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Tobias has furthered his enquiries into this dialectic that perceives human nature with both optimism and sincere misgivings, in such works as ''Nature’s Keepers: On The Front Lines of the Fight to Save Wildlife in America'', ''Voices From The Underground: For the Love of Animals'', and the 1836-page illustrated novel ''The Adventures of Mr. Marigold''. ''Chateau Beyond Time''' got a ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'' Starred Review as a “...a well-written and sophisticated thriller,” <ref>''Publishers Weekly'' March 3, 2008.</ref> |
Tobias has furthered his enquiries into this dialectic that perceives human nature with both optimism and sincere misgivings, in such works as ''Nature’s Keepers: On The Front Lines of the Fight to Save Wildlife in America'', ''Voices From The Underground: For the Love of Animals'', and the 1836-page illustrated novel ''The Adventures of Mr. Marigold''. ''Chateau Beyond Time''' got a ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'' Starred Review as a “...a well-written and sophisticated thriller,” <ref>''Publishers Weekly'' March 3, 2008.</ref> |
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== Dancing Star Sanctuary controversy == |
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In February 2009, Tobias became the center of a controversy surrounding an animal sanctuary run by Dancing Star Foundation, of which he is the president. He has reportedly ordered a culling of the rescued and retired farm animals that live at the sanctuary, claiming it cannot afford to care for them any longer, though he is paid $285,000 in annual salary as its president, the vice president (his wife) is paid $244,000 and the vice president of finance is paid $240,000.<ref>"Sanctuary Becomes Killing Field for 'Protected' Animals," ''Cal Coast News'', 17 February 2009 http://calcoastnews.com/news.php?viewStory=172108 </ref> <ref> "UPDATE: They shoot horses, don't they? Maybe Not", ''Cal Coast News'', 20 February 2009 http://www.calcoastnews.com/news.php?viewStory=172112</ref> <ref> "Ex-Employees Claim CA Sanctuary Killing Animals" ''CBS 5 News'', 20 February 2009 http://cbs5.com/local/animals.horses.Euthanized.2.940213.html</ref> |
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== Works == |
== Works == |
Revision as of 00:35, 5 March 2009
Michael Charles Tobias (born June 27, 1951) is an American author, ecologist, mountaineer, and filmmaker. His more than 35 books and 100 films have been distributed, translated and/or broadcast in nternationally. Many of his projects are collaborations with his wife, Jane Gray Morrison, an ecologist, musician, author, filmmaker, and philanthropist.[citation needed]
Tobias's work has focused on interlocking themes as population and the environment, ecological aesthetics, international conservation and the sanctuary movement. One of his foremost themes is what he has termed "the anthropology of conscience" and has emphasized humanity’s capacity for non-violence, compassion, and tolerance. With his wife Jane Gray Morrison, Tobias has focused on nature and culture under an animal protection / conservation biology approach. This has resulted in what they have generally described as "the sanctuary movement", of which they have been strong international proponents. [1] Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, Queen of the Fourth King of Bhutan, has described their efforts as being “invaluable for policymakers and scientists...(and) inspiration for the next generation of young ecologists wanting to make a difference in the world.”[2]
As an activist, he has been a powerful voice for animal rights[3] and in the mid-1990s was a recipient of the Courage of Conscience Prize.[4] In 2004 Tobias was honored with the Parabola Focus Award for his body of work in defense of the Earth. [5] Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and President of People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, described Tobias as "one of the world’s great souls."[6] Examples of Tobias’s interdisciplinary approach include collections of essays such as A Parliament of Minds: Philosophy for a New Millennium and A Parliament of Science: Science for the Twenty-First Century. In these works he invited philosophers, scientists, and ethicists from around the world to lend their perspectives to a unified quest to blend nature, spirituality, science and ethics.
Early studies
Tobias received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1977 in the History of Consciousness. His particular interests converged around a broad approach to ecological science and humanities: the impact on diverse human cultures throughout time of the idea of nature, a theme which resonates throughout much of gis approach to what he examined with respect to tribal cultures, and the ecological drivers throughout all known civilizations and cultures.
His early mentors, Helen Kazantzakis (widow of Nikos Kazantzakis) and Kazantzakis’ translator, the poet/essayist Kimon Friar, were very close[citation needed] to Tobias, who eventually directed one of his first films on the legacy of Kazantzakis. The Dutch painter Vermeer’s work inspired Tobias to write his biographical novel of the painter and his family, Jan & Catharina. Japanese aesthetics held an allure for Tobias, who later wrote and filmed in that country. He wasalso inteeested in India; During his final year as an undergraduate, he moved to Kashmir, wrote several books, and made several first ascents in the Kashmiri Himalaya.
