Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A new mass constituency for fundamental change – the new way of reasoning made flesh – is visible amidst the blight and the rot. No member of this constituency would find it reasonable to trade clean air for cheap household items, health and justice for toys and gadgets.
As we face the need to limit our environmental impacts, drawing attention to pre-industrial cultures and their ecological contexts may offer some useful pointers towards a viable future.
The prescription for despair is collective action where it is possible to act most fruitfully. Any journey starts from where we live. It starts by beginning to build the future in place.
We’re not alone in this. The land knows what to do and is striving to do so all around the globe at this very moment. Isn’t it time we notice?
We might now wish to slow things down, but modernity was built on a lie; a fatal flaw. If we voiced the command: “Slow down, Hal,” we’d get the response: “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Whatever climate emerges over the coming decades and centuries, it will bear little relation to our past. If we are to survive, the same must be true of us.
From my vantage point — which is sitting in the chicken yard, eating just-harvested mulberries, my fingers all blue — farming within an ecosystem can be joyful and meaningful, life-affirming. It should be an integral part of the way we feed the world and revitalize our degraded land.
Because without water, there is no life. And at those stakes, you always want a back-up plan.
Welcome to the story of Millan Millan and the Mystery of the Missing Mediterranean Storms, where we follow the over fifty year-long career of noted Mediterranean meteorologist Millan M. Millan, profoundly expanding our view of climate change along the way.
Growing food is just like every other exercise – no one learns to rock climb, knit, box, embroider, run, dance, make art, build things, etc… without a LOT of time being less productive than they’d like to be to get the skill set.
Recent archaeology emerging from ancient Mesoamerica is flipping the script of public understanding about the people and institutions that inhabited this world: the evidence tells us that cooperative and pluralistic government was at least as common as and more resilient than despotic states.
If we are to navigate unfolding environmental crises, we will need to draw on all our available knowledge and widen our relationships to find our way.
