29 Nov - 6 Dec 2009

From 7 – 18 December 2009 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen to negotiate and agree the framework for a new international climate change agreement. This will be a last opportunity to pave the way for updating and replacing the Kyoto Protocol before it expires in 2012. A quotation often used in articles about environmental issues:

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

Source unknown but probably a Native American Proverb

22 - 29 Nov 2009

One hundred and fifty years ago on Tuesday, 24th November, (1859) Charles Darwin published his most celebrated book, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” Even though Darwin studied the “struggle for life” of many species, he didn’t lose that wonder he had for the natural world. Unfortunately, some adults lose that sense of wonder which all children seem to be born with. But we can still have a sense of wonder whether or not we believe in an ultimate purpose or in an ultimate Being; or whether or not we accept that species evolve and have evolved from a single organism.

This is the last sentence of Darwin’s book (the words in brackets were added by Darwin for the second edition to make his point clearer):

“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator] into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles Darwin (1809-1882; naturalist, geologist, biologist and author).

15 - 22 Nov 2009

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference between life and death.”

Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel KBE (b.1928; writer, political activist, 1986 Nobel Peace Prize and Holocaust survivor).

8 - 15 Nov 2009

In the week which begins with Remembrance Sunday and includes Armistice Day (11th November), a thought about ‘peace’:

“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education;
all politics can do is keep us out of war.”

Maria Montessori (1870-1952; Italian physician, educator and philosopher).