Category Archives: Ecological Breakdown and Response

Ecological Breakdown and Response

Will we collapse like Easter Island?

Published by:

By Zeeshan Hasan

The spectacular statues of Easter Island, a sparsely populated Pacific isle which is seemingly so desolate that there are not even any large trees on it, have been a mystery for centuries. How could an island of a few thousand people produce hundreds of such statues, the largest of which are 33 feet tall and weigh 82 tons? This question inspired Erich Von Daniken, a best-selling author of the 1970s, to speculate that the statues were erected by aliens from outer space. The real story of the statues and the people who carved them are the subject of the first chapter of Jared Diamond’s book, ‘Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Survive’. Diamond is professor of Geography at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of several award-winning books on the impact of the physical world on human history. His Easter Island history turns out to have profound environmental lessons for us even today.

Diamond points out that archaeologists have proved that Easter Island was once very different from today; before being colonised by people, it was covered with forest typical of other sub-tropical Pacific islands. Once settled by explorers who arrived by canoe from other islands, it seemed to present itself as a hospitable place, and the human population expanded rapidly. Incidentally, this solves the mystery of the statues; a population several times bigger could more reasonably be expected to erect such monuments. However, unknown to the new settlers, the soil of Easter Island was much less fertile than that of other islands that they had lived on. This infertility manifested itself in slower tree growth. Thus when the Easter Islanders cut down trees for firewood, houses and deep-sea canoes, they did this at a rate which may have been sustainable on other islands that their ancestors had lived on; but on Easter Island it brought disaster. As the population grew, people cut down more trees for firewood and canoes. Canoes were necessary as dolphin-hunting provided a large portion of the animal protein in the diet (along with wild birds and other small animals from the forest). But once the forest cover was removed, the exposed land eroded quickly in the rain and wind. Crop yields decreased, and the islanders’ solution was apparently to cut down more trees to plant more crops and build more canoes for dolphin-hunting. As a result, within a few centuries the island was completely deforested. Without trees, there were no more wild birds or animals to hunt, except rats. With no more wood available for canoes, dolphin meat was also no longer available. The islanders descended into famine, war and cannibalism (unfortunately, human meat was one of few remaining sources of animal protein). Two-thirds of the population perished in this terrible manner.

Diamond describes other societies that collapsed primarily due to environmental difficulties, including several more Pacific islands, the Norse colony in Greenland, the native Anasazi culture of the southwestern US, the central American Maya civilisation and modern Rwanda. He also presents the case of Japan, which came close to such a fate but managed to avoid it thanks to intelligent decisions and good leadership.

There is a lesson for us here: in these times of global warming, it may be comforting to believe that our leaders can be trusted to sort everything out, and that humanity would never allow itself to be destroyed. But such a faith would be unfounded; many previous societies have thought this way, and failed. Long-term survival requires a real understanding of the limitations of our environment and a strong political will to live within those limits. Like the first settlers of Easter Island, we find ourselves in a new, unknown environment; namely an industrialised 21st century world with greenhouse gas levels higher than they have ever been in human history. We no longer need to colonise a new island to experience unfamiliar environmental conditions; our carbon dioxide emissions are altering the climate of our whole planet, which will bring unpredictable new risks for everyone. The lesson of Easter Island should make us think on the failure of our own leaders to take real action to prevent catastrophic climate change, even though the latest IPCC report said that only 11 years remain to prevent catastrophic global warming of more than 1.5 C.

Poetry Regenerative Culture

Poem: The Tactics of Our Antics

Published by:

By Liz Darcy Jones

Let
us be Up Rising!

Create
a mighty swell:

Our
words are magnetising

they
say ‘Wake up! Rebel!

We’ll
get up and we’ll stand up

for
those who don’t or can’t

and
if you’re not for marching

then find some trees and plant!

Let
us be Up Rising!

Create
a mighty swell:

Our
words are magnetising

they
say ‘Wake up! Rebel!

we
will not stoop to fight or harm

but
mischief-make with glee

‘til
songs and chants and mass arrests

and
our solidarity

wake
up those in denial

and
rouse the ones who sleep

‘til
all can see we’ve got to change

adapt
and make it deep!

Let
us be Up Rising!

Create
a mighty swell:

Our
words are magnetising

they
say ‘Wake up! Rebel!

If
we can challenge and rise up

and
rock the status quo

whilst
keeping our hearts open
there’s just a chance we’ll show

revolting
rigid concepts

(born
of power or greed)

hold
far more threat than you or I:

let
fierce love be our creed

Let
us be Up Rising!

