Brexit and Long Wave Thinkings
By Andrew Curry, thenextwave
Although Turchin's piece is full of comparisons between the UK and the US, which he sees as fellow travellers, certainly when compared to France, there are significant differences between Trumpism and Brexit.
Mauna Kea, What it is, Why it is Happening, and Why we all Should be Paying Attention
By Nikki Sanchez, Intercontinental Cry
At the base of Mauna Kea, the world’s tallest mountain and the first point on earth where raindrops touch the earth, the largest land defense action in modern Hawaiian history is currently in taking place and the entire movement is being guided by love.
Bleak Financial Outlook for US Fracking Industry
By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog
After years of patience as the fracking and tar sands industries continued to pile up losses, investors are understandably tired of losing money.
Rivers of Dust: The Future of Water and the Middle East
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy In Focus
Whether nations will come together to confront the planet wide crisis is an open question. Otherwise, the Middle East will run out of water — and it will hardly be alone. By 2030, according to the UN, four out of 10 people will not have access to water
Britain’s Infrastructure is Breaking Down. And Here’s Why No One’s Fixing It
By Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian blog
The spirit we need is that summed up by the librarian who rhapsodises to Klinenberg about his branch: “The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can’t otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognise it in them too.”
How a Movement of Movements can Win: Taking XR to the Next Level
By Rupert Read, Medium
We have a plan: a movement of movements. We want contingents of new rebels from movements ‘allied’ to XR. The peace movement. The animals movement. The social justice movement. And several more. Call it the rebel alliance…
Regenerating the Human Story
By Tracy L. Barnett, Esperanza Project
“You know, what’s really wonderful about this is that it’s not just about regenerative agriculture, It’s about regenerating the human story; it’s about regenerating the way that we look at health, food, economics, human relationships — even our own history.”
Responding with Love to a Civilization in Crisis
By Brooke Lavelle, Zack Walsh, Open Democracy
What we face is a turning point between two futures: The Great Transition and the Great Unraveling. The Great Transition describes a future in which society is comprehensively reorganized to sustain itself in dynamic equilibrium with the Earth’s systems.
Understanding the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in a Warming Climate
By Declan Conway, Christian Siderius, Japhet Kashaigili, Carbon Brief
All of nature is infinitely connected. It is therefore no surprise that there are strong interdependencies between the resources that the land surface provides.
Author Ellen Brown Discusses how Public Banking can Create Shared Prosperity
By Robert Raymond, Ellen Brown, Shareable
Public banking is one alternative model, and the grassroots movement that has formed around it intends to radically reimagine the banking system in the United States. Working with legislators across the US, advocates are pushing for the creation of public banks on the municipal, county and state levels.
A New Aesthetic
By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life
It is a mistaken aesthetic that dictates how people see and judge the land around them, that tells us what looks beautiful and productive and “American” – that is, efficient, high-tech, and gleaming with the promise of the future.
New Models Point to More Global Warming than Expected
By Bob Henson, Climate Code Red
Global climate models for the next major IPCC assessment show more warming than expected, bucking decades of consensus. Scientists are working to confirm and unravel the potential big shift….
“V” is for Vitriol, When It Should Be for Victory
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Dan Levitan argues in the New Republic that Republican deniers of climate change, who are now on the side of the “angels,” don’t deserve redemption by Democrats unless they own-up to the harms they’ve caused by their earlier denials.
If the Insects Go, We All Go
By Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance
Buzz, Sting, Bite is a breezy read with a sobering message: insects are so deeply woven into the web of life that the worldwide drop in insect populations threatens every other species.
Rojava: A Practical Example of Ecosocialism?
By Staff, Making Rojava Green Again, Climate and Capitalism
The Rojava Internationalist Commune was founded in 2017 by internationalists from all over the world, supported by the Rojava Youth Movement (YCR/YJC). The aim of this structure is to share knowledge, skills and experience through an internationalist perspective, as well as to support projects and the revolution in Rojava.
