Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Maybe the best thing we can do in the wake of a disaster is to cultivate closely knit, organized, and empowered communities that are more resilient during catastrophes and better able to demand the resources they need to not only survive those acute disasters, but to rebuild on a more just and sustainable basis.
It’s as if, as environmental humanities scholar Anthony Galluzzo posted recently, humanity, not tech is—ha—the engine of history. Again, it’ll be people, not science alone, environmental scientist Erle Ellis wrote in another Times op-ed, who’ll save us from ecological collapse.
The latest addition to President Trump’s reelection campaign’s online store is a 10-pack of plastic straws each emblazoned with “Trump.” The listing features a photo of an unwrapped, solitary red straw, which Trump supporters might want to purchase, it suggests, because “liberal paper straws don’t work.”
let’s fight for what’s right not because we will win (and we’ll want to) but because it’s just what we do. Let us let this be okay. I am not hopeless. I am only without the hopes I had.
We have to draw on each other’s brilliance, get together, set aside our egos, listen with our hearts, and imagine something that’s worth getting up for in the morning.
The story warns that by not listening to Mis Misa’s song, the song will fade. Mis Misa will depart, “and the Earth and all of the societies upon Earth will be out of balance, and the life therein vulnerable to extinction.”
Interview with the late Rhoda Gilman, one of the early leaders of the Green movement. She talks about the origins of the Greens and Adam Smith’s vision of capitalism.
“If we were living in Adam Smith’s world, we wouldn’t be doing badly at all; the Greens would be right at home.”
Our Achilles Heel as a species may have come at a fork along our evolutionary biology pathway many millions of years ago. Relatively few others of our fellow creatures decided to follow our lead, and for good reason. We decided to sweat.
It’s telling that our four Uncertain Future Forum authors—though asked broadly about how to respond to collapse—each ended up with the same focus: tending to and working at the individual and community scales.
Do what you can and as much as you can, even as you factor in your own limits.. Those of us who are awake must find our way to work on what has been unleashed. What we choose to do must become effective participation in the longest relay race we’ve ever been forced to run. Don’t drop the baton, and do pass it on.
Localization means getting out of the highly unstable and exploitative bubbles of speculation and debt, and back to the real economy – our interface with other people and the natural world.
The climate movement has excelled at resistance but is missing a crucial, essential element: a focus on repair. It is clear about what it is against, but largely mum on a restoration project equal to the scale of climate change damage.