Create
a mighty swell:

Our
words are magnetising

they say ‘Wake up! Rebel!

Arts Regenerative Culture Uncategorized

“Hitler denial” as a parallel to climate denial

Published by:

By Zeeshan Hasan

I recently came across the online comicHitler Denialby Australian artist Stuart McMillan. Two panels are shown below as a taster.

The whole comic is definitely worth reading, please visit Stuart’s site to see it! I would discuss it further, but don’t want to give away the whole thing. What I would mention is that I’m cautious about glorifying war time leaders like Winston Churchill; although he was indeed successful in fighting Nazi Germany,it was at the cost of presiding over a terrible famine in India which killed millions.

Nonetheless, I think the parallel with the second world war and the ‘war footing’ that the entire world economy needs to be put on to in order to fight climate change is a worthwhile one to make.

Poetry Regenerative Culture

A Poem for the Bellingham Climate Strikers

Published by:

By Rob Lewis

Bellngham City Hall, 3/15/19

Where the sun meets the earth

your education begins.

Where the gold light meets the green striving

the lesson plan is all laid out.

Your teachers sing from the branches.

Stored knowledge shines in the leaves.

Study closely this living encyclopedia.

Become friends with things

and they will reward you with their meanings.

Though the adult world seems to have abandoned you

The earth is behind you every step of the way.

You have on your side all flowers and all rivers,

mountains and sand grains and the universes

inside those sand grains.

You have the oceans around you and the one inside you,

which occasionally appears on the lip of your eyelid

in the brief relief of a tear.

You didn’t come across waves of time

to fulfill the educational metrics of the state.

You are not given sight, and hearing and imagination

just to elbow past the others

in an economy that’s liquidating the world.

Out of the earth you came.

You hold in your eyes

the sun’s own candles

Don’t be afraid to burn

a few bad ideas down.

Don’t be afraid to dazzle us

with your fire.

Diaries Ecological Breakdown and Response

The Barrier

Published by:

By Andy Matthews, Isle of Wight XR

UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated, “we are in trouble. We are in deep trouble with climate change.” And that, “It is hard to overstate the urgency of our situation…we are still not doing enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption.” This statement came alongside the news that emissions had risen to a new high in 2018 after 30 years of supposedly attempting to cut them.

Can
we adapt to the inevitable effects of “catastrophic
climate disruption” under the capitalist system Or, is it a
barrier to a sustainable future-fit for the good of all?

We
need three basic elements to sustain life: food, water and shelter.
When our species emerged some 40-60,000 years ago we maintained
ourselves as hunter-gatherers. This period lasted for 90% of human
history. Cooperation was crucial for our survival.

Chattel
slavery and the concept of private property emerged before written
history with basic agriculture and the production of surpluses.
People became property, and the state evolved to defend property
rights through the use of coercion. Between the 9th and 15th century
in medieval Europe, the shackles of slavery gave way to feudal
society and the legalised bondage of serfdom wherein the three basics
for life were exchanged for service and labour on the land.

Capitalism
dates from the 16th century and flourished at the expense of
feudalisms inability to adapt. The central characteristics of
capitalism are: private ownership of the means of production, profit,
waged labour, the accumulation of capital, prices, and competitive
markets.

As
elites arose in slavery and feudalism, so too did the unequal
division
of food, water, and shelter for the vast majority of its people.

Capitalism
has mirrored that as Oxfam reports that the, “World’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%.”
Whereas, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation revealed that the
food system fails to properly nourish billions of people. More than 820 million people went hungry last year,
while a third of all people did not get enough vitamins.
Approximately 9 million people die of hunger globally each year.” 

And
water? “At
least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with
faeces…Nearly two million children a year die
for want of clean water and proper sanitation…The UN Development
Programme, argues that 1.1 billion people do not have safe water and
2.6 billion suffer from inadequate sewerage. This is not because of
water scarcity but poverty, inequality and government failure.”

And
shelter? Globally, ” one in eight people
live in slums. In total, around a billion people live in slum
conditions today”. In 2005, the last time a global survey was
attempted by the UN, “an estimated 100 million people were
homeless worldwide.
As many as 1.6 billion people lacked adequate housing”.

These
are symptoms of a cancer called poverty. A sickness intrinsic to
capitalism.

The
question to ask yourself here is: are these people likely to be
joined by millions more given what we know, at present, about the
effects of “catastrophic
climate disruption” under capitalism?

Politicians,
the media, and entrepreneurs scrabble around for quick fixes. All of
them involve market solutions. But the logic of the capitalist market
is to make money. Thus, catastrophe
can also be seen as an opportunity to turn a profit.

