The distinction of Pando Populus lies in our commitment to a worldview that displays the profound interconnectedness and mutual dependence of all the entities that make up our world.

Fourth grade students recruited State Senator Okerlund as a quaking aspen advocate and spokesperson on the senate floor and he, along with colleagues, passed Senate Bill 41 to change the state tree from the Colorado Blue Spruce to the quaking aspen – Pando, of course, being the oldest and largest example. Then the governor signed it into law.

“Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of…Climate Change.” — Alan Rusbridger, Guardian

The “modern” world quickly abandoned Greek wisdom. Seventeenth-century scientists constructed a machine out of the sacred natural world and cosmos of the Greeks. Even humans started thinking like machines.

My argument is that thinking that leaves subjects out of the picture not only ignores the fundamental reality, but also does practical damage.

Should climate scientists frankly tell the public just how dire the situation is? On this question, there are differences of opinion within the climate community.

The history of a world composed of nation states has not been a pretty one. Why should we care? It is not promising that governments are ceasing to be sovereign. It is hard to expect transnational corporations to make the decisions needed to save the habitability of the planet.

Our knowledge of the microscopic world has exploded. For machines, without human programming, to “communicate” and “sense” does indeed sound “almost magical.”

Marilyn Hempel on population: “We’re still adding about 220,000 people a day. The question is: what will be left, of civil society and of the non-human world, by the time human population finally stops growing.”

John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker with more on Laudato Si’: On June 30, 2015 a high level discussion was held marking the publication of the encyclical Laudato Si’. The Secretary General has observed that the pope’s “moral voice is part of a growing chorus of people from all faiths and all sectors of society speaking out for climate action.” Cardinal Turkson strongly underscored a basic point of the encyclical, namely, ”We are all in this together.”

We have a front row seat on the destruction of nation states — or possibly a refusal to surrender to domination by financial institutions.

To become fellow creatures / with ant bee elephant deer / cedar sequoia spruce oak / mitochondria / To live in this world / as one among the multitudinous many