Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Many big-city dwellers appear to be seeking refuge in less crowded towns and rural landscapes. The wealthy, at least, are seeking “bugout” homes away from major cities as places to ride out the pandemic, the economic downturn and the civil unrest that are gripping the world.
If lesson one of coronavirus is that things can change, and lesson two is that they easily slip back again, then lesson three must be about the importance of presenting images of the future that motivate people to imagine change.
On June 23rd, 25 Transition leaders from across the country met virtually to share and explore strategies for bridging community resilience and social justice. Our conversation focused on strategies that align with Transition’s approach of systemic–yet localized–solutions, and fall into two main categories: healing the damage of systemic racism and building equitable new systems.
One of our slogans which we diggers promote is ‘reclaim and extend the commons!’ Yet we have been as surprised as anybody else that this extension and reclamation of the commons should take this form of mass community mutual aid.
The awareness of life is based on language, a huge puzzle of meanings that are entangled, and that form a lens through which we perceive the past, the present, the future and the invisible. Here, at the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, along the Xingu River and its main tributary, the Iriri, traces of a missing population are found.
We argue for an alternative approach to conservation policy moving forward, one that seeks to move beyond both protected areas and economic valuation. Our proposal is less concerned with the targets specified by the current post-2020 framework, and more focused on the means and processes by which these are achieved.
Through the tangible, day-to-day ways people survive, have survived and will continue to survive, we can glimpse at who we really are — open, vulnerable, caring, brave, dedicated, compassionate and socially responsible people acting with, and through our collective fear.
When it comes to the key decisions that will shape human lives in the post-pandemic world, this new generation of activists will continue to pressure decision-makers into giving them a future worth fighting for.
Gradually, and then suddenly. That’s how exponential growth can ruin your day, undo your family, evaporate your economy, destroy your climate, crush an empire and destabilize a planet.
If there is one lesson all of us should have learnt during the Covid-19 crisis, it is about how to separate the ‘essential’ from the ‘non-essential’.
My milk package, the electric cars, agriculture land use and the wood saving stoves are all examples showing why overall reduction in resources use or emissions (absolute decoupling) through substitution and efficiency is a pipe dream in a growth economy.
The eventual outcome of this great implosion is up for grabs. Will we overcome denial and despair; kick our addiction to petroleum; and pull together to break the grip of corporate power over our lives?