Bloomberg
reports that, ” A top JP Morgan Asset investment strategist
advised clients that sea-level rise was so inevitable that there was
likely a lot of opportunity for investing in sea-wall construction.”
And speculating on insurance policies, Barney Schauble, of Nephila
Advisors LLC believes that, “the broader public’s failure to
appreciate the risks of climate change is part of what makes it such
a good area for investing.” Moreover, “there is evidence
that many players in the corporate-military-security industrial nexus
are already seeing climate change not just as a threat but an opportunity…
climate change promises another financial boon to add to the ongoing
War on Terror.”

Technology
we are told will eventually provide solutions to climate change. This
is a crude phantasm of an ideology that seeks to forego any
alternative thinking and to “kick the can down the road.”

The
“green new deal” appears in several shades of grey.
Whether the so-called, “war-time mobilisation” some people
call for could be realised in one country is debatable. But globally?
That would take cooperation on a scale inconceivable given that in
the 20th century The League of Nations, and later
the UN were implemented to maintain peace. Nevertheless, countless
millions were slaughtered in capitalisms’ wars.

And
now? Consider the debacle that is Brexit. And the farce of climate
change conferences.

Cooperatives
and similar types of enterprises are argued for as solutions. But as
long as markets exist they too have to conform to its iron laws.
Cooperatives will have to compete with each other to buy raw
materials and inputs, and then sell its commodities on the market
with every other seller of an equal product. Thus, if a cooperative
produces goods to sell on the market, to obtain money, to pay wages
via profit, then it has to conform to all of the economic laws of
capitalism.

Profit
is capitalism’s raison
d’être, and growth
its imperative.

The
quote, “it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism,”
becomes credible with the knowledge that, “just 100 companies
are responsible for 71% of global emissions,
” many of which are state entities and the residue potent
friends of state actors. Likewise, “the U.S. Military
is the World’s Biggest Polluter .” All powerful adversaries of
anyone who wants to oppose the status quo.

But, for those who think this barrier can be overcome have one great advantage. Imagination. The ability to envision a different world. One fit for the good of all. To imagine it, clarify it, and start to build it. And those that believe the barrier could be breached should begin by inscribing on their banners the dictum -“Toward One World.”

Citizens' Assemblies Ecological Breakdown and Response Regenerative Culture

The economics of extinction: a reason for rebellion

Published by:

Professor Jem Bendell and Rabbi Jeffrey Newman

What would a sane society do, knowing that one of its luxury food supplies was being exhausted? Consume less perhaps? Or grow more? Japan, knowing that the Bluefin tuna is going extinct, does neither. Bluefish tuna make the most profit for fishermen the nearer they are to extinction, as their rarity endows all the more status on their consumers.

Some might think that is a quirky Japanese behaviour or an anomaly of economics, but actually the free-market system in which individuals compete for profit is resplendent with such stupidities. How else could the investment in fracking or tar sands be explained? Or the way Brazil is consuming the lungs of the Earth to pay back its debts. Or the way industry externalises the cost of processing much of its waste, poisoning the Earth and its future consumers?

The logic that leads to these flaws has long been understood, and there have been waves of visceral protest as the ideology of markets became more entrenched. It is two decades since we were shutting down city centres hosting WTO and World Bank conferences; and almost a decade since Occupy camps squatted in the sacred places of decadent high finance. This time our issue is more than economic justice – it is the way governments are standing by as the global house we live in is burning down. We now see clearer than ever how a stupid financial system is driving an environmental breakdown and mass extinction which will undermine our very civilisation.

But for all the dissent about this situation, there’s little agreement or clarity on where within the financial system the real problem resides – or what could be done about it. Explanations from the marching crowds often invoke privatisation, corruption, greed, the power of banks, or the shrinking state. Deeper analyses point to something that many are unaware of, even economists. It is how private banks, not the government or central banks, create our money supply when they issue loans. It is this practice of issuing money as debt that over time creates a scarcity of money which encourages perpetual economic growth whether a society needs it or not. That means more junk, monotonous work, energy burned, natural environments ripped up, more waste, more money locked up in tax havens, and more unpayable debts. Lifting the veil on the monetary system reveals the interconnection between our social and environmental suffering. Through complex chains of profit-taking, the extortionate financial rewards taken by banks leads to people relying upon food banks while we trash the foundational bank that is a healthy planet.

Therefore, after decades of work on reforming corporations to be more sustainable, we both came to understand that we can’t change the way business does business unless we change the way money makes money. Given our perilous situation with the unfolding environmental breakdown, this change is more urgent than ever. As it oscillates along the knife-edge of debt maximisation and debt default, the current system is simply not fit for a future of climate-induced disruption.

