Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We—Indigenous Peoples and local communities—play a critical role in stewarding and safeguarding the world’s lands and forests. For the first time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today recognizes that strengthening our rights is a critical solution to the climate crisis.
Representative democracy was the political system that most successfully exploited capitalism for the generation of wealth, but in recent years it has been compromised by the power of corporations through lobbying and donations, and has proved to be an unsatisfactory vehicle for generating equity and for responsiveness to long-term problems.
The rise of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ signals that climate activism is moving up a gear. Further radicalisation is probably inevitable.
Up to 800,000 hectares of the unique Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground in Bolivia between August 18 and August 23. That’s more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years.
By declaring a national emergency concerning the southern border of the US, Trump may have unwittingly given the next Democratic president an additional weapon with which to combat climate change.
Knowing that our lives are brief—and worse—not knowing where the end of the waterfall is (is it a short drop or a long one?) means it is up to us to live every moment of our lives well. Not “live it up” but live meaningfully, purposefully, and conscious that life could end at any moment.
And now, the Amazon is on fire. Wildfires are incinerating the rainforest at a record pace, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE as it is commonly referenced). INPE recently stated that there has been an 80 percent increase in wildfires in the Amazon, compared to the same period from last year.
Those of us who are lucky enough to be living somewhere in the world where there is enough food to eat, water to drink, and security for us and our loved ones, are living in a bubble.
The global land and ocean surface temperature departure from average for July 2019 was the highest for the month of July, making it the warmest month overall in the 140-year NOAA global temperature dataset record, which dates back to 1880.
Posing a defiant alternative to the Abe government and corporate sustainability, these protesters point to the only possible path forward: Japan must take responsibility for its historical emissions, and use its enormous wealth to help pull the planet back from the brink.
When we discard a plastic bag, an electronic device encased in plastic, a plastic pen emptied of its ink or any of the myriad plastic objects which populate our lives, we usually say we are throwing the object “away.”
I put “away” in quotes because if there were ever any piece of evidence to convince us that there is no “away,” it is the discovery of tiny particles of plastic in the Arctic ice, deep oceans and high mountains.
While the common tendency with ecological grief, as with most forms of pain, is to turn away in an effort to protect ourselves, if we understand grief and love as interwoven, then to turn away from grief is to turn away from love, to close and harden our hearts.
