What better way to localize a general topic to the specific locale of Puget Sound than by using music by Pearl Jam? That’s just what Shifting Baselines in the Sound did.
Commissioned by the Puget Sound Partnership, it illustrates just how our expectations for a healthy Puget Sound are colored by our recent experience with a less than bountiful Sound.
There’s a host of other short films about shifting baselines by Randy Olson at:http://www.shiftingbaselines.org/videos/index.html
In Ian’s Ride, Karen Polinsky tells an inspiring story of Ian Mackay learning ways to approach life after he had been paralyzed from the neck down. One of the things I especially liked about the story was how it focused on the process of finding solutions rather than dramatizing a negative view of the situation.
A five-episode series, each one about a different ocean. The underwater video is stunning, and it does a good job of pointing out ecosystem interconnections.
Cities do, indeed, have their own ecosystems. These have developed over centuries of city growth, suburb growth, and other human impacts on the lands. This book added a new dimension to my understanding of how we are impacting nature.
Earth for All was published in 2022 as a report to The Club of Rome. As I read it, I realized that it was part of a “new wave” of literature about addressing our current global problems — a wave that was based on systems thinking.
I highly recommend Homewaters — for the way it introduces the components of the Puget Sound ecosystem, but especially for how it weaves the various parts together.