Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
David Bollier I have come to realize that language is an indispensable portal into the deeper mysteries of the commons. The words we use – to name aspects of nature, to evoke feelings associated with each other and shared wealth, to express ourselves in sly, subtle or playful ways – our words themselves are bridges to the natural world. They mysteriously makes it more real or at least more socially legible.
For two months in 2012, longtime Iola, Kansas, resident Mary Ross trudged through the sweltering heat, waving gnats from her view as she walked door to door with a petition. It was the hottest summer since moving there with her family about 30 years ago, but Ross was determined to gather signatures requesting a grocery store be established in the small rural town of fewer than 6,000 people.
As captains of the fossil fuel industries and their lobbyists prepare to take over the White House – appointed by a President elected by a minority, claiming to represent the people on an anti-elite ticket yet possessing by far the highest cumulative wealth of any cabinet ever – they will face evidence breaking out all around them of a fast-moving global energy transition threatening to strand the fossil fuels they seek to boost.
Before there was indigenous resistance at Standing Rock, there was Black Lives Matter (and before that, Occupy, and before that the Zapatistas, and before that, May ‘68… and at the bottom of everything, there’s a turtle standing on an island).
For the last two weeks I have switched off the computer, and tried to look back at this tumultuous year from the perspective of where I live, a small lane in East Anglia on the edge of England. Most of my working and social life is done via this machine, so when I go offline the world and its headlines vanish. The physical place comes closer, and with it a depth of perception that all the buzzy discussion about politics and celebrity, about money, about the end of globalisation, never allow in. You get a sense of the mood of the times. One thing is clear: you can’t skip the fall, no matter how much you try.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news.
The two statements – Ezra Silk of the Climate Mobilization’s 100-plus page Victory Plan and Bill McKibben’s essay “A World at War” – have led to a healthy and vigorous debate about these ideas and their potential to play a role in the US response to the greatest global challenge of the 21st century.
Optimists trade on hope, and activists on visions. It seems good then to end a year which lacked both with this hopeful vision of the future, rooted in a visionary dream from the past.
A few days from now, 2016 will have passed into the history books. I know a fair number of people who won’t mourn its departure, but it’s pretty much a given that the New Year celebrations here in the United States, at least, will demonstrate a marked shortage of enthusiasm for the arrival of 2017.
It’s 2016 and the weight of American corporate interests has come to the Missouri River, the Mother River. This time, instead of the Seventh Cavalry or the Indian police dispatched to assassinate Sitting Bull, it is Enbridge and Dakota Access Pipeline.
Ever the optimist, I thought it would be good to end the year on a hopeful note, so here’s my best shot at that.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news.
