Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Shaun Chamberlin Starting Monday April 6 I will be leading an online course “Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time” alongside Sterling College’s delightful Philip Ackerman-Leist, joined by Kate, Rob and further stars of The Sequel, as well as other compelling, internationally-renowned guests including Nate Hagens, Helena Norberg-Hodge and Richard Heinberg.
Four things we can learn from the response to COVID-19 that are critical for climate change resilience.
Problems which start out small, but have the potential to create systemic ruin, MUST be solved when they are small. Waiting to see if such problems become large is courting the very systemic ruin we seek to avoid.
The true value of the internet is being revealed in the public response to the coronavirus pandemic. In bringing people together and keeping them informed, the internet and digital culture in general are doing things few or probably none of their detractors could do.
Large-scale and dramatic rearrangements of our current system worldwide and in the United States are likely to come in the wake of the season of death that is upon us—and in the wake of the economic carnage that results from the breakdown of a system so vulnerable that a tiny virus could topple it at its base.
An ecosocial modest proposal by cartoonist Miguel Brieva from the coronavirus pandemic. How about if we take advantage of such a complex and extraordinary situation to draw some valuable conclusions?
Facts about the COVID-19 pandemic and what you can do. Sources for more information.
For the next few weeks, many of us here in Ireland – and possibly where you are — will feel like we are in a permanent state of house arrest, working from home and looking after children kept home from school. Most of us are, rightly, staying away from crowds of people and making food at home, so most of us need to stock up on the basics durable foods that will keep over time – beans, lentils, rice, flour, salt, sugar and other staples.
If Italy is an example, it may be that in case of a truly serious climate emergency, governments may finally decide to react and do something serious. At the same time, the same people who are now thundering against “climate alarmism” would fall in line and ask for national unity against the climate threat.
We need to be thinking of ways to keep civic connections alive for the next while. The pandemic will not last indefinitely: the virus itself may be here for good, but one way or another it and humanity will negotiate some sort of biological accommodation… Our urgent task is to keep our communities healthy and resilient in the interim.
The first pandemic in a century is forcefully and sadly reminding all of us that Darwin was right about our place in the natural world, more specifically, that we will never be outside of it.
Oblivious to the risks, we have now built a globalized society that from the point of view of a coronavirus is a near perfect vehicle for the virus’ propagation. But that is only one part of the story. For when all the tightly coupled logistical and financial nodes of the global system start transmitting signals of distress and breakdown, this really threatens panic and ruin.
