Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Hannah Rollins In 2017 we reported on the work we’ve been doing with the Skills Network in south London to nurture less siloed communities in the context of the post-Brexit debate. Reactions to that article encouraged us to go one step further in deepening our learning with other groups trying to build collective forms of support and social justice. For most people divisive rhetoric isn’t new; they’ve been developing ways to counter it for years.
In Part 1 of this essay we surveyed the historical, economic, and cultural context for the upset victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. I did not mention Russian interference in that election. That’s because it is a subject that deserves to be treated on its own.
Simplistic versions of events can become entrenched, leaving us stuck in different silos. How can we become unstuck? How do we foster solidarity between people who could be allies for radical change but who view each other with suspicion and anger?
According to alarming weather data released this week, the Arctic just experienced its warmest winter on record. This is devastating news for polar bears, who are suffering as their sea-ice habitat melts from under their paws.
I am a farmer and that is where my world begins. What is an agriculture? I say it is a culture of cities, towns and villages, bridges, roads, canals, harbours – of trades’ people and the trades, which have been created by the specialised cultivation of fields. The industrial revolution was a revolution within agriculture – germinated by fossil fuels, so that today, nearly every culture on Earth is an agriculture.
Earth scientists have been making the case for years that the present level of human activity is not sustainable. We’re rapidly depleting resources, degrading ecosystems, altering the atmosphere, etc. What earth scientists are saying is generally not covered by the mainstream media, or is sugar coated, because the mainstream media is an outlet for the corporate perspective on the world.
It was a volatile week with oil prices climbing slowly on Monday and Tuesday, falling by over $2 a barrel on Wednesday and Thursday, and then rebounding to close down about 50 cents for the week on Friday.
For the majority of people on the earth, the ever-present question of survival is becoming increasingly de-linked from work and wages, as traditional sources of employment and industry collapse, downsize and automate. The class struggle has become not just the struggle for fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, but for freedom to define oneself apart from work, as the holder of multiple, creative, active networked identities and idle pursuits.
Sandra sees her family’s five acre Northern California farmland and the privilege to work it as the greatest source of wealth. For Sandra and her family, wealth comes in the form of fruit trees, lambing season, biodynamic farming, mushroom hunting, growing the food her family eats, hosting farm dinners, wearing the clothes she makes from the farm’s fiber, and giving back to the community.
Having said all that, it’s important to recognise that not all forms of lifestylist responses to social problems lack a structural critique. In fact there are radical forms of lifestylism that are firmly based on a critical analysis of social structures and how they can change.
Let’s begin by asking, is supply and demand truly able to manage the thresholds of resources which an environment can sustain, or to ensure that these resources are allocated sufficiently for the population living in that environment?
After swarms of earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing, Oklahoma has introduced tougher regulations than those used by any Canadian energy regulator. Last month the Oklahoma Corporation Commission ordered all drillers to deploy seismic arrays to detect ground motion within five kilometres of hydraulic fracturing operations over a 39,000-square-kilometre area in the centre of the state.
