Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Charlotte Du Cann The minute there’s an orthodoxy of language and an orthodoxy of thought, which we all feel we have to stay within otherwise we’re going to get punished, or cancelled, then that’s the end of expression, that’s the end of any attempt to explore outside the boundaries. It’s what every orthodoxy from fascism to communism to theocracy tries to impose on the people to purify the culture, by forcing out anyone who thinks or speaks incorrectly.
Oil spills, hazardous waste, and ship groundings hex America’s oceans and rivers every year. Pollution drives people away from beaches, leaving them silent as a boneyard. NOAA looks for ways to bring waterways back to life. To do this, NOAA and our partners often look for opportunities to remove or bypass barriers for fish passage such as dams, faulty culverts, or grates.
This is the sordid tale of six dammed rivers, where pollution settlements provided the opportunity for waters across America to rise from the grave.
The national budget in any country is one of the key instruments a government can use to fight inequality and bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. For this reason, Fight Inequality Alliance Zambia has been carrying out a People’s Budget campaign in the last couple of months to advocate for a more equal budget that represents the needs of the majority poor and not the elite.
But nothing other than dramatic societal transformation will be sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change for the vast majority of the world’s population – and eventually, everyone. It may sound daunting, but rejecting the ecologically harmful assumptions on which our culture is currently built offers us a unique chance to build a healthier and fairer world.
Given that XR’s recent Autumn action did not produce the same level of success and change as the previous actions, we now have fairly clear empirical evidence that XR’s present strategy may be reaching its ‘peak’. If it is to continue to scale as a movement, this needs to be confronted head-on. XR now has the opportunity to review and enhance its strategy, and I offer this critical appraisal in that spirit as a humble contribution to augment such efforts.
In this episode of The Response, we examine the events that led up to the Grenfell Tower fire and learn how the community has responded through the voices of survivors, their families, and others who were impacted.
But Lino did foresee the resilience, the determination, and the imagination of the Kañari people. He knew that, given the opportunity, they could solve the problems. That is what they are doing through TUCAYTA, the bilingual/bicultural education, the Savings and Loan Cooperative, the community cooperatives, and through Mushuk Yuyay, the association of seed and nutritious food producers.
Three years in a row feels like – well, it starts to feel like the new, and impossible, normal. That’s what the local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, implied this morning when, in the middle of its account of the inferno, it included the following sentence: the fires had “intensified fears that parts of California had become almost too dangerous to inhabit”.
What I’ve learned is in these band hunter gatherer cultures, children play. They are free to play all day long. There’s no such thing as anything like school. There’s no sense that it’s the adults job to educate children. Children learn on their own and they learn in play. They learn by watching, observing, and incorporating what they see in to their play. That’s how children are designed to grow up.
Greta Thunberg’s tour of North America continues this week with a visit to Los Angeles to participate in the Youth Climate Los Angeles event at City Hall on Friday, Nov. 1. If you’re wondering why her attention has come to California, which has an image as being one of the most progressive and greenest states in the US, you might be surprised to learn that Los Angeles actually has the largest urban oil field in the nation.
The Klamath is a river in peril, plagued by dangerously poor water quality and collapsing salmon populations. That could start to change as early as 2022, when four dams are likely come down on the river — the biggest dam-removal and river-restoration project in history. Dam removal is expected to help solve many, but not all, of the river’s challenges, and understanding the change that does happen is crucial to planning the next steps for improving the river’s health.
The commons are nothing new. Historically citizens always came together to pool resources and manage them collectively and autonomously. It is the responsibility of cities and states to identify, connect and support them. Today the commons appear as a choice of society in a world at the end of its lifespan.
