Environmentalism with an altitude

A 1,000-year-old redwood tree named Luna was home to activist Julia Butterfly Hill for 738 days, 1997 through 1999. Hill lived in the tree for two years to protest the Pacific Lumber Company's plans to cut down a section of northern California's famous redwood forests. While 180 feet in the air in Luna, Hill founded the Circle of Life Foundation to work for solutions to environmental and social problems. \nAfter descending Luna, Hill began traveling around the country to speak to schoolchildren, college students, labor unions and others. \nHer current six-week tour brings her to Bloomington at 7 p.m. today to speak in the Whittenberger Auditorium of the Indiana Memorial Union. A reception and book signing will follow the speech. The speech's sponsors include the School of Environmental the Public Affairs, Indiana Public Interest Research Group, the Student Environmental Action Coalition and the department of religious studies.\nJunior Nalini Ravindranath, an INPIRG board chair, said her group was involved in obtaining the funding for and advertising of the speech because of its relation to INPIRG's mission.\n"We work on mostly public interest issues, and one of the main issues is obviously the environment," Ravindranath said. "This will definitely raise the profile on how important it is to have ordinary people be active in what goes on in the environment." \nDavid Haberman, associate professor of religious studies, was directly involved in bringing Hill to IU. Haberman said his concern over the state of forests globally and in Southern Indiana led him to read about Hill's experience.\n"I've heard tapes of her talking and seen videos," Haberman said. "I was just very moved by her message of all-inclusive love."\nHill's perspective on the environment supports a connection between ecology and religion, Haberman said.\n"She's a person who says environmental problems are also spiritual problems," he said. "Someone who believes any solution to our environmental problems involves addressing our spiritual problems of the day, which in short could be represented by the fact we are amazingly out of touch with life and life processes."\nBloomington resident Tracy McNeely is spending her fifth day sitting in a tree in Brown's Woods to protect the area from development. Haberman said he has visited McNeely twice and that she said Hill is one of her heroes.\nBesides speaking to the audience at the auditorium, Hill will also make a presentation in Haberman's class on religion and ecology and get together with small groups of SPEA and religious studies majors.\n"I think her action was an inspiration for everyone," said Joshua Martin, a SPEA graduate student. "It inspired me to want to protect the old growth forests. I think she brings something to the University atmosphere we don't necessarily always get to see."\nHaberman agreed with Martin.\n"I think part of an education today means facing what's going on in the world and being clear about the real future college students are facing," Haberman said. "In some ways, the educational process is failing in helping students to do that. To a large degree, education is based on the fact of the future being even more rosy and materialistically luxurious. Anyone who looks at the life support systems on the planet knows this is not the case. Julia Butterfly is part of an educational experience students on this campus deserve"