Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In this episode, Nate is joined by Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, a Peruvian chemical biologist with Andean-Amazonian indigenous roots, to discuss how she is actively merging modern science and indigenous knowledge through innovative research in the Amazon Rainforest.
Dam removals aren’t a climate cure-all, but the magnitude of the crisis we face will require all the tools we can muster — and master. Several decades of dam removals across the U.S. has proved they work to restore rivers better and faster than anything else. Now let’s put them to use for climate action, too.
Can China face the challenges awaiting humankind in the near future?
There’s the book club, the Rotary Club, the Mickey Mouse Club, and the club sandwich. Whatever your preference, you might want to think about joining a club. Social clubs, fraternal orders, and the like have had a storied and critical role in public life.
This episode combines Nate’s own evolution of understanding with the overarching narrative of The Great Simplification, speaking to what it means to be human in a dichotomous era of abundance and depletion, of numbness and awakening.
The tasks facing us are monumental, but we can begin with steps we take in our own communities. We must build the future in place.
The world’s cities creep closer to actual water system collapse.
Virginia tree farmers reintroduce an iconic tree that was decimated by blight.
If we truly seek to create relations of accountability and peace with our larger environment(s), jurisprudence needs to evolve beyond our current anthropocentric lens, and we can make it so by encouraging environmental movements to collaborate in developing ecocentric governance approaches.
Working at smaller scales means that the benefits of additional crop rotations, processing mills and artisan-micro-maker labs could be spread throughout the country, bringing greater resilience and livelihoods to rural areas. Energy demands would be lower and distributed as processing would be localised and require limited transport.
If legacy organizations are structurally constrained, then we need to nurture the new actors — ones willing to fail, to iterate and to take risks that can help spark major transformations. For this reason, I believe it is worth looking in more detail at lessons we might apply from the innovator’s dilemma.
Without urgent and equitable action to fund adaptation, the next decade will not only test our infrastructure; it will test our humanity. Adaptation is not charity; it is climate justice. And justice delayed will only deepen the loss.
