By Samuel Alexander, The Simplicity Collective
The main argument of this essay is that XR and rebellions like it are almost certainly going to grow in coming months and years as more people around the world become politically frustrated, angry, scared, and directly impacted by inaction in the face of today’s overlapping ecological and humanitarian crises.
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
By Bill McKibben, The Guardian blog
By Carol Kalafatic, Agroecology Now!
In this post I aim to elaborate my belief that, to build or spread food sovereignty, there is an increased need for diverse Peoples, communities and social movements to strengthen relationships and coalitions with one another. Our exchange of knowledges, strategies and practices will keep producing tangible results, and on the less tangible but equally important side, our solidarity will reinforce our resilience in the face of increasing unpredictability.
By Stacco Troncoso, Ann Marie Utratel, Hackernoon
So, what do we mean by a DisCO? It stands for Distributed Cooperative Organizations, and it’s a set of organisational tools and practices for groups of people who want to work together in a cooperative, commons-oriented, and feminist economic form.
By Naomi Klein, Aaron White, Open Democracy
Klein’s forthcoming book, 'On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal', takes the reader through a journey of essays and lectures spanning the last decade, exploring how our contemporary crises, from the ecological to the moral, reinforce each other.
By David Smedley, Sustainable Food Trust
Arable farming systems across South Africa are going through a change. Forced by a variable climate and financial pressure, regenerative farming models are increasingly being implemented on cropping, dairy and beef operations as a result. Ethical motivations and issues of family succession are also reasons for adopting the principles of Regenerative Agriculture (RA).
By Aaron Karp, The Ecologist
The better that one understands a problem, the greater the chance of solving it. So it is with climate change, a crisis demanding far-reaching social transformation. But just how far-reaching? A broad curriculum that develops activists’ clarity and unity of vision could be an essential pillar to advance the climate movement’s preparation, ambition, and cohesiveness.
By Mark Heley, Esperanza Project
The Indigenous peoples of Amazonia have lived in a symbiotic way with the rainforest for millenia. They are the keepers of deep knowledge about the ecosystems they live within and are indispensable to its effective protection. Protecting the rights of indigenous people and their land claims in the Amazon can be one of the most effective ways of halting deforestation.
By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog
At first sight it’s incomprehensible. Why risk everything for a no-deal Brexit? Breaking up their own party, losing their parliamentary majority, dismantling the UK, trashing the economy, triggering shortages of food and medicine: how could any objective, for the Conservative and Unionist party, be worth this? What good does it do them?
By Mark H. Burton, Steady-State Manchester
If nothing else, the last few months have heightened awareness of the desperately parlous predicament that now faces humanity, with an accelerating climate and ecological crisis. So attempts to design assertive policy proposals are very welcome. The Green New Deal is the one that currently is getting the most attention and perhaps traction. So I want to ask some critical questions....
By Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch
The greater the number of fossil fuels we consume, the more rapidly we alter the Arctic, inviting the further extraction of just such fuels and their contribution to global warming.
By Bart Anderson, Resilience
We're approaching a turning point on the mainstream's attitudes towards climate change. // On climate, young Republicans now sound like Democrats // Over 170 news outlets vow to cover climate // McKibben in TIME: "Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different"
By Richard Collett-White, DeSmog UK
A coalition of climate science denial groups is gearing up for a European media blitz later this month, in an apparent bid to derail efforts to set an EU-wide “net zero” emissions target, documents obtained by DeSmog show.
By Catherine Tumber, Local Futures
The disappearance of land from ruling economic theory may account for why the collapse of smaller heartland communities is greeted with a shrug by writers for the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also helps to explain its absence from the Green New Deal, for all its social-democratic, capitalist-critical leanings.
By Jeremy Lent, Patterns Of Meaning blog
As civilization faces an existential crisis, our leaders demonstrate their inability to respond. Theory of change shows that now is the time for radically new ideas to transform society before it’s too late.
By Chad Hellwinckel, Resilience.org
Such an agrarian civilization will see no impending ecological doom but instead a future of steady processes and patterns with no need for faith in great technological inventions of salvation. Not a utopian world - surely grappling with problems of their own - but a wise culture; taking the lessons of a past society bent on ever-more for ever-more’s sake to heart and respecting limits.
By Timothy A. Wise, The New Press
A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert
By Ben Raskin, The Soil Association
Written for farmers and advisors this book will help you assess the potential business benefits of agroforestry for your farm or client and to understand the possible benefits to the wider environment.
By Chuck Collins, Common Dreams
Presidential candidates should take a pledge: The middle class should not pay one dollar more in new taxes until the super-rich pay their fair share.
By Paz Serra Portilla, Green European Journal
The age of Enlightenment ushered in progress and left it anchored in our political and economic consciousness. From that moment on, technology has emerged as the key, unique and universal solution to all of our problems. This, coupled with the unprecedented rate of acceleration we are experiencing in today’s world, means that industrial revolutions are occurring before we’ve even had time to assimilate their characteristics and consequences.
By Alf Hornberg, The Conversation
The current blind faith in technology will not save us. For the planet to stand any chance, the global economy must be redesigned. The problem is more fundamental than capitalism or the emphasis on growth: it is money itself, and how money is related to technology.
By Arturo Escobar, Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Federico Demaria, Alberto Acosta, Open Democracy
The paths to a bio-civilization are multiple - and the pluriverse is already visible in the cosmovisions and radical practices of many groups worldwide. The notion of a pluriverse questions the alleged universality of Euro-Americacentric modernity. As the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, put it so wisely, the pluriverse constitutes “a world where many worlds fit”.
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
Vaclav Smil's latest book explores growth in nature and society. It examines the rules and patterns of growth in four key domains, those of the living world; human energy consumption; human artifacts; and human populations, societies and economies.
By David Bollier, Silke Helfrich, Free, Fair, and Alive
The discourse around commons and commoning helps us see that individuals working together can bring forth more humane, ethical, and ecologically responsible societies. It is plausible to imagine a stable, supportive post-capitalist order. The very act of commoning, as it expands and registers on the larger culture, catalyzes new political and economic possibilities.
