Sovereign Sisters in Lakota Lands
By Tracy L. Barnett, Cheryl Angel, Esperanza Project
Now I understand that sustainable sovereign economies are needed to replace the system we support with our purchasing power, and our ancient teachings have all of those economies passed down in traditional families.
‘So You’ve Declared a Climate Emergency, Now What?’ Event Review
By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog
What a climate emergency would mean for Exeter University, and what a genuinely low-carbon, resilient, localised, embedded, civic, ‘anchor institution’ would look like is a huge conversation, one that will need to cultivate an imaginative culture where anything feels possible, but on the strength of this event, that process has, hopefully, begun.
Shifting the Impact of our Clothing: Tips from the Fibershed Community
By Jess Daniels, Fibershed
If you’re not at the helm of a fashion company, it can be difficult to discern exactly how our individual actions are part of achieving progress and ameliorating the impacts of our second skin. In the Fibershed Clothing Guide, we share how the impact a garment is defined by three key elements.
Who, or What, Will Stop the Battle against Biodiversity?
By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee
You can’t read the UN’s recent biodiversity report on the imminent destruction of one million creatures by human economies and not conclude that the environmental movement has failed, and spectacularly so.
Psychology, meet Politics
By Alex Evans, Open Democracy
Whether we manage to find our way through depends primarily on what goes on inside our minds – on whether we’re able to manage our mental and emotional states at a time of extraordinary turbulence; whether we reach for the right stories to explain what’s happening at this moment in history; and above all, whether enough of us can see ourselves as part of a larger ‘Us’ instead of a ‘them-and-us,’ or just an atomised ‘I.’
Vertical Literacy: Reimagining the 21st-Century University
By Otto Scharmer, Medium
The classical university was based on the unity of research and teaching; the modern university has been based on the unity of research, teaching, and practical application. I believe that the current historical moment, with one civilization ending and dying, and another being born, invites us to reconceive the 21st-century university as a unity of research, teaching, and the praxis of transforming society and self.
The Farms of the Future
By Isabel Marlens, Local Futures
People around the world are hard at work creating diverse, living versions of the farms of the future. As a way of life, it would be nice to think that it could really catch on, and one day be accessible to most of us.
Arctic Is Thawing So Fast Scientists Are Losing Their Measuring Tools
By Dahr Jamail, TruthOut
We’ve never experienced anything like this: We are living with the full knowledge of our collapsing biosphere and watching huge portions of it vanishing before our very eyes.
Question of the Century: Do We Have a Right to a Livable Climate?
By Valerie Brown, The Revelator
The question remains unanswered: Do we — including future generations — have a legal right to a climate in which we can pursue our rights to life, liberty, property and happiness?
Permaculture in Taiwan – Permaculture Day Spotlight
By Celia Ashman, Permaculture Association
In September last year, I was very lucky and surprised to find myself in Taiwan for three weeks. I had two weeks free to travel wherever I wanted – so I put the word out for recommendations of permaculture projects, perhaps where I could volunteer and learn about the permaculture movement on another island (Taiwan is a bit bigger than Wales).
Making the Green New Deal Real
By Dianne Feeley, Solidarity
As the Climate Justice Alliance points out, “to truly address the interlinked crises of a faltering democracy, growing wealth disparity and community devastation caused by climate change and industrial pollution, we must reduce emissions at their source.
It’s Time to Stop Calling Natural Gas a ‘Bridge Fuel’ to a Safe Climate, Says New Report
By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog
Natural gas, marketed for years as a “bridge fuel” to cleaner energy sources, cannot be part of any climate solution, according to a new report from Oil Change International.
Avoiding Extinction: Participation in the Nested Complexity of Life
By Daniel Christian Wahl, Medium
So how do we aim for appropriate participation by designing for positive emergence? How do we design for human and planetary health? To do so in ways that are elegantly adapted to the bio-cultural uniqueness of place will require us to pay attention to the qualitative aspects of interactions, relationships.
