Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
My main take-away from the 2018 IPCC report is that there may still be time, but only if we can bring about a deep reimagining of what the world could be and how it might work. As Daniel Aldana Cohen put it, “we are only doomed if we do nothing”.
In principle, churches and congregations are hubs where people gather organically. Being places where people gather organically, faith communities are existing hubs where folks can be more naturally inspired to collaborate toward bigger goals that escape the short reach of individuals.
But what if the dual challenges facing renewables and negative emissions could be tackled together? In a recent paper, published in Earth’s Future, we find that there is considerable potential for combining a renewables-reliant electricity system with Direct Air Capture.
The path to meaning – and real sustainability – is the opposite; it is through recoupling with nature. Instead of denying that we are an integral part of nature in which we swim, live, mate, laugh, cry and die, we need to embrace that fact.
The crisis in democracy is much discussed these days, but almost entirely in political terms that ignore its deeper causes.
How would you describe the process in which a small country builds a 35,000 kilometer network of fully separated bike infrastructure – and traffic-calms 75 per cent of their urban streets to a speeds of 30 km/h (19 mph) or less?
A local economy by nature is more creative because we’re looking to see what does my community need? What does my place want to be? And move towards that.
The monetary system we have is a fundamental cause of our problems, and setting up new systems is crucial in the development of alternative economies. However some popular initiatives are sadly mistaken and can have few if any beneficial effects. The goal must be to set up a system that enables previously idle people and resources to begin producing necessities for the locality. This is easily done.
My feeling on the contrary is that only by properly inhabiting that romance and re-enchanting the relationship between people and land as a precious food-giving resource will the problems George identifies be solvable.
Thus, we should consider whether the superintelligent AI future some fear might already in action, but at perhaps a slower and more subtle pace than some pontificate might happen after “the singularity” when AI becomes more capable than humans.
What the death of ancient trees are now telling us about climate change, concludes Beresford-Kroeger, is that we must “make a daisy chain of people willing to improve our lot.”
But we can—we really can imagine and live with fewer “conveniences”—and even like it. At the risk of being an outlier today, I’ll continue to take the long way, the inconvenient way, for you, Julia—and for your generation.