The Himalayas, and mountains in general, are an important influence on Tobias’s work. Tobias was the first review editor for the journal Mountain Research & Development, and some of his early climbing fiction and non-fiction appeared in such journals as Climbing, The Mountain Gazette, and Mountain Magazine, most notably an early essay entitled “The Anthropology of Ascent.” Tobias made hundreds of mountaineering ascents throughout most mountain regions of the planet, including many first ascents. Among his climbs was the first known ascent (solo) of the sheer wall on Mount Sinai. In 1973 Tobias lived in a cave above the Monastery of Mount Saint Catherine’s, while attending the University of Tel Aviv and writing one of his earliest books, Dhaulagirideon, the subject of a lengthy essay in Mountain Magazine entitled, “Pondering the Imponderable.” In 1984, Tobias wrote, produced and directed a mountaineering film, Cloudwalker for Channel 4 (London), which many[who?] described as one of the most dangerous movies ever made at the time. It chronicled a failed attempt at a first ascent on a 7,000 foot wall of ice on the Moose’s Tooth, in the Ruth Gorge Amphitheatre of Alaska’s McKinley range, with veteran climbers Jeff Lowe, Jim Bridwell and Mark Wilford, and director Bob Carmichael. Much of this early mountaineering appeared in many of Tobias’s books, including his early metaphysical epic, Tsa, and a novel set in Ladakh (where Tobias had spent nearly a year in total while working on his Ph.D.) titled Deva, with a Preface by Kimon Friar. Subsequently, Tobias edited an anthology, The Mountain Spirit, with co-editor Harold Drasdo, as well as the anthologized work, Mountain People.
Population and environment - World War III
Tobias has tackled the many complex issues concerning human population pressure on the environment.[7]] His book World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium received widespread critical praise. Psychology Today wrote, "World War III reads like a volcano erupting...Tobias throws sparks like an evangelist and has the old-fashioned, wide-ranging erudition of a Renaissance scholar.”[8] Placing Tobias in the tradition of Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich and E.O.Wilson, scientist Marc Lappé described World War III as “a lengthy and complex treatise that is a distillation of a lifetime of thought and action concerning the human condition.... a treatise with a difference. It provides a thread of hope, offering a new vision about how humankind may ultimately come to peace with nature.” [9] Writing also of Tobias’s' World War III in 1998, Jane Goodall said, “Tobias describes for us a path that we could take – a path mapped out by a combination of scientific, logical, intuitive, and spiritual reasoning – towards a future where all is not, after all, lost. … In World War III Tobias raises a clarion call. A call for aid such as, in the olden days, would summon knights in shining armour to fight under the banner of their king. And now we are all summoned, each and every one of us. For we must fight together to stop this senseless assault on the natural world.”[10] In 1994, during the UN population conference, the Montreal Gazette quoted Tobias “For purposes of absolute clarity I call it World War III,” or, as the Gazette extrapolated from Tobias’s perspective, “the most terrifying problem humanity has ever faced."[11] In her Foreword to World War III, Jane Goodall said of Tobias that he has provided “ample scientific proof of the large-scale habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity that has and continues to take place. He tackles controversial issues with unfailing honesty.”[12] In China, Tobias tracked down the “father” of the one-child revolution –a legendary mystery figure, Dr. Qian Xinzhong and met with him in Beijing). [13] In his later PBS adaptation of his book, Tobias interviewed Madame Peng Peiyun, the head of China’s State Family Planning Commission; she admitted that China could possibly hit 2 billion: a number that smashed the conventional demographic projections for China by a whopping 25%. Not surprisingly, many were alarmed by the scope and devastation portrayed in World War III. Kirkus Reviews wrote that Tobias had employed “a governing metaphor a bit less subtle than a strip mine” but acknowledges that “Tobias is both knowledgeable and passionate in his attempt to reconcile scientific rationality with a religious reverence for the planet.”[14] Tobias’s contribution to understanding this issue was in his systematic correlations of myriad hits to biological populations throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Pacific Rim, as well as in the G7 nations, resulting from expanding human numbers, a relationship that has recently seen a wave of renewed scientific interest, particularly in the realm of calculating the impact of climate change on biodiversity. [15] The documentary, No Vacancy, based on Tobias’s book of that title, again addresses the issue of population and the environment. Journalist Ellen Snortland writing in the Pasadena Weekly, stated that, “‘No Vacancy’, written and directed by Michael Tobias, is to the world’s population explosion what Al Gore’s `'An Inconvenient Truth'’ is to global warming.”[16], [17], [18] [19] [20], [21]
The anthropology of conscience - the Jains, Bishnoi and Todas