Restoring the Earth, One Camp at a Time
By Liora Adler, Tracy L. Barnett, Esperanza Project
In 2017 John founded the Ecosystem Restoration Camps, a mass movement aimed at healing the Earth while healing ourselves — meanwhile, turning around runaway climate change. Sequestering the excess carbon in our atmosphere on a massive scale is one of the last remaining solutions to staving off the worst effects of climate change.
Feeding the World: Archaeology can Help us Learn from History to Build a Sustainable Future for Food
By Kelly Reed, The Conversation
The enduring success of these ancient methods remind us that we could reimagine our entire food system to feed ten billion people while rejuvenating wildlife and locking carbon away. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we should look to what worked in the past and adapt it for the future.
Climate Politics/Capitol Light (22)
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
EPA has far surpassed deregulatory goals set by Trump's executive order 13771, which stipulated agencies must cut two existing regulations for each new one issued. However, the agency has not been transparent enough in deciding which regulations to cut, according to a new EPA inspector general report.
The wheels come off shale oil
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Will shale oil rise again from the dead as it did after the 2014-2016 price decline? That will happen only if two things occur: 1) The oil price rises significantly and 2) investors have a serious bout of amnesia.
Accelerating climate solutions
By Albert Bates, Medium.com
When politicians set a lofty goal like zero emissions, engineers scramble. Platitudes may win elections, but it takes timber and nails to build bridges. Or willows and biochar to deal with our sh*t.
From Sheep to Shawl: Family Fun at UC Elkus Ranch
By Sasha Wirth, Fibershed
Around 300 visitors have come to UC Elkus Ranch in Half Moon Bay for its annual Sheep to Shawl event when the farm gates are opened wide to anyone interested in getting a glimpse of the agrarian life.
What Kind of Rebellion will it Take to Save Humanity from Extinction?
By Pip Hinman, Green Left Weekly
With the clock ticking, climate activists need to interrogate how we got to this stage and work out the next steps. To do that effectively we need to understand class politics. We also need to understand the power that large numbers of people, organised in a sustained way, have to force change.
Why Indigenous Peoples’ Issues Must be National Issues
By Yoly Gutierrez, Landscape News
Given the lengthy and often difficult process of obtaining formalization, it is clear that Indigenous peoples’ rights to land and territory need to be ensured through policies on a national scale, whether through simplifying bureaucracy or through providing support for regional governments and the communities themselves.
Our Forever War: How the White Male Hegemony uses Violence to Cling to Power
By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian blog
The war is because the future USA will not look like the past USA, in who is here and who has rights and powers. The question is how we survive the transition – or rather how we shape it so that the vulnerable survive and thrive.
In-depth Q&A: The IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land
By Daisy Dunne, Josh Gabbatiss, Robert McSweeney, Carbon Brief
In this detailed Q&A, Carbon Brief unpacks what the IPCC's Special Report on climate change and land says about how climate change affects the land and vice versa, as well as other key topics such as food security, negative emissions and how to tackle the overlapping challenges associated with how humans use the land.
Totnes Declares a Climate & Ecological Emergency – What Next?
By Rob Hopkins, Transition Network
The purpose of the day was to convene a community conversation to begin the process of fleshing out what an appropriate response to the climate mergency might look like.
Progress and its Discontents
By Jason Hickel, New Internationalist
This is where the depravity of the New Optimist worldview becomes clear. There is nothing bold or optimistic about their vision. On the contrary, it is feeble and cowardly – a pessimistic resignation to the status quo.
The Surrounding Fields
By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life
Honestly, ideas about how people ought to interact with nature should not be avant-garde and surprising, because nature itself, in every time and place, ultimately dictates what will work over the long term.
Can Costa Rica’s Path to Carbon Neutrality be Replicated by Other Countries?