But understanding the driving role of the financial system doesn’t give us a course of action and it certainly doesn’t help us to curtail it. For starters, we exist within the confines of this system. Many of us have little capacity to take radical action because we are working off our debts, or earning wages suppressed by employers servicing their own. That is hardly surprising in an economy with more debt than money.

So what might we do? We can move our money to building societies. But that won’t reform the big banks. We can work together to build alternatives at the local level, such as credit unions and mutual credit currencies. Yet in the UK this has proven difficult, as they are less available and less-funded than their competitors. So we might buy into crypto-currencies, yet many of them are run by speculators who make bankers look saintly!

So the only possible way to put the financial system into a reverse thrust is through government who, after all, unleashed the financial beast over thirty years ago.

It would seem though, that the present UK government imagines a different mandate for itself. In his 2018 party conference speech Chancellor Hammond claimed already to have ‘rebuilt the financial system’ since 2008.He said nothing about energy security, food security, climate change, the global migration crisis or indeed any future concerns except a future Labour government. One can’t imagine the sixth Mass Extinction keeping him awake at night. Rather than existential threats he focused instead on linguistic ones, repeating the term ‘21st century capitalism’ as if the next 80 years of economics were already written.

Hammond is out of touch with a public increasingly alarmed by climate predictions. After 30 years of warnings but no meaningful action, the current (very conservative) estimate is that dramatic changes are needed within the next twelve years, just for a chance of avoiding ‘run away’ climate change. Less optimistic readings of the data indicate that rapid and uncontrollable climate change has already begun. That will mean failed harvests and with it, exploding price rises and, understandably, social unrest. A new paradigm of Deep Adaptation  to environmental breakdown is needed to reduce harm and risk in a very uncertain future. As friends and neighbours we might stockpile food, nurture our gardens and install solar power, but government is needed to build the sea defences, mobilise emergency food production and distribution, rebuild transport systems and integrate large numbers of people fleeing droughts, floods and related conflict.

Governments around the world need to develop climate-smart monetary and investment policies. Such bold policies must involve a scaling down of our non-reserve banking system and an increase in government’s issuance of electronic money instead of bonds. All central banks must be instructed to stop buying bonds from companies with large carbon footprints and instead only buy bonds of firms providing low-carbon solutions for a climate-disrupted future. Governments should also ensure there are networks of local banks with a requirement to lend to enterprises that are focused on cutting emissions or drawing down carbon, as well as developing resilience to disruptive weather. Making that the RBS mandate in the UK is a ‘no brainer’. Government should also look at enabling local governments to issue their own interoperable currencies, as a way of helping local communities become more self reliant in preparation for future disturbances. Treasury officials could begin their education on these ideas by talking to the folks at Positive Money. Meanwhile our diplomats could get cracking on negotiating a global carbon tax, embedded into trade law at the WTO, with government commitments to invest revenues for carbon cuts, drawdown, adaptation and reducing impacts on the poor.

Given how bad things are with the environment we don’t know if such dramatic changes will be too little too late. But it is worth a try. And we are convinced that without an attempt to transform the monetary system then we aren’t really trying.

Let’s for a moment imagine what such changes could support. We can imagine what thriving ecosystems look like, so we let’s imagine a thriving economy. Waste would be minimised, and toxic waste eliminated. Most of what we needed would be produced nearby. There would be no unemployment and no shortage of money to pay for valuable work. Housing would be affordable as it was in the 1970s. Children would see more of their parents. Enterprises and population centres would be governed and managed less as pawns of London, Brussels, Berne, or Frankfurt and more by the people who have a stake in them and their continuance.

There must come a time when when it becomes necessary to flout the law to bring down an immoral or incompetent government. Philosophers call it the ‘right of rebellion’. Naturally they differ on the details, but generally a rebellion these days must use non-violent methods, and it must be against a government which is grossly incompetent, malignant, or treacherous. In upholding a financial system determined to burn all the fossil fuels while not protecting the people from the catastrophic consequences, governments are surely being grossly incompetent, malignant and treacherous.

On April 15th international rebellion week will create all manner of creative, exciting and loving peaceful civil disobedience to show the UK government and its financial masters that we can no longer support interlocking economic and political systems that threaten to curtail the life of our children. It is time to tell the truth, act in accordance with it, and set up Citizens Assemblies with mandates that include both financial reform and Deep Adaptation.