In researching indigenous spiritual and ethical traditions, Tobias’s work has moved forward the notion that humanity has what it takes to get it right, with respect to an environmentally sustainable future. In Mother Earth News, Tobias has been described as one who has “reinvigorated (Thomas) Malthus’s theories” [22], [23] of exponential population growth. Tobias has also argued, with a range of examples and research, that human beings are constantly revealing windows on the “soul of nature.” In writing about the example of the nearly twenty-million Jains, Tobias has said that “what we do with the all-encompassing belief in nonviolence is a personal affair...Each of us must rise to the challenge; must transform every juncture of every day into the possibility of a poetic gesture of forgiveness, right intentions, love and compassion. The opportunities, of course, are endless.”[24] In analyzing Jain compassion, lifestyle, and nonviolent approaches to the world, Tobias has championed Jain ecological connections. His work, which most embodies these ecological, religious and ethnographic relationships, is Life Force: The World of Jainism, which has been called “the best book on Jainism.” [25], [26], [27] Tobias’s PBS film Ahimsa –Nonviolence premiered nationwide in the United States on Christmas Day in 1987 and was described by Southeast Asian Religions Professor Chris Chapple as a film “which elegantly portrays several Jain leaders and extols the religion as the great champion of animal rights and nonviolent living.”[28] The film, which took three years of preparations and was filmed in nearly 100 locations across India, was one of the first ever to explore in depth the Jain religion, [citation needed] as well as portraying the life of Digambara, Shwetambara and Sthanakavasi mendicants. In an essay on Jain conscience in 1997, Tobias described “the goal of absolute nonviolence” as an ideal that activists worldwide must take seriously, “every waking moment."[29] Elsewhere, Tobias has argued that evolution does not condemn us; only our choices can do that, adding, “We have the capacity throughout our lives to give unstinting, unconditional love.”[30]
In examining the Bishnoi, Tobias focused on universal principles of conservation based on long-term ethical convictions. In this case, the Bishnoi of Rajasthan who, during a sustained drought in Western India and Pakistan in 1988, were shown to have saved themselves and their communities and ecosystems through prudent and non-violence ecological behavior, a metaphor, said Tobias, for progressive conservation that could be applied throughout Asia, Africa and elsewhere. [31], [32], [33] With regard to , Tobias pointed out that the entire society of the Todas of the Nilgiris converted to vegetarianism 1000 years ago. This transformation of an entire community on ethical grounds is one of the “windows” Tobias cites as key to understanding the potential for the human species to engage in non-violence. In his introduction to the book One Earth Tobias wrote, “The human race is rallying. The earth desperately needs the personal help and restraint of each of us.”[34]
The sanctuary movement and international conservation efforts
In some of his earliest work, Tobias focused extensively on the concept of “sanctuary” as an ecological and modern-day ethical incarnation of early spiritual and legal traditions in many countries, particularly canon law, wherein, for a thousand years those who entered churches could obtain legal sanctuary.
In a cover story for the New York Academy of Sciences publication The Sciences, and in three films, he called for an Antarctic World Park, in the spirit of similar proposals from Greenpeace and New Zealand [35]. He drew attention to the despoliation occurring in what was considered the last great hope for large-scale haitat preservation. His film, Antarctica: The Last Continent (PBS, 1987) encouraged the National Science Foundation to implement best environmental practices at some of its managed bases in Antarctica, including McMurdo, which NSF subsequently did. [citation needed] In his Discovery Channel documentary of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Black Tide, he considered the dilemma of safely using oil resources. "The food chain is the key and it's a horrifying scenario...We have reason to believe (the death toll) is closer to 2 million animals," Tobias said in an interview with The Washington Post in 1990. Wrote Washington Post interviewer Patricia Brennan, "Tobias’s Black Tide concludes that the United States must develop other energy sources and stop relying on oil."[36]
Coupling the impacts of demographic pressure with energy intensity and consumerism have been themes in his fiction, non-fiction, and filmmaking. The Sky’s On Fire, a movie-of-the-week for ABC based upon his novel Fatal Exposure, examined ozone depletion and its impact on biodiversity. The View From Malabar and Element One were early documentaries for public broadcasting examining green space issues, and remarkable prospects for an international hydrogen fuel cell economy. America’s Great Parks, a feature documentary for Discovery Channel, examined the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite, as representative of one of the greatest ideals ever created by Americans.
