Environment featured

The work of restoration will continue, as the Tongva return native species to the land while reviving ceremonial and cultural practices. In the midst of ash and loss, a human relationship to land and water over 2,500 years old is resuming. It may be the LA basin’s most hopeful acre.

As Earth grows warmer, its ground is becoming drier and saltier, with profound consequences for the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants — nearly a third of whom already live in places where water is increasingly scarce and the ability to raise crops and livestock is increasingly difficult.

In the intricate tapestry of backyard ecosystems, an often underestimated yet crucial factor is water retention. From arid deserts to lush rainforests, understanding and enhancing water retention can profoundly influence ecosystem restoration efforts, and it need not be complex.

To lay a hedge, you cut each tree or shrub part way through its stem, then bend it over and lay it down horizontally to make a barrier from which strong new growth extends upwards. But of course it’s not as simple as that. Hedge-laying is hard, time-consuming, skilled work.

The UK government is set to back plans for a third runway at Heathrow, the country’s busiest airport, and to expand two other airports near London: Gatwick and Luton. The move is designed to support the government’s “mission” to grow the economy.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, in February 2024, the average global sea surface temperature (SST) reached 21.06 degrees Celsius, the highest level ever recorded by the service. The previous record of 20.98 degrees Celsius was set in August 2023.

Humanity’s firepower underpins the Anthropocene, which is the outcome not just of anthropogenic meddling but of a particular kind of meddling, made possible by humans’ species monopoly over fire. Even climate history has become a subset of fire history.

But like it’s subject, life, this movement is self-generating. Roots are spreading and it can only grow. Eventually, mainstream journalism will take notice. At that point, the narrative is generating its own rain.

In this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by members of the bioregioning movement, Daniel Christian Wahl, Samantha Power, and Isabel Carlisle, to discuss the necessity of reconnecting to our local places for the sake of addressing our ecological, social, and economic challenges.

Just because our brains are incapable of tracking the complexity of the mechanisms that lead to decisions at the level of life does not invalidate the basis. How grandiose to imagine that we have a say in the matter!