Review: Boys and Oil by Taylor Brorby
Above all, Boys and Oil is a glorious tour de force of narrative nonfiction: a memoir that reads like the best kind of novel, with a gripping story and an astonishing sense of place, time and character.
Above all, Boys and Oil is a glorious tour de force of narrative nonfiction: a memoir that reads like the best kind of novel, with a gripping story and an astonishing sense of place, time and character.
At the most human level, reconnecting people around the growing of their own food may prove to be among our most effective means of healing our widespread sense of disconnection from nature and community.
One thing we know for certain about fossil fuels is that they are a finite resource on this planet—slowly developed in select locations over hundreds of millions of years and being used about a million times faster than the rate of production.
Whether it’s carried out by a local movement such as the L.A. Bus Riders Union or continent-spanning drives like the Native campaigns against Big Oil and Gas, no single effort can snuff out fossil fuel extraction and consumption on its own. The mulitplication of such efforts is therefore essential.
We must eat. But the land sacrifices so that we may live; the land ethic asks that we live in ways that show we are responsible citizens of the land community; and the law of reciprocity asks what we are giving back in return for that gift of life.
So the truth is this: Civilization largely has used fossil fuels to destroy robust natural ecosystems and to replace them with artificial and fragile ones.
The Green Road has seen the global and the local Ukrainian ecovillage and permaculture communities involved in ongoing emergency support for people fleeing the war.
It is time for the United Nations and its various agencies to recognize that its top-down organizational structure is not suited to address our myriad ecological crises, and rather use its influence to advocate for, and allocate its resources to support, land custodianship for the millions of indigenous communities keeping alive the knowledge of how to live within the bounty of what our mother Earth provides.
To effect real change you have to do something to create those changes. Change is work, not theatre. If you want tangible benefits, you have to craft something more tangible than a message.
I have taken to heart the insight that possibly, the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis; that we see this thing we call ‘the climate’ through a window whose frame is itself the product of our toxic culture.
I fear it will be too little and too late in the face of larger forces, but this is part of my answer to those I was debating yesterday who criticize Miranda Whelehan and Just Stop Oil for having no vision for a post-oil world. The part of the vision that they’re helping to supply is a new non-state politics of care. And that’s important.
The Indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego were once relegated to historical oblivion. Now, archaeologists are helping them pursue deeper stories about their ancestors.