He has endeavored to explore the concept of sanctuary in his, and co-author Jane Gray Morrison’s work, Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence. They track efforts by conservationists and animal rights activists to save habitat and individuals. They focussed on Alaska (Wrangell-St. Elias National Park with park service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife researchers working to save a rare seabird, Kittlitz’s Murrelet), the San Francisco Bay Area (Muir Woods and the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge), Central Park, Gene Baur and team’s Farm Sanctuary in Upstate New York, the Central Suriname Nature Reserve with Dr. Russell Mittermeier, the Iberian Wolf Sanctuary in Portugal, the work of Brigitte Bardot in France, continuing efforts to save Bialowieza National Park in eastern Poland and western Belarus, a European brown bear sanctuary in the Netherlands, Michael Aufhauser’s Gut Aiderbichl sanctuary in Salzburg, Austria, Howard Buffett’s cheetah sanctuary (Jubatus) in South Africa, Marieta Van Der Merhe’s Harnas Wildlife Sanctuary in Namibia, and other sanctuaries on the island of Socotra in Yemen, in the United Arab Emirates at Al Maha, at the Al Areen Sanctuary in Bahrain, in the vegetarian Rajasthani city of Pushkar, and the Nilgiris of India (working with the Todas and Dr. Tarun Chhabra), in Indonesian Borneo with Dr. Birute Galdikas at Tanjung Puting National Park, in Brunei’s Ulu Temburong National Park, at a butterfly sanctuary in Malaysia, at nature reserves throughout Singapore, in Thailand, and the many moss temples of Kyoto’s Greenbelt, Japan, and in eastern-most Bhutan’s newest wildlife sanctuary of Sakteng, where he participated in a recent collaborative biodiversity survey across 125 kilometers of little-known Eastern Himalayan high-altitude terrain, under the auspices of Bhutan’s National Biodiversity Centre.
He has been involved wildlife preservation efforts. In New Zealand for nearly a decade he has overseen ecological restoration of an peninsula in the far South of the country, adjoining Rakiura National Park,[37] [38]. He also worked on translocation, ecological island, hotspots, and global animal rights field research, numerous publications, symposia, conservation gatherings for the public, and films.
In Bhutan, he has served as advisor to the country’s third biodiversity action plan. [citation needed] He introduced animal rights as a critical path within that nation’s overall conservation plans. Focusing on one of the primary areas of rural Asian economic revenue streams, agriculture, he writes, “…It is agriculture that, more than any other arena of human activity, inflicts the most extensive ‘pain points’; the ‘suffering index’ equivalency to ‘hotspots’ (areas of vast biological ruination). Pain points refer to all those domains of human economic expediency that affect by far the largest number of creatures –whether vertebrate or invertebrate, mammal or other – doomed to suffer and be killed, a quantum that exceeds 100 billion individuals per year, if fresh water and marine vertebrates are included. The reality of such pain points has never been ignored. Asia’s great religious traditions all acknowledged them…."[39]
In his most recent documentary, Hotspots (2008) Tobias and Morrison joined forces with President of Conservation International, Dr. Russell Mittermeier, to make a film, based upon the book Hotspots Revisited, [40] which focuses upon biodiversity conservation efforts on Easter Island (Rapa Nui, Chile), throughout Madagascar, in the Atlantic Forests of Brazil, in the Tropical Andes, Southern California, and New Zealand.
All of these endeavors converge for Tobias, philosophically and ethically, in an embrace of the pragmatic sanctuary concept; the realization that habitat, and individual members of the more than 100 million estimated species on Earth, can be spared further insult, harassment and death by Homo sapiens if only we will listen to our hearts, and to nature, embracing good governance, proactive conservation measures, and a thorough animal rights orientation in all matters.
Reconciling animal rights and conservation biology
In their book Donkey: The Mystique of Equus Asinus, Tobias, and Jane Gray Morrison examined donkeys through an interdisciplinary ecological approach that has characterized much of their respective and collaborative work; an approach that fuses non-fiction with very personal and lyrical experiential autobiographical prose. The combination of science, art history, comparative literature, spirituality, and animal rights has become something of a hallmark of Tobias’s writing. Jonathan Spaulding, Executive Director of the Museum of The American West, Autry National Center, would write of Donkey, “Humble, tough, gentle, and wise, donkeys have a lot to teach their old companions, the humans. In a book as solid and deep as the species it describes, Michael Tobias and Jane Morrison have given us an allegory for our survival.” [citation needed]
In his book, Environmental Meditation, Tobias modeled his essays in the same style as that of Marcus Aurelius, addressing eco-psychological underpinnings of animal rights, eco-aesthetics, ecological history, and spirituality – from Chartres, to Viennese ducks, the search for paradise and “the mind in an age of ecological stress.” His Holiness Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu, a Jain guru, wrote of Tobias’s Meditations, “In the fear of death, man has forgotten how to live. Michael Tobias shows in his meditations how to live in the fullness of the moment and experience the beauty of the earth and the ecstasy of macrocosm in microcosm.”[citation needed] And actor, author, and environmentalist William Shatner wrote of the book, “With an awesome intellect and enviable passion, Michael Tobias has fashioned a book that must be read by every concerned human who wishes to follow the poetical trail left by a 21st century man...Michael gives us hope.”[citation needed]
The reconciliation of conservation biology with animal rights has propelled recent Tobias’s work. [41] In t his lead essay for the catalogue of a museum exhibition devoted to Endangered Species: Flora & Fauna in Peril,[42] Tobias writes, “The numbers (referring to U.S. Fish & Wildlife listings of Threatened and Endangered species) represent far more than cold calculus. Each species has an amazing, mysterious face, an incalculable biography, and a primeval context that is local, regional, and global... Given the extremes of the human animal, whose footprints are inordinately represented across the landscape, we must confront that all too familiar spectacle of ourselves: ungainly beasts in an innocent garden, with capacities that both recommend and condemn us in the context of biological history.”
