Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I’m with you when you say that climate change is the most important issue facing humankind. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s the most important one ever. But, when I hear folks say—and I have heard it—that the environmental movement is the first in history to stare down an existential threat, I have to get off the train.
While the subject of this story is what we may call biocultural, eco-culinary, or reciprocal restoration, it is quite often enabled through a social process that has been called either community-based restoration, collaborative conservation, or cooperative collaboration.
I would even venture that climate change is becoming one of the topics most talked about—or like religion and politics not to be talked about—around dinner tables. I credit the rising tide of youth activism for this rather sudden reversal of fortune.
We must hold ourselves accountable for our actions before it is too late to prevent catastrophic collapse. When the water runs out we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Here are a few stories about adaptation, to give a feel for actions that flow out of this type of hope — a hope that includes a hard-won acceptance of the very real possibility of impending collapse.
Squashes and pumpkins are great because they’re easy to grow, are a low input/ high output crop with very low maintenance and watering, and most importantly because they provide a good winter survival food.
Black leaders have long been pioneers in protecting communities and the environment — from Harriet Tubman, who in the mid-1800s used her knowledge of the natural world to guide escaped slaves north, to landfill protesters in Warren County, North Carolina in 1982 who galvanized the modern environmental justice movement.
For many of us who actually live along the U.S.-Mexico border, the “Mesquite Manifesto” addresses economic and climate problems by building up industry around the native tree.
Let us make of this precious opportunity the catalyst for a convergence of social movements, community initiatives, and new political vehicles in a mighty blow for the world we want, the world we deserve, and the world we will make!
Conventional economics describes acts of human kindness in entirely pejorative terms. They are variously classed as unproductive labour or labour that is resistant to productivity gains. The criticism runs across the whole gamut of personal, educational and creative services.
The goal is thus not to repeat the tightly-knitted knot and inherited linear understanding of power, but to weave a new political geography, a new terrain of distributed power. No longer is this a challenge of an expansive fiefdom to be owned and controlled, but a series of humans whose relationships need to be collectively organized.
This is the first road to solidarity economy, traveled by many who set out from the reality of poverty and experiences of popular economy. As these initiatives encounter others arising from other realities, with different motivations, the idea of a solidarity economy sector acquires greater visibility.
