Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
So to put today in human context… tonight will be a short summer night, one of many that feel more or less the same to my human body. Tomorrow the sun will rise very early and I will rise to greet the new day and savor the unfolding of time. These are the scales of a human life. And that, too, is good.
So what is this Welsh cultural attitude and why does it matter so much in a book about the history of the landscape? In summary, it is the deeply held conviction that the land and its people are inextricably intertwined.
To create a common consensual vision around which the national climate movement could mobilize, a broad civil society gathering should be convened to attract the leadership of all environmental and climate action groups and set the stage for the National Climate Action Plan.
Music has been an integral part of the human experience for thousands of years, and continues to embody a unique aspect of culture across the world today – yet most people hold only a preliminary understanding of the full range of benefits that sound, resonance, and harmonics can provide. Today, Nate is joined by ethnomusicologist Alexandre Tannous for a deep dive on the evolution of the human relationship with sound and how music could be used as a tool to facilitate personal resilience and healing.
This practice consists of creating a community of prosumers who exchange products and services, creating a process of eco-social regeneration around the local economy, thanks to the exchange facilitator that is social currency.
Now that I have a demographic tool, I can ask questions relating to when we might hit peak power as a civilization. I use power (rate of energy use) as a proxy for all manner of resource dependencies, as energy usage correlates strongly with materials use and ecological impact. Plus, it is a readily-available measure.
Until states and Congress pass new laws to prevent wetlands from being destroyed, we see action by businesses and nongovernment organizations as the most promising substitute.
In 2019, Australia was on the cusp of approving a new coal mine on traditional Wirdi land in Queensland that would have extracted approximately 40 million tons of coal each year for 35 years. But that didn’t happen, thanks to the advocacy of Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, a 29-year-old Wirdi woman of the Birri Gubba Nation, who led a lawsuit against the coal company in 2021, and won.
Of all the pivotal technologies discovered by humans, fire making was the one that gifted our species with power beyond all others.
Ethex’s recently launched 10 years of Impact report demonstrates that the direct impact investing model works and has the potential to provide the vital funding needed by hundreds more impactful organisations that are taking action against climate change, social inequality and the break-down of communities.
The word ‘rewilding’ has had its day and now needs to slip gracefully into retirement. That, at any rate, is the polite suggestion I’m going to make in this post, which is the last in my recent mini-series on ‘wrecked’ land and what to do about it.
The point is, the physical science basis is a term intended for science, and it makes most sense within those boundaries where its meaning and limitations are understood. It’s when it crosses the border to society that things get weird, where you suddenly you wake up to discover everything from forests to farms to whales have been reduced to carbon quantities, and life itself is being financialized.