Tobias has furthered his enquiries into this dialectic that perceives human nature with both optimism and sincere misgivings, in such works as Nature’s Keepers: On The Front Lines of the Fight to Save Wildlife in America, Voices From The Underground: For the Love of Animals, and the 1836-page illustrated novel The Adventures of Mr. Marigold. Chateau Beyond Time' got a Publishers Weekly Starred Review as a “...a well-written and sophisticated thriller,” [43]
Works
Books by Michael Tobias
Non-fiction
- Endangered Species: Flora and Fauna in Peril, Wildling Museum of Art, 2008. (Lead essay)
- Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence, with Jane Gray Morrison, Foreword by the Queen of Bhutan, Council Oak Books, San Francisco, Tulsa, 2008. ISBN 1571782141
- Donkey: The Mystique of Equus Asinus, with Jane Gray Morrison, Council Oak Books, San Francisco, Tulsa, 2007. ( ISBN 1571782028
- No Vancancy: Global Responses to the Human Population Explosion, ed. with Jane Morrison, et. al, Hope Publishing, 2006. (ISBN 1932717080
- Dubai 24 Hours, Motivate Publishing, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2003. Forward by Sheikh Hamdan. ISBN 1860631533
- A Parliament of Science: Science for the 21st Century, ed., with Teun Timmers and Gill Wright, State University of New York Press, (2003) ISBN 0791458148
- Ich Spurte Die Seele Der Tiere (I Feel The Soul of Animals), ed. with Kate Solisti), Frankh-Kosmos Publishing, 2003. ISBN 34400072746
- Voices from the Underground: For the Love of Animals, New Paradigm Books, Pasadena, CA, 1999. ISBN 0932727484
- A Parliament of Minds: Philosophy for a New Millennium, ed., with Pat Fitzgerald, and David Rothenberg. State University of New York Press, 1999. ISBN 0791444848
- In Search of Reality: The Art of Documentary Filmmaking, (ed.) M.Wiese Publishing, Los Angeles, 1997. ISBN 0941188620
- Nature's Keepers: On the Frontlines of the Fight To Save Wildlife in America, John Wiley & Sons Publishing, New York, 1997. ISBN 0471157287
- Kinship With Animals, (ed., with Kate Solisti), Beyond Words Publishing, 1998. ISBN 1885223889
- A Day in the Life of India, Harper Collins, 1997. ISBN 0002251043
- India 24 Hours, Mapin Publishing, India, 1996. ISBN 0944142699
- A Parliament of Souls: In Search of Global Spirituality, (ed., with Jane Gray Morrison and Bettina Gray), KQED/Bay Books, San Francisco, 1995. ISBN 0912333359
- World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium, Preface by Jane Goodall. Bear, & Co., and Continuum Books, 1994, 1998. (and audiobook version)
- El Hombre la Contra de Tierra, Flor Del Viento, Barcelona, 1996.
- The Soul of Nature: Visions of a Living Earth, ed., with Georgianne Cowan, Continuum/Penguin-Dutton/Plume, 1995 and 1996. ISBN 0826306904
- The Soul of Nature: Celebrating the Spirit of the Earth, ed., with Georgianne Cowan, Continuum/Penguin-Dutton/Plume, 1995 and 1996. ISBN 0452275733
- A Vision of Nature: Traces of the Original World, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1995. ISBN 087338480
- Environmental Meditation, Crossing Press, California, 1993. ISBN 089594586X
- La Leggi di Felham from Nuova Etica, Turin, 2002.
- Life Force: The World of Jainism, Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley, CA, 1991 and 2000. ISBN 0875730809
- Mountain People, ed., University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. ISBN 0806119764
- After Eden – History, Ecology & Conscience, Slawson Communications, San Diego, 1984. ISBN 0932238289
- Deep Ecology, ed., Avant Books, San Diego, 1983 and 1986.
- The Mountain Spirit, ed. With Harold Drasdo, Overlook/Viking/Penguin/Gollancz, 1979, 1980. ISBN 0879510730
- A Biography of Self-Consciousness, Ann Arbor Dissertation Archives, 1977.
