Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Perhaps from living in a non-disaster-affected context for a while; perhaps from taking systematic action to reduce my emissions, so an action-oriented perspective has come out naturally; or perhaps, simply from talking more about it, and connecting back into local loves. Good conversation needs laughter too.
What I’m trying to say is, wealth and power are incredibly tightly concentrated and to look at a grossly unequal system and say every person has equal responsibility to fix the mess we’re in just doesn’t make any sense. We all have some power and some responsibility, but some have much more than others.
A recent conversation with a fundamentalist Christian has left me wondering why it seems we fail to recognize the dangers of extremism? Christians who deny the reality of climate change, who believe that humans have a God-given right to exploit the earth no matter the consequences pose a danger to society. I think it’s time we talk about that.
This installment of the Here Come the (Trump) Judges series discusses how federal trial and appellate court judges—including the justices of the Supreme Court (SCOTUS)—go about making sense of enacted laws when confusion and conflicts arise.
Recently, I spoke with John Marion, the executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, who, since 2008, has led the organization. He has successfully spearheaded numerous pieces of democracy reform through the legislature during his Common Cause tenure, including online voter registration, a law strengthening the state’s Ethics Commission, and more recently, automatic voter registration and risk-limiting post-election audits.
In our time of unprecedented interdependence and existential risk, we face a common predicament and an uncertain destiny. As the global quandary deepens and awareness spreads, the conviction that root-and-branch social change is needed to circumvent perils and seize opportunities draws more and more of us.
The goal of the new economy is to meet the needs of all human beings while operating within ecological limits. It seeks to maximize the well-being of all species, human and other. Its proponents believe that economics is embedded in, and dependent on, the Earth’s ecosystems.
There is only one pathway to avert the crisis humanity is heading toward, and it is to deeply feel the connection with the ecosystem we are a part of. But understand, this is not an ecological argument, this is not about the climate or other environmental systems.
When the average person thinks about technology, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t a family dog or cat. Nor would one likely consider a flock of chickens, a packet of seeds or a sack of potatoes to be examples of technology. But technology thinker Dmitry Orlov, in his book Shrinking the Technosphere, argues that that’s exactly what they are.
There is a growing realization that despite what the champions of progress tell us, we can’t just grow and invent our way to plenty, and we can’t continue to ignore the disasters we’re inflicting on those who already suffer the most from our unrelenting demands on nature. And maybe this is not enough, but it is enough to keep trying.
Maddy’s new book Fertile Edges — Regenerating land, culture and hope is a testimony to her doing just this in an eloquent, insightful and deeply caring way. The anthology of editorials of 25 years of Permaculture Magazine is the kind of book you can leave on the breakfast table and treat youself to a daily dose of inspiration one editorial at a time.
What matters is the effort to move beyond mere resistance and onto a more substantive engagement with rebuilding – to ask what comes next, and to harness the current disenchantment and loss of faith in a more productive manner. It is said that moments of crisis are also moments of opportunity. There is little doubt that we face a crisis of governance at the moment; this is also a chance to design a new and improved government.
