Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I wonder, how do the swallowtails drink if too many people buy meat from grocery stores? How does the blood return to the soil? How do the coyotes and the vultures feast on the entrails from the farmer and the hunter? Our wedges, our separation, spills over into all of life. A chink in the chain. We cannot divide ourselves without dividing everything.
So head off to the boonies and find yourself a pile of heavy fabric things and draft blockers and a nicely aged cedar cabinet to keep it all tucked away until winter begins to bite.
COP has been running for 30 years but institutional governance seems to focus on symbolic acts that redeem and repent empires instead of spearheading structural and fundamental changes. After all, the Fund is born out of a Global North/South divide where justice remains a voluntary and charitable gesture.
So, all we can hope that the path of sustainability becomes wider and better lit, because as long as it is too difficult, most people will take the easier path, even if the end of that path is not good for any of us.
The Earth doesn’t need us at all, it certainly doesn’t need us to awaken. It needs us to pay attention, to get involved, and to become ecologically literate.
At Rural Watch Africa Initiative (RUWAI), we believe that empowering one young person can ignite transformation across generations.
Within degrowth, we can and should continue to debate theories and strategies. But if we want to meaningfully engage with system transformation, we must recognise the pluriversal essence of the degrowth contribution and offer our analytical tools to support the anti-capitalist struggles, becoming thus an attribute – or adjective – of existing political proposals.
Forging new alliances between previously disjointed social movements has the potential to significantly build their popular power. The story of Germany’s “Wir Fahren Zusammen” coalition shows how these alliances might be built in practice.
Space stunts might remain impressive for all time, but the likely destiny is that they become silly in the way so many impressive stunts have.
Some key understandings in Crazy Town: the Earth is finite; the economy cannot grow forever; people can harm ecosystems and cause global warming; physics, chemistry, and biology are real; inequality hurts everyone; healthy humans need community, and it’s more fun to laugh than to cry. But where did principles like these originate?
The Caatinga’s story isn’t one of survival in a dryland ecosystem – it’s a lesson of looking for the hidden patterns, finding alliances, and being patient. Well, and about fate of course. Because, if a forgotten biome can regrow from dust, what else might be possible?
But whether we act sensibly and start a controlled descent or just lean into the nosedive (which is where I think we’re heading), we have passed the point of no return. We have passed peak demand, meaning peak production, meaning peak economic activity. And oil companies know that…