If international rebellion doesn’t startle our politicians into making the climate crisis their central agenda, then we must stretch the rebellion into our everyday lives. How many coordinated withdrawals and loan defaults might bring down a targeted bank? How many local councils issuing inter-operable currencies could create an alternative to the Bank of England? How many people joining networks with their own currencies, like Fair Coop, Credit Commons and Holochain, could make these viable alternatives? If government does not heed peaceful calls to change our economic system so that climate sanity is an economic norm, we may well find out.

We realise that initially our suggestions may be dismissed by some office holders in our current system. Religious texts remind us that privileged people “who detest the one who tells the truth” (Prophet Amos 5:10) are neither new or unusual. But the joy of generations coming together in a new spirit of fearless love, reminds us of the divine invitation to “let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Prophet Amos 5:24). We therefore invite more leaders in our current system to join this sacred flow of a peaceful rebellion for life on Earth.

Professor Jem Bendell is founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum and teaches leadership at the University of Cumbria.

Rabbi Jeffrey Newman is Emeritus Rabbi of Finchley Reform Synagogue and leads Shema (Jewish Action on Climate Change).

Further reading on monetary issues:

Currencies of Transition: Transforming money to unleash sustainability. Bendell, Greco (2013)

Re-imagining Money to Broaden the Future of Development Finance Bendell, Ruddick, Slater (2015) UNRISD

The future of sharing: it’s all about freedom, Open Democracy

Thwarting an Uber future for complementary currencies. Bendell & Slater 2017

Diaries Ecological Breakdown and Response

11 Years Left

Published by:

by Claudia Fisher

Claudia
Fisher is a married business woman and artist. She has five children
aged 32 to 13 and is studying part-time for an MA in Creative Writing at
The University of Brighton. For the next couple of months, she will be
writing a weekly blog on the BPEC website about environmental issues,
particularly focussing on climate change and biodiversity loss. Claudia
does a lot of work with the newly formed civil disobedience group Extinction Rebellion. In this blog she will share her journey with you, in the hope that you will join her. Thank you for reading.

I have a question for you.

What
prompts a middle-aged woman who has never participated in any form of
activism before to throw herself wholeheartedly into civil disobedience
and more? The answer is simple.

‘Our house is on fire.’[

These are the words of a 16-year-old student, Greta Thunberg.
What does Greta mean? Our house is on fire? Let’s start with that
image. What would you or I if we knew our house was on fire? Make a cup
of tea and wait to see if the flames caught hold? Let the children sleep
upstairs for fear of frightening them unnecessarily? Walk off and leave
it, hoping it would put itself out? No of course not. That would be
ridiculous.

I am
pretty confident that the first thing every one of us would do is wake
the children and get them out as quickly as possible. We’d pick up the
phone and dial 999. We’d shout ‘HURRY!’. We’d put the hose on and fill
buckets with water. We’d form a chain gang with our neighbours. In
short, we’d do anything we could to dampen those flames.

Let’s
go back to Greta, whose one-woman school strike for climate has captured
the imaginations of hundreds of thousands of young people across the
world.[ii]
For months Greta skipped school every Friday, preferring to sit outside
the Swedish Parliament on her own, rather than be with her friends in
class. She explained that the world was facing such a dire and urgent
climate emergency, she saw no point in studying for a future she would
never have.

She
explains that we, the human race, are facing climate breakdown with
wildfires, flooding, droughts, rising sea levels and heatwaves. The
planet is entering the world’s sixth mass extinction with around 200 species estimated to go extinct each and every day.[iii]
And what are we doing? Pretty much nothing. We all carry on as before
and think people like me are extremist, alarmist, totally off their
rockers. Or we notice it’s a bit hotter than usual, but that’s nice
isn’t it, in a country where traditionally the weather is a bit rubbish?
We can start producing wine now. So, it’s not all bad. And anyway, what
can we do about it? We all have to live, don’t we? We have to eat and
get about and have fun? We don’t want to stop all of that, because isn’t
the kind of easy living we are used to what it’s all about? Well, the
answer is, we have to stop. We have to think. To assess. To evaluate.
Then we have to act. We have to. Because this is not sustainable. It
cannot last.

Every day nearly 100 million barrels of oil are extracted from the ground.[iv]
That is energy made billions of years ago. Yet we dig it up, harness
its energy and release its by-products. Like Pandora’s Box, we let it
out and can’t put it back. I tell my children that their actions have
consequences. Yet I have been guilty, and still am guilty, of taking
actions and making decisions that will have consequences, not
necessarily for me, but for generations to come.

