Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Around the world, 12.7 gigawatts (GW) of new coal capacity has been proposed so far in 2019 – less than 3GW above the amount that has retired (10GW). These trends mean the global coal fleet will soon decline, because only a third of proposed capacity has actually been developed since 2010.
There is ample evidence that some level of cotton production could fit into an ecologically sensitive farming system, yet the future of this crop in our climate relies on re-building organic matter, carbon levels, and dynamic microbial communities in the soil where the cotton is grown.
Among the range of intelligent and possible responses to impending conditions is to take direct action to increase your household and community food security. There are hundreds of ways to do that, including directly supporting your local farms, farmers markets, food coops, food hubs, community gardens, and so forth.
New entities are creating toolkits and models for start-up platform cooperatives to more easily tackle the existing legal, financial and technical barriers to entry in the digital economy.
There are many signs that in our use of electronic technology we’ve reached the point of damage in the physical realm. I contend that we are reaching that point in the intellectual realm, too – when to know something means to be able to type, click, skim, and forget.
When we discard a plastic bag, an electronic device encased in plastic, a plastic pen emptied of its ink or any of the myriad plastic objects which populate our lives, we usually say we are throwing the object “away.”
I put “away” in quotes because if there were ever any piece of evidence to convince us that there is no “away,” it is the discovery of tiny particles of plastic in the Arctic ice, deep oceans and high mountains.
Twenty-two states and seven cities sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan for power plants. The lawsuit alleges that the so-called Affordable Clean Energy rule would accelerate the impacts of the climate crisis and impose health and safety risks on Americans.
Democratic socialism is, I think, at least potentially compatible with, and perhaps even capable of drawing strength from, the small towns and churches of U.S. society.
Iceland’s economy had thrived on speculative finance but, after the meltdown, rather than making the public pay for the crisis, as the Nobel economist Paul Krugman points out, Iceland ‘let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net’ and instead of placating financial markets, ‘imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to manoeuvre.’
I believe it’s time now for a global “soilshot” to heal the land. Rebuilding healthy fertile soil on the world’s agricultural lands would require fundamental changes to agriculture, and a new agricultural philosophy.
While the common tendency with ecological grief, as with most forms of pain, is to turn away in an effort to protect ourselves, if we understand grief and love as interwoven, then to turn away from grief is to turn away from love, to close and harden our hearts.
We don’t view mindfulness as a panacea that will cure the world’s ills. But socially-engaged mindfulness and mindful social action can contribute to addressing our individual and collective challenges.
