Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
By William E. Rees, The Tyee
So I present an unpopular but fact-based argument in the form of two “Am I wrong?” queries. If you accept my facts, you will see the massive challenge we face in transforming human assumptions and ways of living on Earth. I welcome being told what crucial facts I might be missing. Even a realist — perhaps especially a realist in present circumstances — occasionally wants to be proved incorrect.
Beyond November, Indigenous Communities Honor Culture and Heritage Year-Round
By Debra Utacia Krol, YES! magazine
“[Native American Heritage Month] allows for us to remind [non-Natives] that we are still here, living here, despite their attempts to make us like them,” says Redner, the Phoenix Indian Center CEO. “We will continue to survive, but it’s our time to thrive now; it’s time for the seventh generation to use our knowledge.”
Trees in the Field: Taking Farming to a New Dimension
By Marianne Landzettel, Sustainable Food Trust
As positive as it all sounds, the £65,000 investment is a lot. Are the trees worth it? They definitely are, says Briggs, and because trees grow on only half of the farm, he can make a direct comparison. The arable yields per hectare are the same and the trees only take up 8% of the available space. If he can press the apples into juice, the trees are as profitable as wheat or oats would be on the same acreage.
Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth by Guy Standing: Review
By Brian Davey, Feasta
It is in the other English tradition – a tradition starting with the Charter of the Forest, later championed by the Levellers, later by the Chartists and the Co-operatives, the trade unions and the original Labour Movement that brought us the Welfare State – a tradition of resistance to autocracy and privilege – and a tradition that one that can be championed without being compromised by imperialism and militarism. Secondly his new Charter would be a set of principles which, if implemented, would block the politics of Singapore on Thames
Climate Change from the Inside Out: Shock. Grief. Respond. Relief. Repeat
By Vicki Robin, Vicki Robin blog
Repeating and evolving. We are learning together. You are welcome in. Your voice is needed. Your transformation of shock and grief into response and relief is needed. We’re all in this together. Humanity finally has a common challenge.
David Hughes’ Shale Reality Check 2019
By Asher Miller, Resilience.org
1.9 million. 13 trillion. 10 billion. These are the numbers that jumped off the page when I read PCI Fellow David Hughes’s latest “shale reality check ” report on the U.S. government’s forecasts of domestic oil and gas production.
Fossil Fuel Investments Cost California and Colorado Pension Funds Over $19 Billion, Report Finds
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
California and Colorado’s public pension funds together lost out on over $19 billion over the past decade by investing in fossil fuel stocks, according to a report released on Tuesday. The three public pension funds analyzed are currently worth a combined $663 billion.
Fine Fleece at Stone Steps Farm
By Amanda Fisk, Fibershed
The small goats and sheep are very easy on the land. Stone Steps Farm is participating in Fibershed’s soil sampling protocol, and the family hopes to implement grazing practices that sequester carbon and increase soil organic matter. They also aim to decrease wildfire risk by using their goats to clear brush that provides a fuel ladder, and by using their sheep to keep grasses down during fire season.
Peak Oil Review 11 November 2019
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, Peak-Oil.org
US futures fluctuated between $56 and $57.50 last week as stockpiles rose, the rig count dropped, and hopes for a breakthrough in the US-China trade negotiations kept coming and going. Brent rose above $63 a barrel on Thursday after China hinted at progress towards a trade deal with the United States.
Extinction Rebellion: Four More (Unconvincing) Criticisms
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Nah, there’s nothing deathly or millenarian about the XR activists I know. They’re just ‘ordinary’, flawed, caring (middle-class) people like me, full of love and zest for life, and really, really scared about the deathly devastation that climate change threatens to wreak upon the world and the life they hold dear, unless governments act radically and immediately.
Of warnings and their ripple effects
By Albert Bates, Medium
The problem with this warning, and perhaps also why it is shedding supporters, is that it says all the right things but feels like it is speaking to an empty room. It has all been said before. I confess I have the same issue with street protests. At some point, you have to put down the placard and actually do something about the situation.
Air-conditioning the outside—really
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Qatar is both a country and a peninsula which juts out about 100 miles into the Persian Gulf. It is precisely this geography which makes it both one of the hottest and muggiest places on Earth. The average daily high in mid-summer is 108 degrees F (42 degrees C).
Silvopasture: The Benefits of Integrating Livestock and trees
By Ben Raskin, Sustainable Food Trust
We are now starting to learn from other countries – and from an increasing body of research – the numerous benefits of silvopastoral systems. There is also an urgency that climate change brings for an uptake of these systems. Project Drawdown, a climate mitigation project, identified silvopasture as one of the top ten climate solutions.
UK Government Implements Fracking Ban – For Now
By Ruth Hayhurst, DeSmog Blog
After seven years of promoting fracking, Conservative ministers have withdrawn their support and blocked the prospects of a shale gas industry. The UK government has issued an immediate moratorium in England because of the risk of earth tremors. Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have already issued measures that amount to moratoriums on fracking.