Ask any
ecologist and they will confirm that this beautiful blue planet of ours
has a finely balanced eco-system that has evolved over a very, very
long time. I think understanding just how long really helps with getting
a handle on how serious this situation is.

As part
of my MA in Creative Writing, last year I wrote a piece about a
three-hour period where, as a result of severe sleep deprivation and
stress at my son’s serious illness, the balance of my mind was briefly
overturned. In order to reconcile the significance of those three hours
with the greater scheme of things I started researching. Trying to
understand time. For me those three hours felt like an eternity. But
what does eternity really mean? This is what I found out, and be warned, you could find it quite mind-blowing.

‘If
the Earth formed at midnight and the present moment is the next
midnight, 24 hours later, modern humans have been around since
11:59:59pm—that’s 1 second.’[v]

And in
all that time, in the 23 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds of all
existence, the world’s ecosystems could get along with their business of
generating, living, evolving, dying and starting over again
uninterrupted. Then we humans came along.

‘And if human history itself spans 24 hours from one midnight to the next, 14 minutes represents the time since Christ.’[vi]

But for
23 hours 58 minutes 36 seconds of that one second of the previous
24-hour clock, humans were part of the ecosystem. Spending every second
surviving. Living amongst all other life. It is really only in the last
two hundred years, since the beginning of the industrial age that we
have had any kind of impact on our environment. This is equivalent in my
illustration to 1 minute and 24 seconds of a 24-hour period that has
been expanded out of one second of another 24-hour period.

Think
about it. That kind of time span, a mere 200 years, in comparison to
life on earth is equivalent to a fraction of a blink. And the scientists
tell us we have only 11 years left to change our ways, before global temperatures breach the 1.5ºC guard rail.[vii] Beyond that we will have an unstoppable increase. Temperatures of 2-5ºC will cause famine, mass migration, wars and societal break down. Life will at best be miserable, at worst unsustainable.[viii]

Just 11
years. To stop carbon emissions. To clean up our act. Going back to my
illustration, 11 years equates to a mere 4.62 seconds of a second in 24
hours. Which is why waiting till climate change hits home, waiting for
governments to do something, waiting for the changes to be unstoppable
just isn’t an option. The UK government have pledged an 80% reduction in
carbon emissions by 2050. If this target wasn’t so tragic it would be
laughable. It’s like pouring a thimbleful of lukewarm water onto that
house fire and expecting that drop to make a difference.

We need
to act like our house is on fire. Because it is. And this middle-aged
woman for one is not going to stop until that fire is out. Totally out. I
will risk my losing my comforts, my freedom and my life. It is too
important to stand by and do nothing. Because the fire is taking hold of
the ground floor. The flames are licking up the stairs and my children
are sleeping in that house. I need to get them to safety.

More next week about my entry into a different world of possibilities and hope.

Ecological Breakdown and Response XR Youth

Students, Sunrise and Rebels unite to defy extinction

Published by:

Originally posted here:

On 15 March students from around the world will join a global Youth Strike for Climate, leaving school and college to demand that their leaders urgently take climate action. In this guest blog Farhana Yamin, CEO at Track 0 and Extinction Rebellion Activist and Jake Woodier, an organiser of #YouthStrike4Climate explain why.

Politicians beware. Young people are demanding answers from governments to some tough questions.

  • Why have scientific warnings about the climate and ecological crisis been ignored for so long?
  • What emergency actions can now be put in place to stop the extinction of life on Earth?

Tired of the apathy and denialist campaigns funded by vested interests, young people are taking to the streets and joining new social movements that are demanding solutions be put in place in 10 years or less.

That timeframe more or less matches the 12 year deadline given by the United Nation’s chief scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In October 2018, the IPCC spelt out the consequences of what a hotter more disruptive climate would look like. Unless we cut global greenhouse gases emissions by 50% in the next 11 years, billions of people would be exposed to increased storms, wildfires, droughts, floods, acidified oceans and sea level rise which would result in water and food shortages and mass migration.

Students strike for climate in London in February 2019. (Photo: Socialist Appeal/Flickr)

Fearing for their future and acting out of solidarity with their fellow global citizens, this week hundreds of thousands of young people are expected to walk out of schools and colleges to join the school strike movement. They are inspired by 16 year old Greta Thunberg, who in August 2018 stopped going to school on Fridays to sit outside the Swedish Parliament and demand climate action. Since then, thousands of young people around the world have joined the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement with campaigns now active in around 71 countries. In Belgium, around 50,000 children and young people take to the streets every Friday. The UK’s student movement is gathering momentum. The first national strike resulted in 15,000 students and young people ditching classrooms to demonstrate a need for radical and urgent action to achieve climate justice for current and future generations. 

