Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It’s all so small, given everything we face, that it’s almost not worth mentioning. Still, that drying pond bed is at least a little cleaner, my community a little friendlier, and I am at least witnessing (and trying to alleviate) the suffering in Palestine. Shouldn’t that matter at least a little?
As the ecological situation worsens, we don’t have the luxury of snubbing potential solutions. Let’s not be the ones who died of an illness because the name of the remedy sounded silly.
Do we blindly feed our consumption addiction, indifferent to how—or whether—resources can be replenished? Or do we transition from consumer to replenisher, and become responsible stewards, ensuring that what we take today will sustain life tomorrow?
Our 8-billion-strong “cloud” is grossly unsustainable, so that it will collapse via its own downpour if not allowed to shrink. It’s possible to do so by natural attrition and generational transformation of lifestyles.
Here, perhaps is the secret to also countering the far right, not with ameliorative green growthism but with radical, redistributive, anti-commodity leftism – recovering that underground tradition of socialism that starts from a critique of capitalism’s turning everything into a commodity, and instead focusing on what we all need to lead a decent dignified life, within safe limits.
Failing to stop the assault on the tools to even track our GHG emissions will mean at best the U.S. becoming a pariah state, at worst it can derail the global efforts to curb climate change and progress to transition beyond fossil fuels. Not an optimal outcome in either case, and certainly worth fighting to prevent—one public hearing at a time.
Facing habitat loss, climate change, and shifting livelihoods, Maasai women are leading a transformative program that links sustainable dairy farming with the preservation of the Serengeti’s iconic migrations and the resilience of local communities.
The In-Home Suite version of shared housing is elegant and intelligent: separate and complete living spaces all under one roof, sharing only the envelope and services of the house.
Industrial-scale renewable energy does not offer an alternative to the capitalist order and its exploitative relationships to earth.
Peak oil calls on us to imagine a lower-energy future and to start adapting now. It’s a game-changer, and a life-changer.
The Rural Resilience project brings together a small but highly committed team working to connect the dots – between farmers and funders, researchers and regional leaders. In the face of centralised decision-making and extractive business models, our work aims to ensure local realities inform European decisions.
Journalism at its best doesn’t demand credit. It demands results. And it earns them by doing the mundane things that make democracies and markets less blind: showing up, listening, checking, publishing, and then following up until the record itself begins to do the work.
