Refugees Without Legs: How Climate Change Leaves No Room For 'Invasive Species', By Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Refugees Without Legs: How Climate Change Leaves No Room For 'Invasive Species', By Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

In the Summer of 2012, I met a Shoshone Elder named Finisia Medrano. (The story of that meeting is told in “Postcard from Eastern Oregon: When Planting Food is Illegal”[link: https://carolynbaker.net/2012/09/16/postcard-from-eastern-oregon-when-planting-food-is-illegal-by-kollibri-terre-sonnenblume/]). She has spent decades following the routes and practices of the ancient migratory “Hoop” of the Great Basin Native Americans, harvesting and cultivating wild food seasonally. In so doing, she has safeguarded vanishing knowledge and made invaluable observations of the ecosystems in an area spanning several states. Over that time she has witnessed the undeniable effects of Climate Change.

Embarking On The Journey Of Consciousness: Staying On The Train, By Carolyn Baker

Embarking On The Journey Of Consciousness: Staying On The Train, By Carolyn Baker

Perhaps you’ve noticed that staying on the train is a full-time job and that in doing so, there is little chance of maintaining business as usual. Sometimes the speed of the train feels painfully slow, as if one is riding on the little engine that could. At other times, one feels hurled through time and space on a bullet train. In either situation, whether consciously or unconsciously, all passengers on this train have signed up for a spiritual, as well as historical, intellectual, and physical journey, and it is no longer possible to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.

The Greatest Danger, By Joanna Macy

The Greatest Danger, By Joanna Macy

How do we live with the fact that we are destroying our world? What do we make of the loss of glaciers, the melting Arctic, island nations swamped by the sea, widening deserts, and drying farmlands? If you’re really paying attention, it’s hard to escape a sense of outrage, fear, despair. Author, deep-ecologist, and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy says: Don’t even try.

We Are Deluding Ourselves: The Apocalypse Is Coming–And Technology Can't Save Us, By Tim Donovan

We Are Deluding Ourselves: The Apocalypse Is Coming–And Technology Can't Save Us, By Tim Donovan

Last week, Salon ran an article, “Thanks for killing the planet, boomers!,” where I argued that it’s wholly unrealistic to assume humanity will undertake the massive, world-changing, economy-disrupting policy solutions needed for us to even stand a chance of long-term survival. Given that our local political and economic systems are as fragile, stalled and polarized as they’ve been in most of American history, these predictions only seem more dire, and the problem only more intractable. Which is why I’m constantly amazed by the notion that our technology will somehow save us, what I’ve come to consider the deus ex machina defense.

The Torture Of Not Knowing, By Carolyn Baker

The Torture Of Not Knowing, By Carolyn Baker

With catastrophic climate change we do know two things: We know that it is progressing with unimaginable speed, and we know that if it continues to do so, there will be few habitable places on earth by mid-century. Yet what else are we not being told? Does the silence matter? Will it make a difference ultimately? With Fukushima, however, we know so much less. How much radiation has already been released? How much is being released every day? How much radiated water is actually being dumped into the Pacific Ocean every day? What is the actual size of the radiation plumes that are moving eastward in the Pacific toward the West Coast of North America? Specifically how are these affecting sea life and human life? What is the relationship between environmental illnesses or the incidence of cancer and Fukushima? And the questions exacerbate and spin and swirl in our minds.