Anna Taylor, 17, co-founder or the UK Student Climate Network which is coordinating the mobilizations explains:

“The burden of holding powerful actors to account over their climate records has unfortunately fallen on the young. We’ve been betrayed by the climate inaction of previous generations. We’re having to rise up and fight for those around the world already suffering the devastating effects of climate change, and for our very futures.”

The youth led Sunrise Movement rally in San Francisco in December 2018. (Photo: Peg Hunter/Flickr)

Long held attitudes of moderation are now woefully insufficient given the global climate emergency we all face. From the “Green New Deal’s 10 year plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero in ways that generate clean jobs, supported by the youth-led Sunrise movement and championed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to the Extinction Rebellion’s campaign of mass civil disobedience to dismantle the toxic systems that are putting all life on Earth at risk, it is clear that the desire to build a more inclusive society based on respecting nature’s boundaries is beginning to reshape politics.

No-one knows what will happen and no-one can say for sure whether or not fundamental ecological tipping points have already been breached. The good news is that there are millions of people – old and young – who are mobilising around the world to stop humanity from falling off a cliff.   

Extinction Rebellion protest at Oxford Circus, London in November 2018 (Photo: David Holt / Flickr)

We can and must succeed in catalysing a peaceful revolution to end the era of fossil fuels and economic systems based on the extraction and extinction of nature. Life on Earth literally depends on it.

That is why we will be supporting students on strike and all those working to defend life on Earth. As citizens around the world join together to courageously speak truth to power, we hope you will give your full support to strikers and rebels where ever you are.

Views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Elders or The Elders Foundation.

Around The World With XR Arts Regenerative Culture

Poetry Anthology #1

Published by:

Author: Greg Cumbers

Almost Midnight 

Confused by the rhythm
And still, he stands up to dance
With Godheads and their hi-tech threats
Orange bleeds into red

He doesn’t wear a watch
Instead, he stares straight at the sun
Like a rabbit in the headlights
Beyond the point of no return

Confused by the rhythm
She sits down and puts the world to rights
A frightening place with nowhere to hide
The clock strikes closer to midnight

Tired, she’s so tired of waiting
For the sirens to start singing
Wound up like a spring with rage in her eyes
She crosses her heart and hopes to die

These are the days it never rains but it pours
You can run, but you can’t hide forever
The weather will have its way with you! 

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Author: Santosha Tantra

Excerpt from the poem “One True Tribe“

This is the time and the need for the One True Tribe to recognize itself and begin living.
Who is in this One True Tribe?
All Hearts everywhere
We cannot, not know each other.
There are no places we haven’t seen
And no one can live apart from the other, from how the other somewhere else affects everyone here.
We know of everyone’s suffering and everyone’s needs.
Our hearts are all the same, with the same impulse – to live and live well.

To live well all must know their own heart and recognize everyone’s heart.
The heart – the place and the knowing of love – the recognition of all as love.
Love is the impulse to serve without selfishness, to give so all can live with dignity.

Love makes happiness, purpose and enjoyment,
love does not cause suffering for others.
This is the time and the world has the need, for all of us to see itself as
One family, as the One True Tribe.

Around The World With XR Ecological Breakdown and Response Toxic Media Climate

In Support of Life

Published by:

As we prepare to tackle the issue of global warming let us resolve to genuinely fix this problem.  The consequences of inaction or wrong action are dire.  Effective and prompt action is needed.  Towards this end, let us keep in mind that global warming is a symptom of our culture. Thus, if we want to effectively address the issue of global warming, we must address its root causes.

Global warming is not the first instance in which our culture has disregarded the needs of the natural world.  A cursory look at the state of the forests, oceans, prairies, rivers, and lakes will tell us that we have a history of being irresponsible and destructive citizens of the Earth.  Indeed, this history portrays us as a greedy, self-absorbed culture that cares little for life besides our own.  And even with our survival on the line, only time will tell whether we will act responsibly.

In any case, I propose that if we wish to adequately address the climate crisis then we need to examine the principles that drive our culture.  I will begin by proposing some principles that should be at the heart of a healthy culture.  I have five such principles.  To the extent that you agree with these principles, you might agree with my further analysis.

First, we should support life.  After all, we are nothing if not for life.  This is pretty simple.

Second, we should support Mother Nature.  Our lives are utterly dependent upon the ways of Mother Nature.  The food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe are all circumstances that are intricately entwined in the ways of Mother Nature.

Third, we should support honesty and integrity.  Without integrity, the systems of life on Earth fall apart.  Without honesty, we are told by those who destroy the ecosystem that they are supporting the ecosystem.