Fiction
- Chateau Beyond Time, Council Oak Books, San Francisco, Tulsa, 2008. ISBN 1571782133
- The Adventures of Mr. Marigold, Craig Potton Publishing, New Zealand, 2005 ISBN 1877333093
- TWIMC (To Whom It May Concern), Verbum Inc, San Francisco, 2003 (with Chris Traub). ISBN 1882305094
- Jan & Catharina, Smart Art Press, Santa Monica, 1997. ISBN 1889195227
- A Naked Man, Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley, CA, 1994. ISBN 0875730272
- Rage & Reason, Rupa & Co., and AK Press, India, the U.K., and U.S. editions, 1993 and 1997. ISBN 1873176562
- Believe, (with William Shatner), Berkley/Putnam, New York, 1992. ISBN 042513296X
- Vegzetas Sugarak, Plantan, Budapest, 1991. ISBN 9637734007
- Fatal Exposure, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991. ISBN 0671725726
- Voice of the Planet, Bantam Books, New York, 1990. ISBN 0553283677
- Deva, Avant Books, San Diego, 1982. ISBN 0932238106
- Tsa, International Mountaineering Arts, Berkeley, CA., Limited Edition Book. 1974.
- Dhaulagirideon, IMAJ Publishers, Agni Review, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, Limited Edition Book, 1973.
Selected films by Michael Tobias as writer, director, producer and/or executive producer
- Hotspots, A Dancing Star Foundation feature documentary (Writer, Director, Producer, Executive Producer, Co-Director of Photography) – 2008.
- No Vacancy, A Dancing Star Foundation feature documentary, with Population Communication (Writer, Director, Producer, Executive Producer, Director of Photography) Hosted by Bob Gillespie, 2006.
- Mad Cowboy, A Dancing Star Foundation feature documentary, with Voice for a Viable Future (Writer, Director, Executive Producer) Hosted by Howard Lyman, Based upon Lyman’s book by the same title, Produced by Dr. Patrick Fitzgerald, 2005.
- The Hydrogen Age, A World Watch Special, One-hour documentary, (Co-Writer) - Produced and Directed by Geoff Holland and Marc Griffith, Narrated by Leonard Nimoy, 2004.
- Y.M.I., Dramatic feature film, Temple 4 Films (Co-Executive Producer)
- Dubai 24 Hours, Feature documentary, Alarabiya, Dubai Committee and the International Monetary Fund (Writer, Director) – 2002.
- The Cost of Cool, Thirty-minute documentary, Population International, (Director) 2001.
- Images of Arizona, One-hour documentary, KAET/PBS, (Senior Director, Producer) 2000.
- The Sky's on Fire, Two-hour Movie-of-the-Week, ABC, (Executive Producer, based upon Tobias’s novel, Fatal Exposure) , 2000.
- The View From Malabar, One-hour Ohio PBS special, (Director) - Produced by Geoffrey Holland, 2000.
- A Parliament of Minds, Fifteen-part series, PBS/Wisdom Network, (Director, Producer, based upon Tobias’s co-edited book by same title, with Dr. Pat Fitzgerald,) Hosted by Mike Malone 1999.
- Whale Shark Hunters of the Philippines, KETA films, one-hour special for National Geographic Channel (Executive Producer) Directed by Erin Calme, 1999.
- River of Love, Feature film, Dharmic Productions, (Writer, Director) 1999.
- Kids & Animals, Animal Planet, (Director, Co-Writer) - 1999.
- Reigning Cats of San Francisco, Animal Planet, (Director, Writer), One-hour special., 1998.
- Legends & Dreamers, One-hour special, PBS-Phoenix, (Co-Director, Producer) , Executive Produced by Jillian Robinson, 1998.
- A Parliament of Science, Sixty half-hour interviews in Budapest, sponsored by UNESCO, with Vision TV-London, (Writer, Director), 1998.
- At Home in the Universe –The World Of William Shatner, One-hour special, CBC -Canadian Broadcasting Channel & Bravo, (Writer, Director), Produced by Harvey McKinnon, 1997.
- Sean Connery – An Intimate Portrait, Lifetime Television Network, One-hour special, (Writer, Director), 1996.
- The Last Stand –The Battle To Save the Ballona Wetlands, PBS, 1999 (Co-Writer, Co-Executive Producer) A Sheila Laffey Film, Hosted by Ed Asner, 1999.
- America's Great Parks, Two-hour special, Discovery Channel, (Writer) – 1998.
- Renewable Power, Various Public Broadcasting Stations, (Executive Producer) for the U.S. Department of Energy, A Geoffrey Holland Film, 1998.
- The Wetlands of Japan, Goldman Foundation, (Director, Producer) – , 1998.
