Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Share Shed is a Library of Things in Totnes, in the southwest of England, where over 350 items are available for members of the project to borrow at a nominal fee. After watching many people coming in from nearby villages and towns to borrow equipment they didn’t require regularly, Share Shed coordinators began to think about creating a mobile version of the project.
Nonviolence is not about what not to do. It is about what you are going to do about the violence and injustice we see in our own hearts, our homes, our neighborhoods and society at large. It is about taking a proactive stand against violence and injustice. Nonviolence is about action, not inaction.
Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices – from organic agriculture to the farm cooperative – have roots in African wisdom. Yet, Black farmers experience discrimination and marginalisation worldwide. Author, activist, farmer and founder of Soul Fire Farm in New York, Leah Penniman is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system.
The agency in charge of leading the recovery in bushfire-affected areas must begin respectfully and appropriately. And they must be equipped with the basic knowledge of our peoples’ different circumstances.
It’s important to note this isn’t “special treatment.” Instead, it recognizes that policy and practice must be fit-for-purpose and, at the very least, not do further harm.
As Australians grapple with the consequences of the fires in upcoming months and embark on the necessary journey of regenerating themselves and their land, I hope they will look to nature – and farmers like Colin, Eric and others – for inspiration.
Low-carbon electricity output from wind, solar, nuclear, hydro and biomass rose by just 1 terawatt hour (TWh, less than 1%) in 2019. It represents the smallest annual increase in a decade, where annual growth averaged 9TWh. This growth will need to double in the 2020s to meet UK climate targets while replacing old nuclear plants as they retire.
The biosphere and econosphere are deeply interlinked and both are in crisis. Industrial, fossil-fuel based capitalism delivered major increases in living standards from the mid-18th through late-20th centuries, but at the cost of widespread ecosystem destruction, planetary climate change, and a variety of economic injustices.
While there are more women in agriculture than ever before, that doesn’t mean they don’t face discrimination. To this day, the industry is very much a boys’ club. This is a central contribution as to why women haven’t pursued careers in agriculture in the past.
To cross this threshold is to become vulnerable: one way or another, you can be changed by what you come to know, and that change may come in the form of loss. Perhaps the loss of who you thought you were, the stories you liked to tell about yourself.
Having acknowledged these connections, what steps can we take, as scholars, activists, and humans, to cultivate those connections in ways that empower more-than-human beings and ourselves in our collective struggle for Climate X? What does it look/sound/feel like to build climate solidarity beyond the boundaries of the human species? It’s time to find out.
As I have learned about the social life of trees and the intimate bonds that indigenous peoples have with various lifeforms and rivers — as I pore through recent ecophilosophy that explains aliveness to the western mind — I’ve concluded: We really ought to be talking more about animism and commoning.
Two groups on the West Coast, Chico Flax in the Sacramento Valley of California and Fibrevolution in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, are now leading the revitalization of the flax textile industry in the region. Groups in other regions of North America, such as the Cleveland Flax Project in the Rust Belt Fibershed, are also doing this work.
