Climate Politics/Capitol Light (47)
The world is not doing well in its efforts to meet the existing voluntary goals of the Paris climate accord—targets that collectively were known to be inadequate from the day the accord first came into force.
The world is not doing well in its efforts to meet the existing voluntary goals of the Paris climate accord—targets that collectively were known to be inadequate from the day the accord first came into force.
Whether the Sanders campaign seizes this opportunity, or an alternate framework for collective action arises, a mass movement response to the coronavirus pandemic cannot come too soon. For our own sake, and that of our society as a whole, let us help the drive toward solidarity emerge.
Yet, as I said, I am not feeling that helpless form of resignation. You shouldn’t either. And if you’re looking for some inspiration and have some free time in quarantine, pick up a book I hadn’t read in 2008 called A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. In it, she details the astounding things people do to help each other in times of extreme distress.
This condition of wondering is still absolutely intact in us. It is. Amongst the loaded shopping trolleys of Walmart and Tesco, the fluorescent tech hubs, flicker-screens and finger-beckoning apps, it’s still there. This raw, imaginative, holy thing.
There’s an audacity to it, but it’s what we’ve always done.
How people see humanity’s future may not simply reflect what they expect the future might hold. Their views involve complex and subtle relationships between expected future conditions, contemporary social realities and personal states of mind. Future visions can both reflect and reinforce social conditions and personal attributes.
Large-scale and dramatic rearrangements of our current system worldwide and in the United States are likely to come in the wake of the season of death that is upon us—and in the wake of the economic carnage that results from the breakdown of a system so vulnerable that a tiny virus could topple it at its base.
An ecosocial modest proposal by cartoonist Miguel Brieva from the coronavirus pandemic. How about if we take advantage of such a complex and extraordinary situation to draw some valuable conclusions?
Facts about the COVID-19 pandemic and what you can do. Sources for more information.
For the next few weeks, many of us here in Ireland – and possibly where you are — will feel like we are in a permanent state of house arrest, working from home and looking after children kept home from school. Most of us are, rightly, staying away from crowds of people and making food at home, so most of us need to stock up on the basics durable foods that will keep over time – beans, lentils, rice, flour, salt, sugar and other staples.
If Italy is an example, it may be that in case of a truly serious climate emergency, governments may finally decide to react and do something serious. At the same time, the same people who are now thundering against “climate alarmism” would fall in line and ask for national unity against the climate threat.
We need to be thinking of ways to keep civic connections alive for the next while. The pandemic will not last indefinitely: the virus itself may be here for good, but one way or another it and humanity will negotiate some sort of biological accommodation… Our urgent task is to keep our communities healthy and resilient in the interim.
This specific Calenda was dedicated to the protection of the guardians of native corn, to defenders of ecological diversity, and to those protecting indigenous lands. The Calenda, a Native Corn Colloquium, and an indigenous corn performance by the All Species Project and the Mermejita Circus of Mazunte, Oaxaca, was a collaborative effort of seed and climate activists in February of 2020.