Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What we have set in motion now, in the capitalocene, is likely beyond technological solutions, notwithstanding Promethean male fantasies of Mars colonies and planetary geological engineering. What we have set in motion is now, at least in part, beyond human control. That is, no re-engineering of social relationships and modes of production will reverse the biological and physical processes that have been unleashed.
It may come as a surprise to most, that my answer for the times is capitalism. What is capitalism? – it is the ethics of a society, whose aim is to maintain its capital – that is, spiritual, pleasurable and human assets, combined with that which maintains all those things – the undiminished vigour of life – in soil, sea, biomass and biodiversity.
What does a real Climate Emergency action plan look like? The answer is defined by the science − by the physics and chemistry. Some find it hard to imagine this is actually happening. Some think it seems ‘unrealistic’. But ask yourself about the alternative of risking the collapse of civilisation, the death of billions of people and the extinction of much of life on earth? Is that ‘realistic’? No economy on a dead planet.
But I do have a Plan B if George’s vision succeeds. In that eventuality, I’m going to slip the fence of his urban dystopia with my sheep, find a pleasant grassy spot somewhere, and make my living as a mammal and a farmer, surrounded by other wild creatures.
The world is on fire.
We need a global political movement in the broadest, not party-political sense. We cannot go on watching the rainforest burn, the German coal power plants produce CO2 and people as well as millions of animals die in Australia´s bushfires. We need a common and global reaction.
The point about education is that you put money in and get education out, not that you get rich. If you don’t put the right amount of money into the right things, you don’t get a good education out; you get wasted years, resentful and uneducated graduates, and an unprepared citizenry and workforce. How profitable is that?
For decades land use regulation across the U.S. has emphasized single-family houses on large lots. This approach has priced many people out of the quintessential American dream: homeownership. I
2020 is already promising to be a watershed political year for national climate change policy. A failed UN summit in Madrid, new reports updating and confirming climate science studies, student strikes, a continent on fire, and the prominence of climate in the presidential race will all be in evidence throughout the year. The confluence of so many reminders that climate change is both real and already upon us means there will never be a better opportunity to put the nation on a sustainable path forward.
The nonviolent strategist George Lakey argues that polarisation brings clarity and a volatility that makes positive change more possible. We have the polarisation and the disillusionment, and with perspective about how we got here and when we won, we can claim the possibilities in the decade to come.
I returned from my time there with some thoughts, some reflections, which I hope will prove useful in the battles that lie ahead, in the ongoing uphill push to wrestle our future back from insane men who feel it is OK to dash headlong into creating the conditions in which we no longer have one. And a future that could be so, so beautiful.
All agree we need to take action for climate change, but some environmentalists find the Extinction Rebellion’s tactics difficult to get behind. Environmental campaigners Chay Harwood and Marc Hudson provide the arguments for and against them.
The questions posed by the ecological crises – notably the climate emergency – are a series of provocations. These questions drive us back not only to intimate connections between our actions and the fate of the earth and our atmosphere, but to the intimate realm of our attention and capacity to care both individually and collectively.
