Barbara K. Richardson
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A Climate of Change

2/16/2010

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I just finished co-hosting my first environmental conference. As organizers go, environmentalists are a fractious bunch. It’s a miracle they ever get anything done. We, we ever get anything done. Passion mixed with devotion mixed with personal bias mixed with a helpless feeling nothing is quite enough to genuinely help the world situation—I’ve now seen these up close and personal. Kindness helps, when the egoing gets tough.

The actual conference felt completely different than the planning. It took on the temperament of the guests we’d invited to speak: two labor organizers, a Palestine advocate and a world-class biologist. Strong, smart, informed, gracious, these people knitted together both the issues and the local community.

We gathered at the University of Utah this Valentine’s Day weekend to discuss peace, social justice and a healthy planet. I think now it was an activist’s love letter, written over the course of two days. Discussions were civil, the press conference rocked, audiences spoke thoughtfully, a brave, eloquent thirteen-year-old boy demanded the Utah legislature show scientists the respect they deserve, award-winning movies inspired and I learned, in addition to the information shared and experts encountered, just how human love can look on a large scale.

The answer is genuinely good.

RadioActive program featuring Tyler Volk and David Chapman on climate change.

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    Favorite quotes:

    "Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.” 
    —Willa Cather

    "Nothing is as powerful as beauty in a wicked world."
    ​—Amos Lee
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    Favorite place:

    The middle of nowhere.
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    Currently reading:

    Curse of the Pogo Stick
    The Maytrees 

    Just finished reading:

    Finding Stillness in a Noisy World
    ​

    Favorite blog:

    One Woman's Meat: Notes from Escalante

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