embracing tree huggers: the powerful roots of (un)armed environmental protection

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/embracing-tree-huggers-powerful-roots-unarmed-environmental-protection-1325945868



Show the slight­est bit of con­cern for the en­vi­ron­ment and you get la­beled a tree hug­ger. That’s what poor Newt Gin­grich has been deal­ing with re­cently, as the other pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates at­tack his con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials for hav­ing once ap­peared in an adwith Nancy Pelosi in sup­port of re­new­able en­ergy. Never mind that he has since called the ad the “biggest mis­take” of his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer and talked about mak­ing Sarah Palin en­ergy sec­re­tary. Gin­grich will be haunted by the tree hug­ger label the rest of his life. He might as well grow his hair out, stop show­er­ing and start walk­ing around bare­foot.

But is that what a tree hug­ger re­ally is? Just some dazed hip­pie who goes around giv­ing hugs to trees as way to con­nect with na­ture. You might be shocked to learn the real ori­gin of the term.

The first tree hug­gers were 294 men and 69 women be­long­ing to the Bish­nois branch of Hin­duism, who, in 1730, died while try­ing to pro­tect the trees in their vil­lage from being turned into the raw ma­te­r­ial for build­ing a palace. They lit­er­ally clung to the trees, while being slaugh­tered by the foresters. But their ac­tion led to a royal de­cree pro­hibit­ing the cut­ting of trees in any Bish­noi vil­lage. And now those vil­lages are vir­tual wooded oases amidst an oth­er­wise desert land­scape. Not only that, the Bish­nois in­spired the Chipko move­ment (which means “to cling”) that started in the 1970s, when a group of peas­ant women in North­east India threw their arms around trees des­ig­nated to be cut down. Within a few years, this tac­tic, also known as tree satya­graha, had spread across India, ul­ti­mately forc­ing re­forms in forestry and a mora­to­rium on tree felling in Hi­malayan re­gions.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Thanks , I never knew it went back to 1730

tree hugging . Greed and short sighted oppurtunists of course have been here forever.

[fascisthunter]

2. OH MY GOD... how Evil... they defend... NATURE!

quick, label them all terrorists.



PS - thanks for the post!

[Voice for Peace]

3. thanks!