Apr 29, 2014 | Climate Change/Environment
End the dishonesty, the deception. Stop lying to yourselves, and to your children. Stop pretending that the crisis can be “solved,” that the planet can be “saved,” that business more-or-less as usual—what progressives and environmentalists have been doing for forty-odd years and more—is morally or intellectually tenable. Let go of the pretense that “environmentalism” as we know it—virtuous green consumerism, affluent low-carbon localism, head-in-the-sand conservationism, feel-good greenwashed capitalism—comes anywhere near the radical response our situation requires. So, yeah, I’ve had it with Earth Day—and the culture of progressive green denial it represents.
Apr 21, 2014 | Options/ New Paradigm
But when I hear arguments that “we need” to stand up for our ‘inherent’ rights and freedoms, and wrest ‘control’ of the levers of power from the obscenely wealthy elite, and denounce and protest injustice and inequality, and acknowledge and renounce our role as privileged oppressors, as the first steps to a true social revolution in and political and economic reform, leading, somehow, to a radical redistribution of wealth and power, and a more just society, I am reduced to despair.
Apr 13, 2014 | Climate Change/Environment
“Doing something” implies that developing nations of the world and
the fossil fuel industry will come together and: 1) Agree that climate
change is actually happening; 2) Understand that the situation is so
dire that humanity’s living arrangements must be radically altered; 3)
Sacrifice their economic security and industrial profits to
significantly reduce carbon emissions; 4) Agree to the reality of
climate change and the altering of their living arrangements in time to
prevent another 2 degree C rise in temperature. I dare say that
the same people who believe this is going to happen would vehemently
protest a belief in Santa Claus, but nevertheless, they cling to this
chimera.
Apr 6, 2014 | Book Review
From my perspective, whether we are in hospice or merely transitioning to a new story or both, these questions constitute our overarching assignment in the time we have left, and they form the crux of my work in the wake of our predicament. The pivotal task, I believe is an invitation offered on Page 66: “Imagine yourself on your deathbed, looking back on your life. What moments seem the most precious? What choices will you be the most grateful for?” This is hard-core hospice work.
Apr 6, 2014 | Climate Change/Environment
Apr 4, 2014 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged.
Apr 1, 2014 | Extinction
I find a lot of what I am drawn to in the teaching I do, the experiential work, is to help people make friends with uncertainty, and reframe it as a way of coming alive. Because there are never any guarantees at any point in life. Perhaps it’s more engrained in the American citizen that we feel we ought to know, we ought to be certain, we ought to be in control, we ought to be upbeat, we ought to be smiling, we ought to be sociable. That cultural cast has tremendous power to keep us benumbed and becalmed. So it’s been central to my life and my work to make friends with our despair, to make friends with our pain for the world. And thereby to dignify it and honour it. That is very freeing for people.