The Open Amazon and its Enemies: a Call for Action and Optimism
By Francesc Badia I Dalmases, Open Democracy
The Amazon is so key to the future of our planet that it has become a hot issue of geopolitics. And, we are not only talking about the physical environment. We are talking about the future of the people- those who live there and us.
Now is Not the Time to Defend Britain’s Democracy – we Need a Democratic Revolution
By Laurie Macfarlane, Open Democracy
So despite the good intentions, now is not the time to be defending Britain’s broken democracy. Instead, we should be demanding a democratic revolution.
Some Thoughts on Extinction Rebellion – and the Future of the Climate Movement
By Paul Arbair, Paul Arbair blog
The rise of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ signals that climate activism is moving up a gear. Further radicalisation is probably inevitable.
Eating Tomorrow: Excerpt
By Timothy A. Wise, Resilience.org
That is why I decided to write this book. I needed to understand why our leaders, after the wake-up call of a global food crisis, remained so blindly committed to business-as-usual policies that ignored the affordable solutions all around them. These solutions could help hungry farmers eat today while giving them the natural and financial resources that could allow them—and all of us—to eat tomorrow.
How Sharing Offers and Needs Can Shatter Gender Stereotypes
By Crystal Arnold, Tadzie Madzima, Medium
IGNITE Youth is organizing upcoming Offers and Needs Markets to multiply local exchange and build a more vibrant economy in Zimbabwe. As the talent and wealth in their own community became visible, they felt that anything was possible.
Climate Change Politics-as-Usual can’t Fix the Climate Crisis. Maybe it’s Time to Try a Citizens’ Assembly
By David Farrell, The Guardian blog
This climate emergency requires a courageous response from our political leaders. A citizens’ assembly – given sufficient time, resources and expert assistance – offers one means to solve the problem of taking difficult, long-term decisions in a political system governed by short-term rules.
Climate Politics/Capitol Light (24)
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
It is hard to take the Trump administration at its word when it comes to environmental impact assessments and studies. The administration continues to assault NEPA requirements without any real regard to the science involved.
Human Rights from the Ground Up
By Jackie Smith, Great Transition Initiative
The initiative to which I have dedicated my energies is the growing global “human rights cities” movement. This movement is a response that has been building from cities around the world to address the growing urgency for protections of people’s basic needs such as housing, water, energy, and other rights.
It’s not Just Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest that’s Ablaze – Bolivian Fires are Threatening People and Wildlife
By Claire F.R. Wordley, The Conversation
Up to 800,000 hectares of the unique Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground in Bolivia between August 18 and August 23. That’s more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years.
Rethinking the Modern University
By Marcus Ford, Resilience.org
We need a form of civilization that co-exists with the nine million other species of life on this planet. We need a form of civilization that is socially just and does not equate human happiness and well-being with the endless consumption of material goods. The modern university, as it is currently configured, stands in the way of creating this form of civilization. Rethinking civilization requires rethinking higher education.
With New Perennial Grain, a Step Forward for Eco-Friendly Agriculture
By Jim Robbins, Yale Environment 360
A cereal and beers are now being made with a new variety of perennial grain known as Kernza. Proponents say this marks a significant advance for a new agriculture that borrows from the wild prairie and could help ensure sustainable food production in a warming world.
The Green New Deal Battles Business as Usual. Both Will Doom Us
By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee
We’ve begun to experience collapse in all spheres of life. Collapse can be both slow and rapid. It is a series of unending emergencies. Instead of responding or preparing, we’re cheering on a fight between fantasies.
Cap and Adapt: A Failsafe Approach to the Climate Emergency
By Larry Edwards, Stan Cox, Resilience.org
Here, we propose a policy framework we call Cap and Adapt, to accomplish the resolution's proposed managed phase out of fossil fuels, and by design to do so at a speed matching the last-minutes-to-midnight urgency of our climate plight. Also, by design, it is inherently failsafe both for meeting any target end-date the final legislation may adopt for the phase out and for ensuring the needs of individuals, families, communities, and the national economy are met.
How the Women of Standing Rock Are Building Sovereign Economies
By Tracy L. Barnett, YES! magazine
Food security, traditional agriculture, and local self-reliance are key to regenerative societies of the future, say water protectors taking the movement’s lessons forward.