Bicyclopolis
By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry
Doomer porn has limited appeal and shelf life; you can only get so miserable before there’s nowhere to go and no point. One of the most appealing subsets of speculative fiction, then, is what we might call the “good old future,” where our descendants have come through a crisis and created a better world that looks a lot like the past.
Environmental Reporting can Help Protect Citizens in Emerging Democracies
By Eric Freedman, The Conversation
What happens when an illegally logged tree falls or poachers kill endangered brown bears in the forest, but there’s no journalist to report it? That’s the situation in the Republic of Georgia, which faces challenges that include poaching, deteriorating air quality, habitat disruption from new hydropower dams, illegal logging and climate change.
Peak Oil Review: 3 June 2019
By Tom Whipple, Peak-Oil.org
Oil prices fell on Friday posting their biggest monthly drop in six months, after President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on imports from Mexico.
Innovation and Precaution: European Principles and New Ideas
By Liz O'Neill, Sustainable Food Trust
Europe’s precautionary principle is being challenged in the name of innovation. What might at first seem like a battle of words could, however, have profound impacts on the future of food and farming in the UK, across Europe and beyond.
Why the Next 12 Years Could be the Making of us
By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog
It was a delightful taste of what the climate emergency will look, feel, taste and sound like if we get it right. It was the future. It was common sense. And I can tell you, it smelt, tasted and looked absolutely fantastic.
Why Greta Thunberg’s Leadership of the Environmental Movement is so Important
By Magdalena Burtan, Open Democracy
What’s not so simple are the connections between environmental factors and our mental and physical wellbeing. Air pollution and an excessive exposure to toxins have been found to affect the brain not only in adults but also in children,
Seeding a 100-year Vision for Land Justice in the Bay Area
By Chris Tittle, Sustainable Economies Law Center
We had no illusions about the futures imagined by status quo institutions and actors -- but we also left grounded in the knowledge that our vision seeds are rooted 5,000 years deep in the soil already, and roots that deep might just be resilient and resistant enough to create a new abundance for all.
Climate Politics/Capitol Light Newsletter Issue 5
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
The House and Senate are back from their week of district workdays. They’ve come back to a growing list of to-do’s in an atmosphere of contention within and between both parties and between Congress and the White House.
Band-Aid Town: Season or Show Finale for Crazy Town?
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford
Episode 13, Band-Aid Town, returns to the premise of the show: the absolute batsh*t-crazy (lack of) response to the enormous, urgent challenges of the climate emergency, the energy transition, an economic system that’s destroying the prospects of a viable planet, and the growing racial and wealth divide.
Is there a way to counter the Chinese stranglehold on rare earth metals?
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Rare earth metals which are crucial to modern electronics are in the news because the Chinese, the dominate world supplier, are threatening to cut off exports in retaliation for tariffs on Chinese goods imposed by the Trump administration. Is there any way to counter Chinese control of these crucial metals?
Right To Own: A Policy Framework to Catalyze Worker Ownership Transitions
By Peter Gowan, The Next System Project
In fostering the creation of communities and workplaces driven by values of solidarity, cooperation, and justice, workplace democracy and worker ownership are crucial, powerful tools, and they can and should play an important role in the next economic system.
Pedal Power: The Cycling Revolution Cleaning our Air, Clearing Congestion, Tackling Climate Breakdown and Improving Health
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
Car use may have risen enormously in the last 30 years in most countries, but some places have managed to get people out of motorised transport and on their bikes in huge numbers, reducing carbon emissions and increasing health and wellbeing.
Climate Politics/Capitol Light Newsletter Issue 4
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
The fault for this lies on both sides of the aisle and is the consequence of decades of hyper-partisanship. The loss of faith in our democracy comes with the blurring of the lines separating the three separate but equal branches of government.
4 Common Misconceptions about Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, Explained
By Lai Sanders, Intercontinental Cry
The evidence is clear: Indigenous Peoples and local communities have long been the backbone of the world’s environmental protection efforts, safeguarding what remains of our planet’s precious forests and natural resources despite mounting threats to their lands and their lives.
