A Prologue To A “Green Resume”/”Green Credentials”

 

July 1, 2009 - 8:00 pm

 

            I am sitting here in my chair tonight looking out the back window at two Wrens bouncing around in the trumpet vine that I planted some 20 years ago. It seems that the nest that the Wren has been protecting so seriously has produced at least one “hollow legged” child, who is perpetually hungry.

 

            I saw another recent hatchling tonight, a 2/3 sized male Downey Woodpecker who was happily dining on the mealworm suet I have a couple of feet outside my kitchen window.

 

            …and, a large flying “bug” out in my yard, in our patch of jewel weed, turned out to be our semi-resident Hummingbird, stopping by for an evening snack.

 

            All this was happening in my small suburban Cleveland Hts. yard as I was mulling over what I should write down and document for my “Green Resume”/ “Green Credentials”

 

            It’s now 8:30pm, and Liza Jane Doolittle is insisting that I am very late for my cat feeding duties.

 

            I had best go, if I place any value on my ankles…

 

 

 “Green Resume - Green Credentials”

 

 

Introduction: 

          I was influenced early on by reading “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson in the late ‘60’s. I read Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” and the Club of Rome’s “Limit’s To Growth” in the early ‘70’s.

 

            While in at Case Western Reserve University in the mid ‘70’s, the “Spaceship Earth” concept arose, with the concerns that we might be over extending the resources of our “spaceship” Planet Earth. I also read the book by Dr. Mihajlo Mesarovic, “Mankind at the Turning Point, The Second Report to the Club of Rome”, who was in the Systems Engineering Department there at the time.

 

            I first heard “Global Warming” described in detail in the early ‘80’s, by Professor Mesarovic at a talk that he gave one evening in a classroom at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. At that time he said that the Global Warming problem would overshadow anything that the Club of Rome studies had been concerned with.

 

           In the subsequent 25 some years, the concept of “Global Warming” has gone from theory, to potential hazard, to possible hazard, to probable hazard, to genuine concern.

 

            I truly hope that I can be “part of the solution”, and not just a “part of the problem”.