Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In this episode, Nate is joined by physicist Anastassia Makarieva about the critical yet often overlooked role forests play in maintaining ecological balance and climate stability.
Researchers in agriculture, forestry, and horticulture bank pollen for some species, but the strategy has been largely overlooked for wild plants. Wolkis sees it as an exciting possibility for conserving the genetic biodiversity of exceptional species with little need for extra infrastructure investment.
A number of deep and fundamental compatibilities connect science to animism, possibly illuminating a route from where we now find ourselves to a better-integrated existence on Earth—without having to abandon what we learned to our great collective misfortune.
If you are on the permaculture train, I applaud you, it’s a great ride, but I also invite you to look around and ask: where is it really going? Is it fostering collective care and ecological reciprocity, or is it just another form of “green” entrepreneurship? Has it challenged the dominant system or capitalist materialism? Or has it merely carved out a comfortable niche within it?
Impasse succeeds in its aim of candidly assessing our planetary predicament and offering a realistic, ethical way forward. Its achievement lies not in offering solutions—since Scranton persuasively argues that none exist—but in clarifying the nature of the bind we are in and offering a way to live meaningfully within it.
Once again, wild horses chase each other. Taurus cattle, stand-ins for aurochs, rip up the dirt with their horns. Soon, with luck, lynx will haunt the forests and flocks of vultures will circle. We can’t return to the past, but we can rewild.
Yes, you can grow a lot of tomatoes in a relatively small space inside these plastic hot-houses, but did any of the Icarus-minded engineers and plastic-film aficionados ever stop to ask some simple questions? What are the long-term prospects for this practice? And what will eventually happen to all that plastic?
Our ancient pine forests in Sherani, once crowned as green gold and blanketing rugged mountains, now crumble to ashes due to persistent wildfires.
The wider point here is that we’ve now reached a point where climate change has become a fact of life. One of the problems with this is that people in different silos are used to thinking of their climate change problems as being different from other people’s, rather than connected.
To undermine the Endangerment Finding is a breach of government responsibility, one that will not lead to an improved future for even special interests like energy producers and car companies.
Among a long list of lessons, Katrina taught us that climate migration is not a distant possibility, it’s already here. We were among the first in recent history to be displaced by a storm of its magnitude, but we absolutely will not be the last.
In this episode, Nate is joined by environmental and migration historian, Sunil Amrith, to explore the complex history of human movement – and what it reveals about the looming wave of climate-driven migration.
