Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
But why should we care about what happens to some sheep farmers in a remote corner of Britain, far from the front lines of catchier environmental stories like the disappearing Amazon rainforests, China’s sinking coastal cities, or rampant poaching to feed the illicit ivory trade?
What would our food system look like if the impacts of production on the environment and on public health were taken into account? At present the polluter doesn’t pay, and those producing food sustainably are not rewarded for positive outcomes.
This seems to be a pivotal moment in contemporary struggles over how nature is best valued, managed and allocated.
The more we expand our populations and built space over the landscape, the less the biosphere can offer its free services to the human economy.
A while back I had considered free energy as it exists in modern industrial society. Today I want to consider free services provided by nature, but that are ignored for what they are, especially in the context of a long-running trend that is finally getting notice in the tech-centric media: the tension between automation and employment. Specifically, I’ve been trying to understand what these trends say about how we conceive of our society and the ecosystem around it.
