Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Rob Hopkins Now that these myths lie shattered, let us move on from here, the smell of fresh air in our nostrils, and build the future our dreams tell us is what we, and the world around us, deserves. And one that this time works for everyone, not just a select few…
Cuba’s preparation for COVID-19 began on January 1, 1959. On that day, over sixty years before the pandemic, Cuba laid the foundations for what would become the discovery of novel drugs, bringing patients to the island, and sending medical aid abroad.
In many respects the pandemic highlights long-standing food problems. If we are to avert not just this food crisis but the next one as well, deeper changes to the current system are needed. We must redesign the relationships between food producers, processors, retailers, and consumers so as to shorten supply chains and create more slack in the system.
In this episode, Rob, Asher, and Jason ask themselves, “If High Energy Modernity is on the way out, what will we miss most, and what will we be glad to see go?” And they ponder appropriate technology and whether the digging stick is primed for a comeback.
Though many of our ideas may seem “impossible” now, history shows us again and again that today’s “what ifs” can become tomorrow’s “what is” during a time of crisis – but only if we take them seriously enough and put in the work that’s necessary to bring them to fruition.
Now, here in a changed world with a broken-open heart, I look into the eyes of beauty and invite in the fullness of it all, the grief and the love, the fear and the hope, the pain and the joy.
The present mass voluntary isolation of Indigenous communities due to COVID-19 should lead those working with Indigenous communities to reevaluate and reprioritize. Reliable access to clean and renewable energy will be fundamental to the future quality of life for off-grid Indigenous people, and to the future of the ecosystems that they protect and we all depend upon.
Now is a great time to think ahead a little further than tonight’s meal, plan to leave something on the shelf for others, and support our local farmers. I’m making the trip to my favorite pastured farm tomorrow.
To state unequivocally, “These are revolutionary times!” is to recognize that the world is changing in ways that we would not necessarily choose; that it will change even if it goes against what we would otherwise choose; and that we can no longer choose to resist it.
Maybe the pandemic, along with the resulting temporary shuttering of travel and commerce, is an opportunity to rethink and reboot both our individual lives and our collective ways of being on this precious planet. That would make this Earth Day a truly meaningful occasion.
It is astonishing that so little of the food debate is enlightened by a proper understanding what the main driver of the food system is: Markets or even more precisely, capitalist markets (today, one can hardly find a market that is not capitalist).
I believe that higher education would better serve students in particular and all humans in general if our teaching and research methods stop perpetuating the cultural paradigm that brought us to the brink of extinction and start encouraging students to imagine and create alternatives to it.
