Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A film produced by white people for other well-meaning white people, which does not include voices from the most vulnerable, who bear the major brunt of climate change and ecological collapse, entirely misses the mark around why ecological concerns are a matter of humiliating injustice for many people rather than merely a lifestyle choice.
The logical endpoint then is to leverage the word cataclysm in these times, because only that word captures the magnitude with which our species is fundamentally altering the world in ways that will have profound, lasting, and potentially fatal impacts for humanity as a whole.
Geoengineering refers to proposals for solving the problem of climate change, not by mitigation—that is, reducing emissions and deforestation, the causes of global heating—but instead by the use of new technologies.
To steer ourselves towards compassion we need to dedicate ourselves to becoming Gaia-wise. Spending time in nature deeply listening to birdsong – that’s a good way to start.
Join Asher, Rob, and Jason as they give a guided tour of the growth, conservation, collapse, and reorganization phases of the cycle, and hash out how it can be applied to the modern world.
It would be arrogant and irresponsible for the global North not to look to cultures in the global South that have sustained themselves for vastly longer than it has taken industrial capitalism to annihilate much of the living world.
Each of us can decide what is the right action for us to take. It is important that our action comes from a place of peace inside, and that it brings joy. It does not need to conform to other people’s standards or expectations. We can find our particular passion that lights us up, and put it in service to the earth, in service of strengthening our collective wellbeing.
Cultural burning is far more than a new method in the spectrum of hazard reduction burning; it is a recognized official Australian wildfire prevention technique. Cultural burning sets focus on re-establishing the kinship between the species in a certain ecosystem; it pays full attention to fire relationships of the area.
So, was the film “Planet of the Humans” a hit job on the environmental movement disguised by the filmmakers’ phony claim to care about Mother Earth? Or was it an honest, get real, exposé of its assertion that, “The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete”?
Asher, Rob, and Jason grapple with the cacophony, hash out the good and bad of the film and the response to it, and argue for an honest, messy-middle approach to the transition away from fossil fuels.
The point that must be recognized and discussed, that begs our attention, is the fact that “normal” was killing us.
Most of our politicians and the for-profit media portray the economic disaster we are currently facing as strictly Covid-caused. It’s not.
The love and interconnectedness that is awakening and being expressed – selfless acts of kindness, neighbors helping each other, local self-reliance, community mutual aid groups — are the seeds of another possible future. Yet, heartening as they are, it is critical that they be up-leveled to encompass the systemic dimension as well as personal and local expressions.
