Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We still cheer for Costa Rica when we take on mighty Brazil in the Copa America, but that is the joy of life, that we can indulge in partisan loyalties while knowing that we share in this larger family, this place in my heart, this hope of my great grandchildren: this one united Earth.
When the current IPCC report was first released, the UN Secretary General described it as a “code red for humanity,” and called for decisive action.
In her new book, Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back, Kate Aronoff describes how a new type of denialism is taking hold in the fossil fuel industry, a bid to ward off systemic change and protect the business model.
Maybe the most important lesson the present catastrophes can teach us is this: we are not powerless, and we must work together to save the Earth, our only home.
When advocates support NZ2050 they are tacitly supporting a dangerous agenda leading up to COP 26 in Glasgow that will codify an unsustainable pathway with continuing high fossil fuel use, dangerous “offset” trade-offs, and unacceptable risks of unstoppable climate warming.
As flooding events like those seen in Germany, Belgium, China and London become ever more common, policymakers must not see people just as potential victims of the climate crisis.
If I accept the seriousness of our predicament the question becomes, to use a familiar phrase, “How then shall we live?” What can people who care about life on Earth do to help at this point?
Intact old-growth forests remain our best natural defence against dangerous climate volatility because they have witnessed the greatest climatic variations overtime.
The prospect of getting back to normal, of being released from the current peculiar restricted condition is suddenly almost as overwhelming as was the initial lockdown.
“Diversity matters in climate and energy policy because for too long, concerns of vulnerable communities have been minimized and dismissed while white-male-dominated-fossil-fuel interests have profited from exploiting marginalized people. “
If we do have that revelation, there’s a chance that from the ashes of our current rapacious culture will be born an ecocentric, just, and restorative one.
Unless we recognize and recontextualize what we perceive as threat, our actions around climate change are going to be insufficient to prevent our demise as a species.
