Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Bart Hawkins Kreps Why is car culture so dominant in North American life? Is it a matter of personal preference, or is it the result of extensive advertising?Those are important factors – but University of Iowa law professor Gregory H. Shill says that auto dominance has also been cemented by a myriad of laws that favour drivers and discriminate against non-drivers.
In the time of the Seventh Fire, the Anishinaabe were told that we will have a choice between two paths: one well worn, but scorched; and a second that’s not well worn, but green. We are instructed to make a choice.
Instead of free market capitalism versus the climate, we have fossil fuel welfare versus the climate. And if we reinvested that fossil fuel welfare into social and ecological welfare, we could create a much more socially and ecologically prosperous future.
I have become more certain that the way through despair involves experiencing oneself as part of a greater whole and surrendering to the mystery of creation. But now the climate crisis invites us to engage with the mystery of life with fresh eyes and open hearts.
The UK government only has 12-18 months left to raise its game on climate policy, or risk “embarrassment” as the likely host of the COP26 UN summit late next year.
This frankness and the positioning of human need delivery in the context of a planet burning up before our eyes make this rich book required reading for anyone who wants to break out of siloed thinking, who wants to understand the enormity of the task at hand, and who wants to be reminded of what the purpose of the economy should ultimately be.
To be healthy creates the illusion that health is perennial—a guarantee—while to be disabled is to acknowledge and work within limits. To acknowledge the limits of our bodies helps us better see the planet in peril. To acknowledge illness is to face reality, and then to fight like hell to be made well.
The future is bright for wind and renewables just about everywhere. Now it’s a matter of people, and communities, recognizing and acting on that potential.
The rapid emergence of large-scale school climate strikes shows how well understood the issue now is. But this level of energy and participation will be sustained only if we achieve some real emissions-cutting victories quite soon.
How have we allowed the public debate to conflate 100% plant-based diets with saving the planet? And in so doing, how on earth has the humble cow come to have taken 90% of the flak for global warming?
Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement last month that a Labour government would replace social mobility with social justice as a policy benchmark raised more than a few eyebrows. It goes against received wisdom and bipartisan consensus that social mobility is a good thing.
Filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the niece of John F. Kennedy, and Aileen Getty, granddaughter of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, are among numerous prominent founding members of a Climate Emergency Fund that will send everything from cash to bullhorns and other supplies to grass-roots activists gaining momentum across the country and around the globe.
