By Kamran Nayeri, Our Place in the World
The fight for ecocentrism, like the fight for human emancipation, is a fight for universal values. Without ecocentrism, that is not just an intellectual point of view but a genuine love for nature and for life on Earth, there will be no humanity and no human emancipation.
By Stacco Troncoso, Stacco Troncoso blog
By David Bollier, David Bollier blog
By Fibershed staff, Fibershed
Right now, your dollars are a lifeline for many small businesses and workers. Who can you help stay afloat during this time? We want to share direct opportunities for those who are able to make purchases for essential needs as well as enjoyment, and we also are including resources for those already experiencing economic insecurity.
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
On March 25, a federal judge tossed out federal permits for the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), built to carry over half a million barrels of Bakken crude oil a day from North Dakota, and ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full environmental review of the pipeline project.
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
Pandemics change business-as-usual overnight. Governments mobilise huge resources to tackle the problem and compensate for its impacts. At the same time, people depend on the civil and public domains for advice, protection, health services and the whole infrastructure of response.
By Brian Davey, Feasta
This is a lot clearer in a collective crisis like this one than if it were happening to one person but the essential issues are the same. There is the need for a new “package” of life routines and elements that is sustainable before mental and emotional turmoil will stabilise.
By Charlotte Du Cann, Charlotte Du Cann blog
In a year where biblical calamities have rained down upon the world – as floods, bush fires and locust storms– this fracture has not emerged in the highly stressed natural world but from within a globalised human society. After ignoring the cries of Cassandra for decades, the horse has finally entered the gates of the cities, releasing billions of tiny invisible lifeforms that are no respecters of age, gender, wealth, position or race.
By Naomi Bosch, Plentiful Lands
Even if we don’t have gardens of our own, there is an array of ways to grow food right in our cities! This concept is called urban gardening or urban farming. And it’s got a surprisingly rich & interesting history… Could urban gardening, along with community supported agriculture, be the next food revolution?
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
With coronavirus prompting a slowdown in global trade, it’s all the more critical to find a different way forward. Thankfully, Asher, Rob, and Jason have a few ideas about how to have fun while building a resilient local economy.
By William Vitek, Resilience.org
It’s hard to take much comfort in our collective cultural and institutional experience with thinking through the kind of pandemic we now confront. Nor do we seem to have anything as valuable and practical as a paddle with which to leverage our movement out of the hole we’ve fallen into.
By Brian Czech, CASSE
COVID-19 has done in a deadly way what steady-state economists would prescribe in a healthy way: putting the brakes on a runaway economy. In fact, the pandemic has slammed on the brakes and jammed the GDP gearstick into reverse.
By Tim Lang, The Conversation
We ought to be demanding that Public Health England and the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast revise the Eatwell Guide, our national healthy eating guidelines, around sustainable diets, combining health, environment and social criteria such as affordability. These are what should drive production and determine rationing, if circumstances deteriorate.
By John McLeod, Esperanza Project
So…. imagine trillions of dollars to craft and curate a sustainable future that overhauls our economic system into a vibrant and energetic web, providing a hopeful and healthy vision of tomorrow. Who gets to imagine our future? Let’s make sure this vision is led by our powerful and vital actions and imaginations.
By Adrian Ayres Fisher, Ecological Gardening
Hard planetary boundaries and fraught ecosystem requirements do exist. Yet love exists too, and everywhere, amidst the imperatives of risk and survival.
By Paul Engler, Waging Nonviolence
Whether the Sanders campaign seizes this opportunity, or an alternate framework for collective action arises, a mass movement response to the coronavirus pandemic cannot come too soon. For our own sake, and that of our society as a whole, let us help the drive toward solidarity emerge.
By Lydia Smith, Open Democracy
In fact there’s a wealth of evidence to support the idea that books can help to boost good mental health. ‘Bibliotherapy,’ a term first coined by American essayist Samuel Crothers in a 1916 issue of Atlantic Monthly, means the art of using literature and reading as a healing activity. It’s widely accepted as a way to enhance wellbeing.
By Rob Hopkins, Transition US
In this webinar, co-hosted with the international Transition Network and Post Carbon…
By Ronnie Cummins, Chelsea Green
Grassroots Rising is a passionate call to action for the global body politic, providing practical solutions for how to survive—and thrive—in catastrophic times. Author Ronnie Cummins aims to educate and inspire citizens worldwide to organize and become active participants in preventing ecological collapse.
By Nate Hagens, Resilience.org
Let’s create a living open source project—where collective intelligence informs near and intermediate term mitigation, one that helps us as a culture navigate the narrow path between fantasy and doom. When we see gasoline this summer under $1 per gallon let’s not waste that moment in a Caligula-like orgy of consuming like we used to, but rather, reflect, imagine, and resolve to make America good again.
By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org
Will future generations look back on the coronavirus pandemic as a blip or a game changer? Let’s review a few of the major trends that developed during the Anthropocene and engage in a little informed speculation about how they might be affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
By Matt Mellen, Local Futures
Coronavirus is both a symptom of the problematic globalized economy and an important signal that things need to change. Emergency short-term measures to contain the virus also have a positive impact on decimated global ecosystems.
By Samuel Alexander, Resilience.org
When an economy contracts involuntarily, that is called a recession or, if it lasts long enough, a depression. Nobody advocates for such unplanned economic contraction because that has all sorts of negative social effects, including rising unemployment, stress, and poverty. So we must never confuse degrowth with recession.
By Subin DeVar, Sustainable Economies Law Center
Because beyond whether we achieve everything in the vision for a Green New Deal or not, it is inspiring that young people do not view climate change as a pass/fail test. For them, failure is not an option. Instead, the question is: how transformative will our success be?
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
In times of crisis, especially in urban situations, a lot of the usual individualist concerns drop away and people create ingenious new commons to get by, ‘paradises built in hell’ in the resonant phrase of Rebecca Solnit. But I’d argue the longer and larger task is to dwell less on this transient commoning and focus instead on building the conditions in which people can create their own livelihoods renewably and locally as individuals-in-communities.