Right! No real blogging for the next few days due to stats class. BUT, there’s a recently installed spam-catcher (deletes idiot rants about WYD straight to the bin unread! Oh, Critical Mass has their own account about Christians sadly not acting at all ‘Christian’ with their shocking on-the-scene account in Sydney with Violent Pilgrims VS Positive Atheism (part 1) and Violent Pilgrims VS Positive Atheism (Part 2)) – and I even figured out how to play Google video!
Next, I’ll figure how www.podblack.com can make me a cappuchino and deliver world peace, I think.
But M sent me the following this morning and it seems to be quite a news release – will write more on my studies later, but first: ANU Media Release – News from The Australian National University
During World Youth Day events the Pope said he is confident about the future of the planet, yet the Catholic Church and others like it are still largely stuck at the stage of making generalised policy when it comes to addressing ecological challenge, an academic argues.
Dr Steve Douglas from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU says that major Christian denominations are failing to take any real institutional action on climate change and lowering their ‘ecological footprint’, as they are primarily concerned about internal factional disputes, recruitment crises, declining finances, and issues such as sexuality, gender, and child protection.
“For at least several years, the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting Churches in Australia have all made laudable statements about the need to ‘care for Creation’, but this has not been translated into effective institutional action,” Dr Douglas said. “All three are making commendable changes at various levels, but significant gains are relatively few, very patchy, and often at the fringes of the organisations. Most action is ‘bottom-up’, with little meaningful action from leaders, particularly in the larger denominations.”
…Dr Douglas says that the major Churches have taken action to prevent further sexual misconduct by their staff, including implementing workplace safeguards, mandatory reporting and punitive measures. He says that this is proof they can make whole-of-organisation reforms to deal with moral issues when pressured. “When it comes to environmental issues, the major Churches have used language that’s as least as strong as their condemnation of sexual misconduct by clergy – yet they have not backed it up with sufficient reform or investment behind the scenes. It seems that they now accept that care of children is essential, but that ‘care of Creation’ remains effectively optional.”
In my own town, there’s been a bit of action regarding an ecological crisis, involving a declining parrot population – Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo. Last weekend, there was a tree-planting effort in the community, simply because of the destruction of their habitat has led to less and less food sources for them. People were even finding parrots dying on their lawns!
There is some good news though – Birds Australia has released a news item in the most recent ‘Cocky Notes’ (pdf):
In April this year, after learning about the importance of understanding the movements of Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos, a family from the Shire of Victoria Plains was inspired to donate funds to initiate a pilot project investigating if currently available tracking technology is suitable for this species. Birds Australia will collaborate with Perth Zoo, Murdoch University and the Black Cockatoo Rehabilitation Centre to run an aviary trial of radio and satellite transmitters on rehabilitated wild Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoos aiming to identify equipment robust enough to track wild cockatoos. This private donation has made this major ‘next step’ possible.
Every step helps.
Oh, just found some more about the issue – thanks to a great interview done earlier this year for In Conversation, with Professor of Zoology Don Bradshaw of Scott National Park in WA:
If you go and look at the vertebrates, the animals as well, you see the same sort of picture: there’s 456 species of vertebrates listed here and 100 of these are endemic to the region, and these include 19 species of birds, 7 mammals, 50 reptiles, 24 amphibians and 8 species of fresh water fish. Five of the bird species are listed as threatened under the EPBC act (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999)for example, they include things like Carnaby’s black cockatoo, the Baudin’s black cockatoo, the noisy scrub bird, western whip bird, western bristle bird etc. etc. We’re very fortunate to have this extraordinary biodiversity here in the south west and it’s really up to us whether it survives or it doesn’t. We’re concerned about proposals for development – and development can occur and be compatible with conservation but it needs to be done in a very sensitive sort of way.
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