Why It Is Too Late for the Green New Deal (As Presently Envisioned)
By Bill Henderson, Resilience.org
Instead of a climate mitigation plan that is shoehorned into the economic and political status quo, there is no time to taper-in mitigation to protect the economy: emissions must peak immediately and substantial emission reduction from the present high of more than 37 billion tons annually must happen immediately.
The New Movement Connecting Social Enterprises across Brussels
By Jesse Onslow, Shareable
The city is a hotbed for radical social enterprises, citizens’ initiatives and grassroots activism, each seeking to build alternative business models for a more sustainable and participatory future.
Is a National Clean Energy Standard the Answer?
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
This time around, there is little reason to believe that climate will flash and burn in the minds of voters as it has in the past. A new generation of environmental defender has joined with earlier generations to add its voice to the cries for environmental action—a collective voice raised louder than any that has gone before.
The Future of Food: Getting Beyond the Energy Blindness of Techno-Utopianism
By Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
The eventual decline in fossil hydrocarbon flows, and the inability of renewables to fully substitute, will create a deficiency of energy to power bloated urban agglomerations and require a shift of human populations back to the countryside. In short, the future is rural.
What Would It Mean to Deeply Accept That We’re in Planetary Crisis?
By Dahr Jamail, Barbara Cecil, TruthOut
At this critical planetary moment, the two of us are each considering what it means to deeply accept that our planetary home is in crisis — and how to move forward. Here are some of our individual reflections.
Weaving as a Way of Life at Oakland Fiber
By Kalie llana Cassel-Feiss, Fibershed
Sheng rented the studio in November, bought the looms in December, set them up in January, and started teaching classes in February. She is currently working on her business plan, and is most passionate about weaving as a form of employment.
Gifts of Good Dirt
By Liz Brazile, YES! magazine
The majority of people interested in his soil generally have an affinity for growing their own food. He hopes to help others who might not — especially those who are food insecure.
It’s Never Really about the Bread
By Eleanor Goldfield, ROAR Magazine
Corporate media often depicts major social upheavals as single-issue affairs — to see how movements and struggles connect we need to look beyond the headlines.
Review: Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush by John Michael Greer
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
Like John Michael Greer’s numerous other books on the subject of industrial civilization’s demise, this one reveals its author to be an astonishingly gifted guide to a future that most people refuse to contemplate.
Climate Politics/Capitol Light Newsletter Issue 3
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Democratic contender Julián Castro said Thursday he has signed onto the "No Fossil Fuel Money" pledge, swearing off money from oil executives, lobbyists or PACs. The Sunrise Movement and other progressive climate advocate organizations consider the pledge a requirement for their support.
Plastic Swamp
By Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance
The billions of pieces of plastic floating in ocean gyres begin their watery journeys in ditches and creeks in almost every location inhabited by people. Many are tossed into tributaries in the centre of continents, far upstream from any ocean, including the small watershed where I live.
The Great Convergence?
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
I don’t necessarily think all neo-optimist whizz-bangs are intrinsically a waste of time, but we need a Plan B … and this, I think, is a small farm future, which I suspect may well become Plan A.
The Survival-Investment Gap and the Berlin Wall: a Thought for Solarcentury’s 21st Birthday
By Jeremy Leggett, Jeremy Leggett blog
On Solarcentury's 21st birthday, an interesting question occurs to me. How many Solarcenturys would it take to stave off the climate crisis, at least where energy is concerned. The answer I arrive at might really surprise you.
Emergent Education
By Kat Wall, Ali Tamlit, STIR to Action
If we are moving away from this old form of political education – filling empty containers with the ‘right’ knowledge or ideology and policing those ‘right answers’ – what then are we actually trying to do?
What Defines a Farmer? Exploring Attitudes to Scale in Agriculture
By Julie Baber, Sustainable Food Trust
The dictionary definition of ‘farmer’ is simply: “someone who owns or manages a farm”. A farm is: “an area of land and its buildings used for growing crops and rearing animals”.