- Climb for Tibet, One-hour special, Wisdom Network, (Director) , 1997.
- The Originals, Three-part series, Doordarshan, (Executive Producer, Director) 1997.
- Jam Packed, PBS, One-hour, 1997 (Director, Co-Executive Producer)- Hosted by Alexandra Paul, Produced by Geoffrey Holland, 1997.
- Element One, PBS, One-hour, (Writer, Director) – for the U.S., Canadian, German and Japanese departments of Energy .produced by Geoffrey Holland and William Hoagland, 1997.
- A Day in the Life of India, PBS/Doordarshan/NHK/StarPlus, Two-hour film, (Writer, Director, Producer, based upon Tobias’s book by same title) – 1996.
- World War III, PBS, One-hour documentary, (Writer, Director, Producer, Executive Producer, and Host, based upon Tobias’s book by same title) 1995.
- A Parliament of Souls, PBS/Vision TV-Canada, Twenty-eight half-hour series, (Writer, Director, Producer, based upon the book by the same title, edited by M.Tobias, Jane Gray Morrison, Bettina Gray) -Conversations with such luminaries as H.H. the Dalai Lama, Hosted by Bettina Gray, 1993.
- The Sixth Annual Genesis Awards, Discovery Channel, One-hour, (Director, Producer) 1992.
- A Day in the Life of Ireland, PBS-WNET/RTL-Dublin, One-hour, (Writer, Director) , 1992.
- The Fifth Annual Genesis Awards, Discovery Channel, One-hour (Director, Producer) , 1991.
- Voice of the Planet, TBS, Ten-hour dramatic miniseries, (Writer, Director, Producer, Executive Producer, based upon Tobias’s novel by same title) starring William Shatner and Faye Dunaway, Senior Producer, Jane Gray Morrison, 1990.
- The Making of Voice of the Planet, TBS, One-hour, (Writer, Director, Producer, Executive Producer), 1990.
- Black Tide, Discovery Channel, One-hour, (Writer, Director, Producer) 1989.
- The Power Game, Corporation for Public Broadcasting special (CPB/PBS), Four-hour series, (Executive Producer) based upon the Hedrick Smith book by the same title, A Phillip Burton Production, with Maryland Public Broadcasting, 1989.
- Ahimsa -Non-Violence, PBS, One-hour documentary, (Writer, Director, Executive Producer) - 1987.
- Antarctica -The Last Continent, PBS, One-hour documentary, (Writer, Director, Producer, Host, Editor) , 1987.
- Science Notes, PBS, thirty-two part series, (Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Host) 1985-1987.
- Animal Rights, and three other MacNeil-Lehrer PBS specials, (Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Host), 1986-87.
- The Gift, PBS, Thirty-minute documentary, (Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Host) 1986.
- Playing God, PBS, One-hour, (Narrator) – 1986.
- Space Futures, PBS, Thirty-minute documentary, (Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Host) 1986.
- Sand and Lightning, PBS, Thirty-minute documentary, (Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Host) - 1986.
- Cloudwalker, Channel 4/London, Royal Geographic Society Premiere, A&E, PBS, One-hour (Writer, Director, Producer) 1984.
- House for All Seasons, PBS, two thirty-minute specials (Writer) 1984.
- Kazantzakis, PBS, Thirty-minute documentary, (Writer, Director, Producer, Composer) - 1984.
References
- ^ “Red listed biodiversity threatened,” by Jane Gray Morrison and Michael Tobias, www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7638, 7/23/08; See also, http://onlineathens.com/stories/052701/boo_0527010021.shtml
- ^ From the Queen of Bhutan’s Foreword to Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence, by Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison, p. ix, Council Oak Books.
- ^ See “Michael Tobias,” pp.269-278, People Promoting And People Opposing Animal Rights – In Their Own Words, ed. by John M. Kistler, Foreword by Bernard Rollin, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2002.
- ^ http://www.peaceabbey.org/awards/cocrecipientlist.html
- ^ EXPLORE THE POWER OF MYTH IN FILM AT MYTHIC JOURNEYS www.mythicjourneys.org/PR_film_festival-rev3.pdf
- ^ www.petacatalog.org/BK882_PEEK.pdf
- ^ See such essays as “Feeding the Population Monster - A review essay based on a new book by Michael Tobias entitled: World War III: Population and the Biosphere At the End of the Millennium,” by Ronald Bleier, desip.igc.org/Monster.html; Thomas Marks’ review of World War III, published in: the journal Small Wars & Insurgencies, Volume 7, Issue 1 Spring 1996, pages 112 – 119; “Population Ethics For the 21st Century,” by Michael Tobias, www.populationpress.org/essays/essay-tobias; See also, “Listening To Women,” by M.Tobias, The Population Press, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004, pp.6-11.