Cultivating the Middle Ground: Enough in Action
By Anne B. Ryan, Feasta
In the places where citizen-leaders come together, we can promote the idea of the great middle ground. The ‘middle ground’ refers to the masses of people all over the world whose way of living is between over-consumption and poverty; they live without making excessive demands on the earth.
Shrink the Military, Shrink Injustice
By Walter Keady, Uneven Earth
United States House Resolution 109, the document that proposes a Green New Deal, focuses narrowly on the US. It threatens to create Green New Colonialism through increased extraction abroad. It also gives no mention of the US military’s environmental impact or its ability to maintain global injustice by force.
Corporate Climate Commitments: Who Should Lead Climate Action?
By Ryan Gunderson, Diana Stuart, Resilience.org
There are more possibilities than a marginally less-bad business-as-usual future. Effectively and justly achieving deep emissions cuts requires fundamentally changing the system, not merely modifying it or slapping its beneficiaries’ wrists. Real change requires state programs and regulations as well as trying out new forms of ownership and governance.
Integrity of Life
By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life
The phrase “integrity of life” reached out and grabbed me when I heard it in church a while ago. Those three words express what I’ve always been trying to work toward: why I’ve several times given up my old life and gone to live in primitive circumstances; why I’ve worked, raised my family, and ordered my daily tasks the way I have. I have been trying to find integrity of life. I’ve never achieved it, and sometimes I feel I’m farther from it than I’ve ever been.
This Life Is Not Yours
By Erik Assadourian, Gaianism
But then he dropped a big rock, the ripples of which reached all the way to me standing a bit removed on the shore. He said, “This life is not yours.”
When Wildfires Sweep through California, Who Gets Left Behind?
By Zoya Teirstein, Grist
The wildfire crisis, one that is expected to get worse in the Golden State in the coming years as the full effects of climate change kick in, illuminates a glaring disparity. When fires rip through a community, its most vulnerable members — the old and sick, domestic workers, construction workers, and incarcerated folks — get left behind.
New Bubbles, Mounting Debt: Preparing for the Coming Crisis
By Ben Reynolds, ROAR Magazine
The global economy is clearly headed for another recession after a decade of lukewarm recovery. The bailouts and loose monetary policy of the post-2008 world did nothing to fix the fundamental causes of capitalism’s latest systemic crisis. Instead, they papered over structural weakness while enabling another orgy of irresponsible lending and rampant speculation.
Interview With Mackenzie Feldman of Herbicide-Free Campus
By Mackenzie Feldman, Independent Science News
Mackenzie Feldman, Founder of Herbicide-Free Campus has been working to end herbicide use by the University of California campus system. This May, the University announced a ban on glyphosate citing “concerns about possible human health and ecological hazards”.
Climate Politics/Capitol Light (37)
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
The big news of the week—kind of—was Trump’s starting the paperwork for getting the US out of the Paris Climate Accord (Accord). Although Trump announced his intentions in June 2017, the rules of the Accord prohibited any formal action before a few days ago. The US won’t actually be off the Accord until November 4, 2020—a day after the next presidential election.
Keystone Attitudes and Policies of Enough
By Anne B. Ryan, Feasta
We need keystone policies that are underpinned by a vision of a rich social, personal and economic habitat for people. The role of politics is to design institutions and policies that enable people to co-operate and that facilitate citizens to act for the common good. The policies mentioned above function in this way. If key principles are observed or key attitudes developed, many structural problems can work themselves out in practice.
We Need to Talk About … Green New Deal and Other Necessary Vocabulary for our Times
By Anne B. Ryan, Feasta
In this post, I reflect on the vocabulary we need to be familiar with if we are to raise awareness and develop widespread literacy and skills for responding to all our interrelated problems, from climate breakdown to soil erosion, species extinction, human suffering and inequality. The issue of language and vocabulary has arisen in a number of conversations I’ve had with friends and acquaintances in recent weeks, as we approached the School Climate Strikes on Sept 20 2019.
What Can One Person Do?
By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life
So finally, vegan or not, it comes down to this: Live rightly, and don't worry about how large an impact you're having. The intractable evil of the world around you is no excuse for you to violate your own conscience. If you think it is right to eat differently, spend differently, live differently, then do so, just because it’s right.
‘Coyote’ Alberto Ruz on the Rights of Nature
By Alberto Ruz Buenfil, Chiara Lionello, Antonio Giachetti, Esperanza Project
Every time a group of people starts to make others understand that there’s a need to take action for a given problem, they can start to undertake initiatives to adopt this law, as we are doing. The abolition of slavery in America and of apartheid in Africa started with small groups which engaged themselves in the recognition of specific rights.
Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence?
