Writing has its way to deliver ideas

Here is a piece of essay from Kammen, good structure to put a way for his own idea also a good history summary to inspire our environmental mind. Beautiful English!

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THERE IS a saying that "life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." Such an event takes place today in San Francisco, and warrants a place in history.

In the environmental arena, the September 1962 publication of "Silent Spring" was such an event. Rachel Carson's book alerted America to the destruction we were causing to birds, fish and to ourselves, and launched the modern environmental movement.

Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was another milestone, when millions gathered across the nation to take heed of Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson's warning, that, "we have only one Earth, we need to take care of her." Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, arguably the single-most important and successful piece of environmental legislation to date.

The June 1992 "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro was an unprecedented U.N. conference where heads of state, non-governmental groups and almost 10,000 journalists gathered to deliver the message that changes on a grand scale were needed, and were possible through a mix of local action and international accords, to protect the planet.

To this list we can now add Sept. 27, 2006, the day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign a piece of landmark legislation that has been agreed upon by a coalition of Republicans, Democrats, climate and energy scientists, activists and a cadre of industry leaders: Assembly Bill 32 (AB32), the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

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Shortly before her death, Rachel Carson wrote: "Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself ... (We are) challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."

Today, a vital step is being taken to meet that challenge.

Daniel M. Kammen is the Class of 1935 distinguished professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley. He co-directs the Berkeley Institute of the Environment and is founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL). He has appointments in the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy.