Ontology as a Hidden Driver of Politics
Today’s mainstream political and economic discourses are increasingly sterile and unfit in large part because they are based on incorrect assumptions about the nature of being.
Today’s mainstream political and economic discourses are increasingly sterile and unfit in large part because they are based on incorrect assumptions about the nature of being.
What form should reparations take? How much should they be? Who should pay them? Who should receive them? How should that transfer be made? What will happen if this is done? Would it really help anyone?
People of color and low-income communities have long gathered ingredients for meals, and foraging can help fill in the gaps in places where historic redlining has had lasting effects on supermarket options. In fact, some wild and feral foods can provide greater nutritional benefits than produce bought in stores.
If you’re a ‘Beaver Nut’ and realise earnestly just how critical these creatures are to the future well-being of the earth, with a pivotal role in the creation of abundant biodiversity, water provision, purification, flood and drought alleviation, you will pursue beaver advocacy with the kind of tedious zeal generally restricted to deluded members of obscure religious cults.
Even as communities begin picking themselves up after the devastation, West Coast climate activists are experimenting with what an effective response to such crises looks like.
I have the feeling that we are on the threshold of a transition to more sustainable practice which, if it could be made economically viable, could quite quickly become mainstream.
But Shell and BP ― the second- and fourth-largest oil companies by revenue last year ― are still active members of at least eight trade organisations lobbying against climate measures in the United States and Australia that were not disclosed in the public reviews, an Unearthed and HuffPost investigation has found.
The climate clock is unforgiving. Multiple overlapping crises – political, ecological, economic, pandemic – are already upon us. We lost the election, we have lost the party leadership, but we have not yet lost the chance to build our movement.
In 2012, hardly anyone had heard of fossil fuel divestment. Today, more than a thousand institutions with more than $14 trillion between them have divested in one form or another. The impossible became conceivable, then inevitable. Change can and does happen, with sustained effort.
Across Africa, a network of Earth Jurisprudence Practitioners is accompanying traditional and indigenous communities in the revival and enhancement of their Earth-centred customary governance systems.
Growth, in this new story, means soils, biodiversity and watersheds getting healthier, and communities more resilient.
The signals of transformation I talk about are not concepts, and they are not the fruits of a vivid imagination. They are happening now.
Jane Davidson is the author of #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country, the story of why Wales was the first country in the world to introduce legislation to protect future generations. Jane shares her thoughts on “What could possibly go right?”