- ^ Psychology Today, “What's next?”
- ^ Lappe, Marc. "So Many People . . . How Will We Feed Them? World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium, By Michael Tobias", Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1994. "Like Wilson, Tobias perceives the duty to maintain biodiversity as a moral requirement of planet stewardship."
- ^ Jane Goodall, from her Foreword to World War III –Population And The Biosphere At The End Of The Millennium, Continuum Publishing Company, New York, 2nd edition, 1998, p.12.
- ^ “Cairo’s an apt site for UN population conference,” by Mark Abley, The Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, September 3, 1994. www.lexisnexis.com/us/Inacademic/frame.do?tokenKey-rsh-20.640961.830
- ^ p.12, Jane Goodall’s Foreword to World War III – Population And The Biosphere At The End Of The Millennium, by Michael Tobias, 2nd Edition, Continuum Publishing Company, New York, 1998.
- ^ ibid., p. 59.
- ^ Kirkus Reviews, 1994.
- ^ Climate Change and Biodiversity, Edited by Thomas E. Lovejoy and Lee Hannah, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut., 2005.
- ^ www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/search/?page=3&author=256
- ^ “Regarding a sustainable world,” by Olivia Redwine, New Perspectives, Winter 2008, pp.18-21.
- ^ “No Vacancy, a Film by Michael Tobias,” reviewed by Dr. Alvin Winder, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Int’l. Quarterly of Community Health Education, Vol. 26(3) 319-320, 2006-2007
- ^ 'Mad Cowboy' Wins Artivist Film Festival Best Feature Award;
- ^ findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2006_Dec_1/ai_n27072207;
- ^ www.allbusiness.com/services/business-services/3964379-1.html
- ^ “The New Population Bomb,” August/September 1997, Mother Earth News, www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community/1997-08-01/Dangers-Of-Population-Increase.aspx?page=;
- ^ "“Feeding the Population Monster,” A review essay based on a new book by Michael Tobias", desip.igc.org/Monster.html
- ^ p.x, from Tobias’s Preface to Mahavira –Prince of Peace, by Ranchor Prime, Illustrated by B. G. Sharma, Mandala Publishing, San Rafael, Calif., 2006
- ^ 25. Prashant Shah, http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1RE17MISWF41G/ref=cm_cr_dp_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview;
- ^ An Anthology Of Living Religions, ed. by Mary Pat Fisher and Lee W. Bailey, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J., Second Edition, 2008, pp.108-110;
- ^ Tobias’s Life Force: The World of Jainism, Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1991, pp.5-16.
- ^ Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life, edited by Christopher Key Chappel, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, Religions of the World and Ecology Series, 2002.
- ^ “Ecology of Conscience,” by Michael Tobias, Parabola, Fall 1997, p.18.
- ^ “Choosing Generosity –Filmmaker and author Michael Tobias on developing the capacity for unconditional love and making sense of our passions,” Interview by Zoe Weil, Hope Magazine, Spring 2000, No.22, pp.51-53.
- ^ Michael Tobias, "Desert survival by the book", New Scientist, 17 December, 1988, p.29- 31;
- ^ www.institut.veolia.org/fr/cahiers/symbolique-eau/mythes-eau/afrique.aspx;
- ^ Tobias, M., Environmental Meditation, Crossing Press, Freedom, Calif., 1993, pp.83-96.
- ^ Michael Tobias, “The Anthropology of Conscience,” Society & Animals, pp.69-71.
- ^ “The Next Wasteland: Can the Spoiling of Antarctica Be Stopped?” by Michael Tobias, The Sciences, March/April 1989, pp.18-24
- ^ "'Black Tide'; Discovery's 'Tide' Examines Alaska Oil Spill," by Patricia Brennan, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 18, 1990, The Washington Post Sunday Edition
- ^ “Island fence set to enhance biodiversity,” by Phil McCarthy, Southland Times, Invercargill, New Zealand, April 14th, 2005: “It was an important conservation tool to help restore native flora and fauna in a region of outstanding historic biodiversity, “ Tobias said.
- ^ http://www.dancingstarfoundation.org/new_zealand.php
- ^ http://www.dancingstarfoundation.org/bhutan.php
- ^ Hotspots Revisited, by Russell A. Mittermeier, Patricio Robles Gil, Michael Hoffmann, John Pilgrim, Thomas Brooks, Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier, John Lamoreux and Gustavo A.B. Da Fonseca, CEMEX, Mexico City, 2004.
- ^ http://www.dancingstarfoundation.org/articles.php.
- ^ Endangered Species: Flora & Fauna in Peril, Wildling Art Museum, Los Olivos, California, 2008.
- ^ Publishers Weekly March 3, 2008.