Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kathleen Dean Moore For decades, fossil fuel propagandists have tried to weasel out of responsibility for climate change by blaming their customers, ordinary people like Debbie and Ernesto. The hurricane names reinforce that narrative. Let’s change it.
Rich countries have exported climate breakdown through extractive industries, creating a “carbon colonialism.”
If we expect the next generation to do better than the present one at protecting our precious blue marble, however, we have an obligation to help them as much as possible.Â
Modernity has no choice but to end, although it seems very likely to me that humans will survive the trauma and come out the other side experimenting with new (and/or old) ways of living, necessarily in closer connection with local ecological realities.
Most big-think essays like this end on a note of inspiration and hope. For once, I’ll resist the temptation to go that route. Can we humans make ourselves useful to the rest of life? It’s an open question.
Wetland restoration and conservation, in combination with agricultural stakeholder best management practices, is a promising model for success.
A just and fair Local Power Plan would disperse power to those who use it and produce it, not those who profit from it.
You see, as we foolishly escaped our ecological context, we recklessly re-fashioned the world so that we are destroying the ecological context crucial to millions of other species—including ourselves, eventually.
I want my garden to be useful. And that means it should produce a harvest that I can use. It also means it should provide home and shelter to as many other beings as possible.
Natural principles are a core part of regenerative practices. They are seen in permaculture, biomimicry, biophilic design, systems-thinking, regenerative leadership, regenerative economics, ancient and indigenous wisdom.
The whole tapestry of Black Wall Street, with all its complexities, deserves the spotlight, even as the fight for concrete compensation in the form of reparations continues.
For all its bleakness, The Burning World offers a more hopeful outlook on humanity’s future than does The Drowned World. While the latter leaves no room for hope that human extinction can be averted, the former hints at the possibility of recovery and renewal for humanity.