Selection by Stone
By Michael Major, Food Tank
With one stone, Abdellah Bounagua ensured his voice was heard. He was able to guide breeders like Filippo in their development of the varieties that will allow him, and other farmers like him, to prosper while the climate changes. That’s a big splash for such a small stone.
Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger Than Exxon Valdez?
By Justin Nobel, DeSmog Blog
In July 2015 workers at the Garden Creek I Gas Processing Plant, in Watford City, North Dakota, noticed a leak in a pipeline and reported a spill to the North Dakota Department of Health that remains officially listed as 10 gallons, the size of two bottled water delivery jugs. But a whistle-blower has revealed to DeSmog the incident is actually on par with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which released roughly 11 million gallons of thick crude.
P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival
By Michel Bauwens, Kate Raworth, Commons Transition
Why should you read this latest report of the P2P Foundation, and why does it matter? Our inspiration comes from the great synthesis provided by Kate Raworth in her book, Doughnut Economics, which graphically presents the great question of our age: can we produce for human needs, without exceeding planetary boundaries?
911, What’s Your Climate Emergency?
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
By declaring a national emergency concerning the southern border of the US, Trump may have unwittingly given the next Democratic president an additional weapon with which to combat climate change.
Carbon, Climate Policy, and the New Alchemy
By Lee Epstein, Resilience.org
Unless you live under a rock, you know that most reputable geophysical scientists around the world, especially climatologists and those who study the near-Earth atmosphere, will tell you they are very worried about carbon.
Waves, Waterfalls and Our Eventual Return to Gaia
By Erik Assadourian, Gaianism
Knowing that our lives are brief—and worse—not knowing where the end of the waterfall is (is it a short drop or a long one?) means it is up to us to live every moment of our lives well. Not “live it up” but live meaningfully, purposefully, and conscious that life could end at any moment.
Explainer: The High-Emissions ‘RCP8.5’ Global Warming Scenario
By Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief
In this article, Carbon Brief examines how the emissions scenario underlying RCP8.5 was developed and how it has subsequently been used in the academic literature and media.
Large-Scale Frameworks, Small-Scale Solutions
By David Bollier, Great Transition Initiative
So today, various relocalization movements need to develop a cultural analog of TCP/IP to help local actors interconnect and inhabit a common space.
Farming Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis
By Jonathan Foley, Medium
If we look at the whole board, we can see numerous opportunities to work together — across economic sectors, geographic locations, and local-to-national scales — to reduce emissions, create carbon sinks, restore healthy ecosystems, create jobs and local economic benefits, improve human wellbeing, and stop global warming.
The Future of Technological Society: Will They Really Think of Something?
By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life
There is a fundamental truth that these prophets of cutting-edge technology are not considering: fossil fuels are running out. It was inevitable that they would. Nothing that could only be created under unique conditions over millions of years can be expected to renew itself during the brief span of the Industrial Revolution.
Trump and Greenland: America keeps looking for the next frontier
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
President Trump's announcement that he thinks the U.S. should consider buying Greenland was widely ridiculed. But what he is proposing has a long pedigree in American history. And, he is tapping into very deep yearning in the American psyche.
Transition as Wildfire Adaptation in California
By Chris Nelder, Energy Transition Show
We are fortunate to have Michael Wara as our guest in this episode—a bona fide expert on the subject who is a member of the state-appointed wildfire commission in California—to help us think through this complex web of issues and understand how to start plotting a new path into the future.
“It Begins with Respect”
By Jeff Conant, Miguel Sánchez Álvarez, Pedro Hernàndez Luna, Intercontinental Cry
As sumak causay was brought to the awareness of the non-indigenous by Andean social movements a few years ago, now in Chiapas a generation of Indigenous scholars is bringing to light – theorizing, they would say – the local understanding of buen vivir: a concept articulated in Tseltal and Tsotsil as el lek’il kuxlejal.
What County Farms Can Do For Us
By Victoria Balfour, Sustainable Food Trust
“If people are serious about producing good, sustainable and healthy food with high animal welfare and environmental standards, whilst looking after rural communities, county farms have an important role to play.”
Studying Capitalist Dystopias, and Avenues for Change
By David Bailey, Angela Wigger, Open Democracy
We live in dystopian times. The crisis of global capitalism is revealing itself in the most uncompromising fashion. Quantitative easing – the one ‘solution’ to the last crisis – has only re-inflated the global financial bubble, and created the prospect for the next impending crisis to be greater than witnessed heretofore.
