby's four season images depict nature's cycles and flux forces. Home and cultural artifacts are upstaged or veiled by branches, buds, leaves, and various stages of precipitation and sunlight. Shoots, thorns, and tendrils animate as they stretch towards "father sun" to photosynthesize. Sun and vegetative and Earth breath and exchange energies, in and out. Earth and all vegetation acts like vital external organs. Roots absorb mother Earth’s love. Vegetation responds and plays light and shadow, feels frost, bends to snow, or falls and decomposes to re-nurture Earth. Rain barrels and drip lines, solar panels, and all energy-efficient or organic practices reflect a Zen "way of life." Each day, Nature reveals Yin-Yang or complimentary flux forces that challenge, refresh, and sustain life.
Have we forgotten who we are, where we come from, and that we must balance our growth and impact within the delicate labyrinth of life? Why are we failing to visualize, understand, and revere nature's molecular, chemical, biological, ecological, and atmospheric interrelationships? Our energies touch all matter within a unified consciousness. Do men and women of the industrial age suffer from a post-hunter-gatherer form of amnesia? Many indigenous people have not forgotten the Oneness of life and the mysterious energies that fuse body, mind, and spirit with Gaia, the Cosmos, and creator.
Shortsighted goals, flawed thinking, and selfish desires dismantle Earth's homeostasis—the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interconnected and interdependent elements. Nature surrounds and permeates all life and functions like a vital external organ shared by all Earthly life. Religious, philosophical, and scientific misperceptions have leveraged disconnections from nature. Zen mindfulness or "right living" has waned. Courage, collaboration, cooperation, and compassion must drive humanity's creative imagination to take hold and co-create Neo-nature.
CONCLUSION
What can countries, regions, states, and individuals do to reverse ecological disharmony? Can a fresh, eco-consious era evolve, where urban, suburban, and rural designs foster integrated systems that recognize the need to maintain a healthy atmosphere and support communities of organisms, flora, and fauna? Transformations are possible! Individual citizens, nations, and world organizations have healed Earth. Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (1962) and her revelation of highly integrated ecosystems created a paradigm shift for environmental science. Everyday citizens and scientists (along with politicians cooperate heads) listened, altered perceptions, and supported change. Carson revealed the destructive cause and effect relationships inherent to the widespread use of DDT and other chemicals. Carson’s ideas became a comprehensive vision that evolved into Earth Day. The environmental fever swept across America for a single day (April 22, 1970) with teach-ins and demonstrations. As a result, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded in 1970, the Clean Air Act was updated (1970), and the Clean Water Act was revised (1972). The Endangered Species Act, signed in 1973, and the Soil and Water Conservation Act passed in 1977. These acts received bi-partisan and presidential support.
Other movements followed: Eugene Smith's Minamata photographs brought international attention to mercury poisoning in Japan (1971). Lois Gibbs, a fervent Love Canal activist whose community rested upon a toxic waste site, challenged industrial and political titans. In the end, she brought forth accountability for environmental misdeeds and cover-ups. Her work led to Congress passing the Superfund Act to compensate citizens and restore contaminated landscapes. The Montreal Protocol (1987), an unprecedented global treaty, was designed to reduce ozone-depleting chemicals released into the atmosphere. The agreement succeeded; the ozone layer is steadily increasing.
Edward O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, or "urge to affiliate with other forms of life," is a term Colby uses to describe the source of his environmental passions. Wilson proposes that nature is deeply rooted in our DNA, biology, and psyche. Does this surprise you? We evolved from, are bound to, and highly dependent on Mother Earth in innumerable ways. Wilson hopes that humanity's altruistic, collaborative, cooperative, and compassionate genes will come to the fore to re-calibrate a new evolutionary path, one that understands that we are bound to Nature . . . and reaffirms our "humble place" within.
Colby's photographs meld the artistic styles presented in "New Topographics" and reflect Ansel Adams' Idealism and Eliot Porter's Earthly abstractions. Adams and Porter transformed landscapes into holy sanctuaries and ethereal spaces worthy of taking communion. In stark contrast, "New Topographics" presented environments that were unnatural and unholy. Colby demonstrates reverence for nature as he creates and documents a sustainable environment. "I believe that preserving wilderness areas, cultivating green homes, and healing atmospheres will invigorate Earth's natural healing processes. Humanity has and can co-create sustainability," said Colby. "Solutions to current climate-change challenges require a near-Platonic Quest or call to excellence within nations, regions, and individual citizens."