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
Costa Rica’s culture encourages the treatment of the environment as a top priority. Already, it has managed to achieve the highest combined life expectancy and life satisfaction relative to ecological footprint in an international ranking.
Trump’s Environmental Legacy Will Take Time to Erase
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
The way forward for any climate defense plan—moderate or progressive—is going to be cluttered with the refuse of the Trump administration, e.g., rolled back regulations, extant lawsuits, the lost government offices and programs needed to implement a pro-environment agenda.
Humanity – not Just a Virus with Shoes
By Shaun Chamberlin, DarkOptimism
We can do better. So much better. These times call for creativity and imagination in our lifepaths. Humour and magic in our days. Something far more compelling than the mainstream.
This mayor puts the “Conserve” back in Conservative
By Jeff Turrentine, onearth (NRDC)
Indianan Jim Brainard has been making the post-partisan case for building sustainable, resilient cities for more than 20 years. As a self-identified conservative Republican who not only believes in climate science but has made it his personal mission to incorporate sustainable urban planning and climate resilience into his vision for Carmel, Brainard has become a symbol of what post-partisan climate leadership can and should look like.
‘Desertification’ and the Role of Climate Change
By Robert McSweeney, Carbon Brief
Desertification has been described as the “the greatest environmental challenge of our time” and climate change is making it worse.
The Age of Collapse
By Umair Haque, Medium.com
Our challenge now, in this new century, is this. Nourishing, replenishing, nurturing, renewing, endowing. What? Everything that we can. Everything from basic incomes to to trees to insects to glaciers to hospitals to schools to retirement to mountains and forests. Do you see how the theme of nourishment and replenishment is what flows through all our challenges, like a great laughing river, renewing a parched, weeping ocean?
Ecosystem Development in North Macedonia
By Simoon Fransen, Medium.com
The intention of the event was to activate the system we are all part of, find common ground and common intention in our work. Academia, Institutions, Government and Civil society looked deeply into ‘what their work is’ and re-assessed the fact that we play on the same side.
Climate Politics/Capitol Light (21)
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Countries under the leadership of populists, e.g., the US, Italy, Poland, and Brazil, are likely to follow Trump’s lead and go their own way—which is away from any commitments their predecessors may have made.
Solve These Climate Change Report Mysteries
By Steven McFadden, Mother Earth News
“A great challenge of today,” the late Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess wrote, “is to save the planet from further devastation that violates both the enlightened self-interest of humans and non-humans, and decreases the potential of joyful existence for all.”
From the Royal to the Prophetic to the Apocalyptic: The Case for a Saving Remnant
By Robert Jensen, Resilience.org
The royal, prophetic, and apocalyptic traditions in the Hebrew and Christian bibles provide a compelling framework for understanding progressive intellectual and political work today, as we face the task not only of struggling to create a just and sustainable world but also imagining a saving remnant that will negotiate a radically different future in which both new and old skills, stories, and spaces will be necessary.
Consuming the Anthropocene
By Alexis Rider, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog
In the basic conception of the Anthropocene, there are two actors: mankind and the environment. This sweeping and seemingly compelling divide at once highlights the separation of the two categories and collapses it: if humans are geologic force, we can no longer imagine ourselves outside of nature.
A Response to Noah Smith about Global Poverty
By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog
The debate about global poverty is important. But our collective understanding of this matter will only be served by intellectually honest and sincere engagement with the arguments at hand.
The New Green Revolution, a.k.a. The Grand Transition to… ?? – Part I
By Tad Patzek, Life Itself
How naive it is to think than the "New Green Deal" will allow us to continue our current lifestyles, just by other greener means. This, my friends in the developed, power and resource hogging countries is impossible.
Rethinking the Good City: Vallejo’s Bold Vision
By John de Graaf, Front Porch Republic
“Fortunately,” he says, “we here in California believe in climate change. We believe in the ecology of our land. We believe that we can make the positive changes that need to be made so that we have life on this planet.” And not only life, but a good life.