A Force of Nature: Us

We live in epoch-making times. I mean this literally, rather than as a tool to dramatise the global economic crisis or latest political scandal. An epoch describes a geological time period. The end of the last glaciation, some 11,000 years ago, saw the transition from the cool Pleistocene to the warmer Holocene. This relatively stable epoch saw humans turn to agriculture and our population rise considerably.

Ducking the Shadows of Suburban Life

When the jets come, they start out like the shrill distant whine of a child, or with the deep rumbling sound of thunder in the mountains.

Each jet crescendos into an elephantine wail that fills the sky and all the spaces below it: kitchens, patios, bathrooms, bedrooms—there’s no escape. The wail turns to a sudden roar above the house, rattling the Victorian redwood timbers of mom’s home.

Finally, as the planes pass, their roar fades into a distant rumble….

Saving Ourselves: Consuming Within Recharge Rates

In bygone days, the environmental movement would often cast its lot with a "Save the [blank]" ideology that generally included non-human components such as "world" or "whales" or "spotted owls" in its formulation. Unsurprisingly, many people scoffed at the suggestion that human opportunities and progress should be foregone in the name of saving other entities.

Global Land Grab

Close to a billion people in the world are hungry, and there is growing poverty, unemployment, and displacement in the rural sector. The world community is in widespread agreement about the urgency of more investment in agriculture. The food crisis, partly characterized by unstable markets and low reserves, has led governments to seek measures to meet their food security needs more directly than through global trade. Even though this year's harvest was good and there was some replenishment of global stocks, there's no certainty of what markets will look like next year.

The Century of The Rights of Mother Earth

Perhaps the most impressive statement in the speech of the President of Bolivia Evo Morales Ayma to the General Assembly of the U.N. on April 22nd, when that date was proclaimed the International Day of Mother Earth, was: "If the 20th Century is recognized as the century of human rights; individual, social, economic, political and cultural, the 21st Century will be known as the Century of the Rights of Mother Earth, of the animals, plants, all living creatures and all beings, whose rights must also be respected and protected."

Shrinking Our Way Towards Happiness

When a British government commission publishes a report calling for an end to economic growth, it suddenly seems that our world is changing. Growth has been the central goal of economists since the beginning of the industrial revolution. But Prof. Tim Jackson, the Economics Commissioner of the UK's Sustainable Development Commission has written a book that sums up the current state of our knowledge about economic growth and shows convincingly that growth should end.