This is one website that Louisiana Pagans who are environment conscious should be aware of. It has valuable information about the environment here, the problems, and most importantly, what you can do about it. I have seen the organization mentioned in numerous articles for their various court battles.

LEAN was founded to help Louisiana citizens change the balance of power and challenge the insanity of continued economic and ecological suicide as practiced Lousiana-style. By empowering more than one hundred grassroots, community organizations, and countless individuals, LEAN has already helped in gaining a tremendous foothold in the war to make Louisiana’s communities safer, healthier places to live. LEAN’s expanded efforts will allow the progress already made to continue.

I am forming a new list of links for environmental information and other “sustainable living” websites, which you will find in the sidebar. Recommendations for additions to my list are always welcome.

The normal proposals to preserve our wetlands, various piecemeal mitigation and restoration projects, may not be enough to replace the football field we lose every 30 minutes.

Tennessee Technological University’s Dr. Vincent Neary proposes a radically different plan: diversion of the extreme lower river to the East and West, allowing sediment to be restored using natural processes.

His proposal will be presented to Louisiana Governor Blanco on June 1st, the first day of hurricane season. According to Dr. Neary, a solution that preserves our wetlands is feasible. The real question is whether the political will exists to make it a reality.

As a druid, I feel it is up to me to help my community live in harmony with nature. While such “harmony” may have some deeply spiritual meanings, I mean something very simple and concrete: living in a way that is sustainable. Not taking more from Nature than She is willing to give indefinitely. Planning for the long term — not in terms of five or ten years, but in terms of fifty or a hundred.

Our food production is not sustainable. It requires about 10 units of energy for every unit that makes it to the plate, and it is extremely oil-dependant. Pesticides, harvesting, transportation, preservation, and cooking all depend on oil and oil-based machinery. One answer to this dilemma is organic growing and permaculture methods. It is possible to develop systems of agriculture that could be operated on a small scale locally, require no pesticides, and no more than 2% of the population to be devoted to agriculture. Researchers in Asia have a lot of useful information to share with us. In Making the World Sustainable Mae-Wan Ho discusses the importance of integrating livestock with agriculture.

It may sound like a dream, but it is possible to produce a super-abundance of food with no fertilizers or pesticides and with little or no greenhouse gas emission. The key is to treat farm wastes properly to mine the rich nutrients that can be returned to the farm, to support the production of fish, crops, livestock and more; get biogas energy as by-product, and perhaps most importantly, conserve and release pure potable water back to the aquifers.

In One Bird - Ten Thousand Treasures this principle is applied to rice paddies by adding ducks.

“Well, it has been called a ‘one-bird revolution’”, my host began, “the duck is the key to success.” The secret is to release ducklings into the paddy fields soon after the seedlings are planted. But won’t the ducklings eat the rice seedlings? No. “It is in their nature not to eat the rice seedlings.” Mr. Furuno assured me, then added,”agronomists in the university say it’s because rice seedlings have too much silica.”

There are plenty of resources to teach us how to break our dependence on cheap oil and distantly-produced food, and our un-sustainable use of natural resources. It is time we learn and practice what real “harmony with nature” is all about.