By Kris De Decker, Low-Tech Magazine
The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels. The mist shower, a satisfying but forgotten technology which uses very little water and energy, could be a solution. Designer Jonas Görgen developed a do-it-yourself kit to convert almost any shower into a mist shower and sent me one to try out.
What is ‘Ecological Economics’ and Why Do We Need to Talk About it?
By Anitra Nelson, Brian Coffey, The Conversation
As environmental crises and the urgency to create ecological sustainability escalate, so does the importance of ecological economics. This applied, solutions-based field of studies is concerned with sustainability and development, rather than efficiency and growth.
Unpath’d Waters
By Courtney White, The Grass Canoe
I don’t know where we are going – no one does really – and I don’t know what we will find ultimately in this unprecedented new world, but I do know something about the early days of the voyage and have thoughts and experiences to share.
We Need Good Policy on Good Food Policy
By Wayne Roberts, Resilience.org
Neighborhood groups, business improvement associations, and unions can adopt policy. Universities can adopt policies to buy local and sustainable food. The power of public and para-public purses is more widely available than ever before. As well, the talents of citizens for self government and leadership are higher than ever before. We need to look ahead to a world of policy partnerships.
Post-Capitalists Must Understand the Role of Migration in Global Capitalism
By Hannah Cross, Open Democracy
Fundamentally, migration has always been, and will always be, a part of human development. There is no use in casting it as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ phenomenon in itself: the notion of being ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ migration is a useless hook for popular debate and undermines the dignity of people who have migrated.
With XR Disrupting London’s Streets
By Naresh Giangrande, Resilience.org
And what I say to those who choose to criticise XR is please by all means criticise us, and come up swiftly and proactively with something better we can do to meet the challenges of imminent climate catastrophe and ecological disaster. I would be the first to be behind you. But if you cannot then I would think very carefully about what you are going to say to the present generation, Greta’s generation, today’s children and grandchildren when they ask, ‘What did you do when we had our last chance to avoid catastrophe?’ Think very hard about that question.
In its Insatiable Pursuit of Power, Silicon Valley is Fuelling the Climate Crisis
By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian blog
Human beings are at their worst when they are consumers, locked into the miserable pursuit of satisfaction through the isolation of individual consumption – particularly when that shopping and consuming is done online (and when, as with Instagram, we learn to turn ourselves into commodities). T
Where to Draw a Line on Climate Denial— More Questions than Answers
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
The one thing I am sure of, however, is that there’s too much hedging going on both in politics and the private market. We’ll never prevail in keeping below the temperature thresholds scientists are warning of by hedging climate defense investments with continuing investments in fossil fuels.
The School of Economics as a Suicide Academy?
By Brian Davey, Feasta
In 1972 economists became embroiled in a controversy with a group of systems scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and declared themselves the winners. It became the conventional wisdom that the economists won the argument. This complacent judgement now turns out to be premature.
Enough is Plenty
By Anne B. Ryan, Feasta
In the past, we did not need to make a big deal of enough; it was built into our lives in many ways. Our language recognised it in phrases like ‘enough is as good as a feast’, and ‘waste not, want not’. But in modern life the sense of enough is badly underdeveloped; in affluent societies we have largely forgotten the wisdom captured in the old sayings.
Peak Oil Review 4 November 2019
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, Peak-Oil.org
On Wednesday, the price of oil came under pressure after the EIA reported a crude oil inventory build of 5.7 million barrels for the week to October 25. Analysts had expected a much smaller build of 729,000 barrels after a 1.7-million-barrel draw interrupted a string of five weekly inventory builds.
The Stories We Need: Pan-African Social Ecology
By Eleanor Finley, ROAR Magazine
Kadalie’s book is one more testament that a collective awakening is taking place to jettison the state and redefine global history from the bottom up. For all this, direct democracy by itself can hardly promise social and ecological restoration. Democracy is not a matter of implementing formulaic procedures and structures; it is a matter of fostering bonds of mutual support and the sharing of communal power.
A ‘Council for the Future’ Could Break Australia’s Climate Paralysis
By Helen Camakaris, The Conversation
Like most people, I hoped climate policy would improve, but years of infighting and adversarial politics have resulted in a dearth of climate action, where cooperation might well have yielded positive results. One solution to this frustrating deadlock is to place the responsibility for climate policy at arm’s length from political actors. We need a Council for the Future, tasked with the long-term thinking that eludes so many of our elected representatives.
The biggest obstacle to progress is our idea of progress
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
How we think about progress governs what we do every day. The dominant notions of progress, however, are driving us to ruin even when they are deployed to help us address the critical environmental problems of our day.
Dammed Good Questions about the Green New Deal
By Don Fitz, Green Social Thought
While many people have concerns with large dams, very few realize their impending connection with the Green New Deal. In addition to threats that they pose to wildlife, human rights, and human health, the article explains two problems that most environmentalists are unaware of.