Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The environment, health and economic development are intertwined. What’s happening in remote villages on a Southeast Asian island holds lessons for how all nations can better prepare for the next global shock.
So, will the apparition at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel actually represent an oncoming train that heralds the re-establishment of the globalised industrial model? Or might it be the beginnings of a renaissance of food systems which truly serve the public interest?
There is no time left for barking up one wrong tree after another; no time to waste in false solutions. Hence this series pointing out the fallacies behind such proposals as electrifying everything, carbon trading, geoengineering or switching to “gas—the clean energy fuel!”
I call these framing strategies “unconventional optimism” – forms of optimism that are not grounded in a firm belief that victory is nigh or even highly likely, but that emphasize aspects of the future or the present that are nonetheless motivating.
So, was the film “Planet of the Humans” a hit job on the environmental movement disguised by the filmmakers’ phony claim to care about Mother Earth? Or was it an honest, get real, exposé of its assertion that, “The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete”?
Any tool or circumstance that enables Indigenous people to fortify their traditions, territories and practices, while carrying them into the next generations, will be of great benefit to the global community. The COVID-19 pandemic may just give the proper pretext to support this important process globally.
Asher, Rob, and Jason grapple with the cacophony, hash out the good and bad of the film and the response to it, and argue for an honest, messy-middle approach to the transition away from fossil fuels.
Amidst the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, California’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), whose stated mission is to “prioritize protecting public health, safety, and the environment in its oversight of the oil, natural gas, and geothermal industries” paradoxically issued 24 new fracking permits on April 3rd, authorizing the first new oil wells using hydraulic fracking in California since July of last year.
I have come to think that the themes we on the Left should be coalescing around are dismantling rentier capitalism, offering a new income distribution system in which basic income divorced from the performance of labor is the anchor, and reviving all forms of commons and commoning.
If the pandemic extends into the next harvest, farmers like Piro may be forced to focus on maximizing yield at the expense of innovation, quality, and conservation. The long-term consequences are not just for our palates or our pockets, but for the environment.
This shock to the transport system has come as a result of a global pandemic, despite consistent and increasingly urgent calls for change in the face of climate change. It took a more immediate public health threat to give governments the power to declare national emergencies and to restrict movement and other individual freedoms.
The point that must be recognized and discussed, that begs our attention, is the fact that “normal” was killing us.
Most of our politicians and the for-profit media portray the economic disaster we are currently facing as strictly Covid-caused. It’s not.
