It's Not Too Late to Love the World: In memoriam Michael Dowd

While a lot of people listening to Michael might get stuck on the "It's too late to save the world." part of his message, that was really the just preface to his core message, which was "It's not too late to love the world."

Can mini ponds influence microclimates in the city?

The city's microclimates alienate animals and plants. But with a reconfiguration of belief systems about what city life can or should be, creating urban microclimates that invite animals and plants to thrive is feasible.

The Most Dangerous Story Ever Told: Ecological Collapse, Progress, and Human Destiny

We were born here and we are meant to die here. That is our destiny. It always was. We can either embrace it, or we can continue to deny it, to tell ourselves wishful stories about interstellar travel and making a home for humans on other planets, and thereby hasten our extinction.

Food Waste and Methane Emissions

Few behavior changes necessary for handling climate change overlap the issue of poverty and carbon footprint so blatantly.

Climate Change, EditorialMirna Wabi-SabiJune 22, 2022Climate Crisis, Climate Change, food wasteComment

Pool yourself together: Sufficiency and interdependence in the wake of a degrowth future

People are able to organize very complex distribution and exchange mechanisms in a very short time without the intervention of state institutions. […] People did not engage in a general war for survival, but gathered in smaller groups around small 'pools' of remaining resources.

Sacred Hunter: A Tale for the Eve of Samhain

What I am advocating is a radical reappraisal of how we relate to our food, whether animal, vegetable, or both.

Climate ChangeGods&RadicalsOctober 31, 2021huntingComment

The Bee Priestess

Every day, it seemed, I had to watch the people around me destroy plants and animals with a determination I seldom see humans apply to anything else.

Animism, Climate Change, PaganismAsa WestAugust 30, 2021bee, Climate Crisis, Climate Change, Animism Comments

“Damn Dirty Humans!”: ‘Planet of the Humans’ and Progressive Denial

“The film is asking us to come to terms with some difficult realities which we have yet to face: namely, that sustaining our infinite growth, industrial civilization on renewables is neither desirable nor possible, yet that is exactly what green capitalists are intent on pursuing.”

Rainreturn

Our land is dying; our neighbors are dying; everything sacred is being hunted down and destroyed. But tonight, at this moment, all I can do is pause to feel gratitude for the rain.

Climate Change, Cultural Commentary, Displacement, Land, working classAsa WestFebruary 18, 2020California, wildfire, Fire, Death, HomelessnessComment

Why I Stopped Protesting and Started a Garden

Certain gardens are not retreats, but attacks—attacks on the kind of world that says it is meaningless to do something so small, so local, so specific.

Learning to organize in a time of repression, climate crisis, and war

Humanitarian crises will weaken borders between “developed” and “underdeveloped” nations, and guaranteeing these borders will continue to weigh on the US Military. How can we better prepare for this impending fate?

We Did Start the Fire: Climate Change & the Curse of Hope

Human civilization is a fire. It’s been burning since we’ve been human. And the human story is not a straight line, but a circle, a great ring of fire.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger! Invasive species and halting biodiversity loss

“the war on invasive species is a distraction from genuine ecological change, through spending our time and money on ‘carrying on like before’ whilst shooting the messengers of change; invasive species.”

A Time of Hunger

You will not see me slipping through the door
on the day the freezers break but you might see my face
on the otherside looking at you from another place

Climate ChangelornasmithersOctober 17, 2019Brexit, The Seasons, The Otherworld, Winter, Summer, Winter HillComment

The Burning World and the Hope of Hopelessness

As the pressure builds, we know we cannot carry on as we have been doing. We, as a species, will reap what we have sown, in one way or another, for I feel we are too far gone for anything else.

Article, Climate Change, EnvironmentalismEmma KathrynAugust 23, 2019Amazon, Fire, Environment, community, direct action, witchcraftComment

The Avengers Won the War, But Lost the Argument: How Our Heroes Doom Our Future

Unlike Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man, we are not gods or supermen or cyborgs. We are human beings. And to be human to be limited. Ironically, it is in our capacity to embrace our finitude, to love it even, that our salvation lies.

The Wizard & the Prophet ... and the Microbiologist?: 3 Visions of Our Future

Norman Borlaug and William Vogt are, respectively, the Wizard and the Prophet in the title of Charles Mann’s 2018 book, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Mann presents Borlaug and Vogt as archetypes, representatives of two different visions of humankind’s relationship with the natural world: the one viewing nature as a something to be bent to the will of humankind, the other viewing nature as something to which humankind must bend.

Book, Climate Change, Industrialisation, Environmentalism, Land, CapitalismJohn HalsteadApril 25, 2019 Comments

The Return of the Wrach?

As global warming produces conditions favourable for the breeding of mosquitoes and the spread of malaria (or ague as it was once known), this essay looks at the lore associating it with hags and witches, who paradoxically were believed to cause and cure it.

Climate Change, WitchcraftlornasmithersApril 18, 2019Yr Hen Wrach, Anopholes Mosquito, Malaria, AgueComment