Let’s face the facts. The environmental, social justice, and conscious living movements remain fragmented and vastly underdeveloped despite the paramount need to address global crises.
We know the problems. We have the technology. We have enough collective will power.
So why isn’t the world tackling global warming, sex slavery, economic disenfranchisement, species extinction, terrorism, environmental collapse, financial sustainability, and other critical problems with an all-hands-on-deck approach? Get it done and move on, right?
It’s easy to blame politics and institutional resistance to change, but few if any periods of social enlightenment were mandated from the top down. Systemic change occurs through pressure from all directions, and political will power is firstly dependent upon pressure from the bottom up.
So why isn’t there enough pressure from average citizens to trigger widespread institutional change?
Thousands of campaigns and millions of nonprofit organizations exist around the world, disseminating information and calling citizens to action. It’s easy to think that with all this activity the world must be headed towards a tipping point for peace, sustainability, and prosperity. However, it’s difficult to find data that supports this wishful thinking.
The data more often than not shows trends towards systemic and irreversible collapse.
The critical mass is missing.
Read more →
Discovery News, the same people as Discovery Channel, wrote an interesting article on why global warming can look like El Niño but differs significantly in how precipitation gets distributed. Normally in an El Niño cycle, dry regions get more rain and wet regions get less. In global warming, the opposite often occurs causing significant strain on ecology and inhabitants.
Read the full El Niño article on Discovery News.
It’s interesting to see articles like this popping up more and more through mainstream outlets. With all the controversy last year over climate science at least people are paying more attention to the data.
A related news thread to follow is the acidification of the oceans. Changes in the oceans are the canary in the coal mine for accelerating global warming.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, wrote a pointed op-ed for The Washington Post to commemorate Earth Day’s 40th anniversary. The message: the environmental movement is losing. It’s time for an overhaul.
Read full article.
While the environmental movement won many battles over the last four decades (most notably the US Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act), its political influence is waning. Not to mention that much of the public views “green” as more of a marketing fad than a movement.
It’s the view of this blog and a growing cadre of strategic thinkers like Van Jones that the future success of the environmental movement lies in linking economic, social, personal, and national prosperity to a thriving environment. Easier said than done, but not impossible.
Thanks to the democratization of media through social media and mountains of new data, it’s possible to start telling a compelling story of how the relatively unseen negative impacts on our environment over the past half-century are causing serious threats to our near-future prosperity. Try to improve the economy without addressing environmental impact and it won’t work. Try to preserve the environment without addressing social and economic impact and it won’t work.
The future success of the environmental movement depends on the cooperation of social, economic, political, educational, and personal development movements. A true movement of movements focused on hard science and doing the most good for the most people without sacrificing the minority or the environment.
Game on.
Check out the FOUR YEARS. GO. campaign to get involved in coalescing a movement of movements. It’s in an early stage of development but picking up steam behind the scenes.
The world may have just surpassed peak phosphorus production. Who cares? Soon, everyone will if we don’t reduce our dependency on it.
The industrial agricultural revolution of the past 100 years depends heavily on the availability of phosphorus as the primary ingredient in fertilizers. The mineral is mined, added to fertilizers, absorbed by our food crops, ingested by us, passed through to our waste treatment systems, and eventually ends up in the oceans. Not a big deal if we want to wait millions of years for the oceans’ phosphorus deposits to coalesce into mine-able pockets. But a serious problem for the foreseeable future of our current agricultural system.
The reduction in the phosphorus supply means escalating food prices as production costs go up and yield is decreased. The race is on to move agribusiness to sustainable permaculture practices that do not rely as heavily on mined phosphorus. A win-win all around but will likely require an end to the irrational farm subsidies in the US and Europe that encourage rampant use of fertilizers. Big agribusiness is not likely to change its ways without a fight.
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