Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
And yet the climate movement can and must grow stronger. In my view, the movement has yet to develop the full analysis of the problem it hopes to solve, and consequently its full, autonomous identity. I lay out what I believe to be the full analysis in my essay on the next steps of the climate movement, but I’ll recount some main points here.
Downwind manages the triple feat of being at once a rigorous piece of scholarship, a moving account of a dark and ongoing period in human history and an exquisitely accomplished first book.
Despite the warning signs — climate change, biodiversity loss, depleted soils and a shrinking supply of cheap energy — we continue to push along with an economy fueled by perpetual growth on a finite planet.We’ll need to reckon with this discrepancy.
What is needed is an approach called commoning – the idea that we all share responsibility. We are all are entitled to share natural resources– but only so far as use is made at a sustainable scale.
Seven years ago, two sustainable horticulture students took a field trip to an organic farm in the U.K. and were shocked to see cauliflowers left in the field due to their irregular shape or size. In reaction, they founded Food in Community, which aims to tackle food waste, food poverty, and social isolation in Totnes, England, by connecting producers with food banks and other distributors.
A public space is only as community-driven as its process. It follows that public spaces can only exist for everyone if the conversations in which they are envisioned include everyone.
I lay out the whole damning history in this book. When the next oil train disaster strikes, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
Millions of people, led by students, are signing up to walk out of their schools and jobs on September 20 and 27 to demand the world stop using fossil fuels—according to organizers.
In some places, people will subsist on animal husbandry or hunting and fishing, like the Maasai or Inuit; in others, tree crops will form the bulk of the diet. Densely concentrated farming will have to be used in some areas, where far more calories per acre will be needed than corn or wheat can provide.
The dilemma in these cases is really about the impracticality of making oil companies pay the trillions of dollars in damages caused by an act that the federal government essentially sanctions—the refinement, sale, and use oil and gas. You can also lump in coal.
We all need to transform our lifestyles as well.I believe any transformation process will consist of a “patchwork of solutions”; some will evolve in parallel, some mutually enhancing and some may also turn out not to be successful.
If we don’t transition away from growth economics and embrace our Arrival and the agenda of making ourselves at home, the world’s richer countries risk destroying what they already have, while shutting out development in poorer countries.
