By Karen Greenberg, TomDispatch
Perhaps instead of hurling insults at President Trump’s incompetence and the seeming disarray of his presidency, it might be worth taking a step back and asking ourselves whether there is indeed a larger goal in mind: namely, a slow, patient, incremental dismantling of democracy, beginning with its most precious words.
By Tegan Tallulah, The Climate Lemon
Looking into this has made me even more convinced that tackling global poverty has to be done in tandem with tackling climate change. They are intricately connected. I think it’s important that we remember climate change is a historical injustice: the poorest countries suffer the worst impacts yet have done least to cause it and have the least capacity to address it.
By Tim Crownshaw, Economics for the Anthropocene
Insisting on more and shaping the world to suit our designs is a Faustian bargain. What we face is not so much a problem to be solved, but a crisis of culture stemming from the hidden conflict between Lotka’s principle and the boundaries of a finite world.
By John Foran, Ethan Jones, Resilience.org
So I’m in favor of all the above, there’s no one model to solve this problem, but altogether I think many pin pricks can draw blood, to use a violent metaphor which I don’t uphold strategically. The mosquitos can win.
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
So…what path to take? The old familiar mainstream, the marginal, or the radically new? Hell, I’m opting for all of the above. I think we need to revitalise the best of the old traditions of right and left, while bringing in the contributions of more marginal political positions from the past – and articulating them all afresh in the completely novel historical circumstances we face.
By Daniel Christian Wahl, Medium
Life actively contributed to the creation and maintenance of conditions on Earth that are favourable for higher organisms. In the words of Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimcry Institute: “Life creates conditions conducive to life.” Over the course of the last forty years James Lovelock’s hypothesis has matured into a new field of scientific investigation that is referred to as Gaia theory or Earth Systems Science.
By Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence
In short, the biggest inhibitor to effective action in the face of the current convergence of crises is a fundamental lack of collective intelligence on the part of the human species as a whole.
By Rob Hopkins, Vanessa Andreotti, Rob Hopkins blog
So the sense of worthlessness, and the fear of worthlessness, of pointlessness, of meaninglessness, tends to drive a lot of our efforts. But if we remove that fear, That’s my ‘if’ question: if we manage to remove that fear, of pointlessness, worthlessness, and meaninglessness, what would be possible for us to do?
By Patrick Noble, Feasta
All I’ll need of my current wage will be a tithe. We’ll keep the tithe and refuse the rest. We’ll keep just a living, breathing Earth and refuse the strata of those many millions of sequestered and fossilised years. “Keep the tithe and refuse the rest!” could prove a populist slogan, or the refrain to a popular song.
By Mason Herson-Ford, Aaron Vansintjan, Jason Geils, Katie Horvath, Uneven Earth
Every city has its graveyard of nonprofits, cooperatives, social clubs, and community centers. Without a strategic vision, local projects cannot possibly amount to a systemic alternative to capitalism.