Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Mackenzie Feldman, Founder of Herbicide-Free Campus has been working to end herbicide use by the University of California campus system. This May, the University announced a ban on glyphosate citing “concerns about possible human health and ecological hazards”.
In this post, I reflect on the vocabulary we need to be familiar with if we are to raise awareness and develop widespread literacy and skills for responding to all our interrelated problems, from climate breakdown to soil erosion, species extinction, human suffering and inequality. The issue of language and vocabulary has arisen in a number of conversations I’ve had with friends and acquaintances in recent weeks, as we approached the School Climate Strikes on Sept 20 2019.
So finally, vegan or not, it comes down to this: Live rightly, and don’t worry about how large an impact you’re having. The intractable evil of the world around you is no excuse for you to violate your own conscience. If you think it is right to eat differently, spend differently, live differently, then do so, just because it’s right.
Every time a group of people starts to make others understand that there’s a need to take action for a given problem, they can start to undertake initiatives to adopt this law, as we are doing. The abolition of slavery in America and of apartheid in Africa started with small groups which engaged themselves in the recognition of specific rights.
As environmental crises and the urgency to create ecological sustainability escalate, so does the importance of ecological economics. This applied, solutions-based field of studies is concerned with sustainability and development, rather than efficiency and growth.
Neighborhood groups, business improvement associations, and unions can adopt policy. Universities can adopt policies to buy local and sustainable food. The power of public and para-public purses is more widely available than ever before. As well, the talents of citizens for self government and leadership are higher than ever before. We need to look ahead to a world of policy partnerships.
Fundamentally, migration has always been, and will always be, a part of human development. There is no use in casting it as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ phenomenon in itself: the notion of being ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ migration is a useless hook for popular debate and undermines the dignity of people who have migrated.
And what I say to those who choose to criticise XR is please by all means criticise us, and come up swiftly and proactively with something better we can do to meet the challenges of imminent climate catastrophe and ecological disaster. I would be the first to be behind you. But if you cannot then I would think very carefully about what you are going to say to the present generation, Greta’s generation, today’s children and grandchildren when they ask, ‘What did you do when we had our last chance to avoid catastrophe?’ Think very hard about that question.
Human beings are at their worst when they are consumers, locked into the miserable pursuit of satisfaction through the isolation of individual consumption – particularly when that shopping and consuming is done online (and when, as with Instagram, we learn to turn ourselves into commodities). T
The one thing I am sure of, however, is that there’s too much hedging going on both in politics and the private market. We’ll never prevail in keeping below the temperature thresholds scientists are warning of by hedging climate defense investments with continuing investments in fossil fuels.
In the past, we did not need to make a big deal of enough; it was built into our lives in many ways. Our language recognised it in phrases like ‘enough is as good as a feast’, and ‘waste not, want not’. But in modern life the sense of enough is badly underdeveloped; in affluent societies we have largely forgotten the wisdom captured in the old sayings.
Kadalie’s book is one more testament that a collective awakening is taking place to jettison the state and redefine global history from the bottom up.
For all this, direct democracy by itself can hardly promise social and ecological restoration. Democracy is not a matter of implementing formulaic procedures and structures; it is a matter of fostering bonds of mutual support and the sharing of communal power.