What We Can Learn from the Labor Movement
By Aaron Vansintjan, Great Transition Initiative
In general, the power of the elite cannot be confronted by timidly asking or jumping to compromises. It can only be confronted by hampering the source of their power in the first place: the ability to make a profit.
The Amazon Is Dying and Bolsonaro Is Fanning the Flames
By Dahr Jamail, TruthOut
And now, the Amazon is on fire. Wildfires are incinerating the rainforest at a record pace, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE as it is commonly referenced). INPE recently stated that there has been an 80 percent increase in wildfires in the Amazon, compared to the same period from last year.
Why was the Blackout Used to Attack Renewables? Because Some Media Still Have an Anti-Climate Action Agenda
By Mike Small, DeSmog Blog
England recently experienced its most severe blackout in more than a decade, leading to a cacophony of calls from the usual suspects to scrap windfarms and abandon plans to turn the country’s electricity supply from brown to green.
TyT Field Dispatches: ‘I Remember When All This was Bare Earth’
By Chris Maughan, People's Knowledge
One standout issue this time was how much joy I felt (and others appeared to feel) on being in the field, gathering on the farm, and (especially) being in the field that had greater diversity. All this is missing from our results. The conventional measures we use aren’t particularly good at reflecting the process of research, which – in citizen science at least – is arguably so much more important than ‘results’.
Resist Locally, Renew Globally
By Helena Norberg-Hodge, Great Transition Initiative
As the fault lines in the global economy continue to grow, and the desire for genuine human connection becomes ever more keenly felt, these existing initiatives will provide direction as well as inspiration, and stand as a compelling alternative to the faux-localist path of violence, fear, and hate.
Living in Two Worlds: Capitalism Pretends All Is Well While the World Is Burning
By Dahr Jamail, Barbara Cecil, TruthOut
Those of us who are lucky enough to be living somewhere in the world where there is enough food to eat, water to drink, and security for us and our loved ones, are living in a bubble.
Access to Land is a Barrier to Simpler, Sustainable Living. Public Housing could Offer a Way Forward
By Alex Bauman, Samuel Alexander, The Conversation
There is a very powerful reason we are currently unable to move toward a simpler and sustainable society: the costs of securing access to land for housing often mean only the relatively affluent can afford such “green lifestyles”. In response to this problem, we offer some ideas to show how public land could be used for sustainable forms of community-led development.
Sea Change
By Charlotte Du Cann, Charlotte Du Cann blog
What if we started again here, by the sea, where the memory of our physical happiness comes to us on a summer’s day? I always thought ground state meant you needed to have your feet planted on terra firma – but what if it means being at home in another state entirely? Something more shifting and fluid. A state where we can remember our creaturehood, our place in the pod, the feeling we are beloved by the life that surrounds and holds us, its beauty and complexity?
Small Farms don’t Produce Most the of the Worlds’ Food – But they Could Produce All
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
The key message is that the potential of small farms for global food production is determined by economic conditions rather than biological, ecological or agronomic limitations.
Tools for the Awakening
By Aimee Lewis-Reau, LaUra Schmidt, Resilience.org
Take this leap. You are not alone. We are all in this together. Garnish support from and hold space for others. Let’s process, dream, and grow together. We need you now. There is no more time to waste.
As Climate Crisis Grows, Temperatures Set Global Records
By Ian Angus, Climate & Capitalism
The global land and ocean surface temperature departure from average for July 2019 was the highest for the month of July, making it the warmest month overall in the 140-year NOAA global temperature dataset record, which dates back to 1880.
Reclaiming the Commons through State Ownership? Maybe Not
By Milan Babic, Open Democracy
But how close is this form of transnational state capital to an idea of public or common ownership? Is state ownership really a viable alternative for a post-neoliberal, more inclusive and emancipatory global economy?
One Word—Plastics: Why the World Will be Slow to Abandon Natural Gas
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Petrochemicals are the 800-pound gorilla that many fail to account for in their climate defense plans. Termed a blind spot of the global energy system by the International Energy Agency (IEA) petrochemicals are a driving force behind the increasing demand for fossil fuels.