Fourth, we should help each other out.  We are all alive today because of the help of others in our lives.  We would not survive our infant years but for the help we receive from our parents and caregivers.  Our communities sustain us.

Fifth, we should support dignity in life.  None of us wishes to live without dignity.  We should support life with dignity for all.

To the extent that we all support any one of these principles, we should ensure that the institutions and rules of our culture support that principle. And here is the rub.  Our culture, along with its rules and institutions, lays waste to each of these five principles.  Life is on its way out.  Mother Nature has been disregarded for millennia by western culture.  Honesty and integrity are but hollow promises in our halls of government and on our media airwaves.  The homelessness in our streets attests to the facts that neither do we help each other out, nor do we ensure the dignity of life for people in our culture.

Of all the people I know personally, I don’t know anyone who wishes to get rid of life on Earth.  I know no one who thinks that the ways of Mother Nature can be disregarded.  No one thinks I should lie to them, or refuse to help my fellow neighbor, or deny dignity to anyone.  We are a culture of well-intentioned people who have taken a wrong turn and are heading down the path of destruction.  Where have we gone astray?

I suggest that we are a culture preoccupied with the pursuit of power and wealth.  In fact, it is this pursuit of power and wealth that drives decisions that go against each of the five principles I have named.  It is this pursuit of power and wealth that is driving us into the climate crisis.

The pursuit of power and wealth is ingrained into the fabric of our culture to the extent that most of us equate the pursuit of power and wealth with the pursuit of life itself.  I think that it is time for this confusion to stop.  It is plain to see that when the wealthy among us are pursuing power and wealth they are no longer pursuing life.  Any multimillionaire alive today has all that they need in order to live in our culture.  It is deeply ironic that the rules and institutions of our culture are being used to increase the wealth and power of those who need no more wealth and power.  It is clear to see that for the wealthy; the pursuit of power and wealth should not be confused with the pursuit of life.

Furthermore, let us recognize that money has no intrinsic value.  You cannot eat money.  You do not build a house out of money.  Money does not warm you on a cold winter night or move you from home to work on Monday morning.  Money itself does not support life.  Money is a thing in our culture solely because we agree that it is a thing.

Because of this agreement, it is hard to live without earning money.  Food and housing and transportation have all been folded into our economy in such a way that those of us who are successful at the wealth and power game have an easy time getting needs met while those of us who are not successful suffer.  And thus, people who are not wealthy need to earn money in order to live.  We conflate the pursuit of money with the pursuit of life because the rules of our culture demand that we make money in order to eat and put a roof over our heads.

But is it not time to stop pretending that this economic system is helping us out.  Who among us really feels fulfilled in the work that they do to make money? Most of us work at jobs aimed first and foremost at lining the pockets of those who need no more money.  The success of every company and industry and corporation depends upon the profit that it brings its owners, not the benefit it brings to life on the Earth.

Our economy is designed to transfer power to those at the top of the economic pyramid.  It does this at the expense of people and life.  While we must acknowledge that most people must earn money in order to create “value” and thus live in our culture, we also should acknowledge that the system itself is destructive.  The “value” that we are creating is in many cases not valuable.  This system values consumption at the expense of life, profit at the expense of community.  This is the system that has ushered in global warming.

The people of America spoke at Standing Rock demanding that oil pipelines not be built from the fracking fields.  The pipelines were built anyway at the behest of the oil corporations looking for profit.  The people of the world have gathered in the streets at the climate talks calling for real solutions to global warming.  Meanwhile, the rich and powerful in control of the talks have ensured that corporate profits get priority over real solutions.

In western culture, we play the game of who can gain the most power and wealth.  In this game, the winners win because they cut costs and exploit resources.  If you try to run a business ethically, without cutting costs and exploiting resources, you lose out to those in the industry willing to cut costs and exploit resources.

In this game, the winners work on Wall Street while the losers lose their farms.  The winners sit in the boardrooms of corporations while the losers work overtime in order to afford food and housing and health care.  The winners decide monetary policy while the losers drown in debt.

Our economy, by the very nature of the rules of western society, will destroy life.  We are seeing this take place in front of our eyes.  Most of us are caught up in this system even though we disagree with the outcomes.  We are forced to chase wealth because those are the rules of our culture.  People who gain wealth, be it ethically or not, get to buy food.  People who don’t suffer.

It is time to do away with our allegiance to the principle that people should pursue power and wealth.  It is time to stop letting this corrupt principle drive decisions in our culture.

 

George Palen is an educator from California.