Joel Sternfeld
ALTERNATIVES
The Axial Age, which refers to the historical period between the eighth and third centuries BC, was a period of profound transformations, which created “the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today,” a period of collapse from which emerged new ways of seeing and being… We may be living through a second Axial Age now……
Read More about Paul Kingsnorth: The Axis and the SycamoreForests/Wildlife
“You can’t get this experience of listening to these birds second hand through a screen, or through an MP3 player, or YouTube.You get a simulacra.You get something similar but not in any way the same. Because it is a shallower engagement, the result of that is a shallower wish to act on behalf of it.”…
Read More about Rob Hopkins: Why our imagination needs the dawn chorusINDIA
So where are my reading glasses? Here, right in front of me, so close that I missed them. The lenses need cleaning. Some of Delhi’s smog still clings to them. Landour would not approve. And here I am, back on my hilltop, pen in hand, spectacles balanced on my nose. The new day has begun….
Read More about Ruskin Bond: Where have all the flowers gone?
The Indian Quarterly
Forests/Wildlife
From The Indian Quarterly: Strange things happen in this forest. A bug sucks and then pees. Droplets of bright water shoot out of its bum and fall rain-like on the forest floor. I saw it today with my own eyes. Orange and black bug on a Heliconia leaf, shadow-spangled, tumbling in the gusting wind, peeing….
Read More about Suprabha Seshan: People of the rainConserve/Resist
From Yale Environment 360: Ecologist Suzanne Simard, now at the University of British Columbia, has pioneered research into how trees communicate. She has shown how trees use a network of soil fungi to convey their needs and aid neighboring plants. Now she’s warning that threats like clear-cutting and climate change could disrupt these critical networks….
Read More about Suzanne Simard on the networked beauty of forests
ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION
Andreas Malm writes: Mainstream climate discourse is positively drenched in references to humanity as such, human nature, the human enterprise, humankind as one big villain driving the train. Enter Naomi Klein, who in ‘This Changes Everything’ lays bare the myriad ways in which capital accumulation pour fuel on the fire now consuming the earth system….
Read More about The Anthropocene myth: Blaming all of humanity for climate change lets capitalism off the hook
CLIMATE CRISIS
The Guardian reports: Planet Earth has entered a new geological epoch dubbed the Anthropocene because of the extent of humanity’s impact on the planet, according to a group of scientists. An international working group set up to consider the question voted by 30 to three, with two abstentions, that the Anthropocene was real in a geological sense….
Read More about The Anthropocene is here: Scientists declare dawn of human-influenced era
German author Peter Wohlleben has written a bestseller on the 'social networks' of trees
Education/Awareness
Robert Macfarlane reports: Individual plants are joined to one another by an underground hyphal network: a dazzlingly complex and collaborative structure that is often called the Wood Wide Web. It allows plants to distribute resources —sugar, nitrogen, and phosphorus— between one another. Even more remarkably, the network also allows plants to send one another warnings….
Read More about The secrets of the Wood Wide WebEducation/Awareness
“A forest is much more than what you see,” says forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery—trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes….
Read More about Video: How trees talk to each otherConsumerism/Lifestyle
The night is under assault, as indeed all planetary attributes are. Things that happen in the night, like plant respiration, the release of melatonin in our blood streams, the pollination of night-blooming flowers by a spectacular diversity of moths, the dark phase of circadian rhythms, the 24-hour timekeeper that nature abides by, are under attack….
Read More about Suprabha Seshan: Turn off the LightsConsumerism/Lifestyle
Science Daily reports: Mental illnesses and mood disorders are common in cities, scientists found that this is partly due to the reduced access to nature. The authors of the study published in the journal Science said that the growing tensions from the necessary role of the urban cities have disconnected humans from the natural world….
Read More about Video & Report: Disconnect with nature driving mental illness in urban areas
Culture/Cognition
Aseem Shrivastava writes: A species that endangers other species endangers itself. This simple lesson in interdependence is the first principle of ecology, a commonsensical science of such far-reaching and enduring contemporary significance as to merit a compulsory education for all humans; for nothing is more perilous for human destiny today than ecological illiteracy and myopia….
Read More about Who is the dumb primate, really?Bookshelf
Kurt Cobb writes: Latour understands that the natural world — which politics has always held at arm’s length while nevertheless dealing daily with nature’s demands — must now explicitly invite that natural world to the bargaining table. This is not about being a “nature lover” who only cares about animals and plants, but not about humans….
Read More about Bookshelf: The Politics of Nature by Bruno Latour
From the 17th century text Hortus Malabaricus
Culture/Cognition
Manu Saunders writes: What will be the consequences if the perceived connection between scientific endeavor and the natural world continues to weaken? Presenting nature study as a pleasant but scientifically irrelevant hobby may have beneficial effects on our health and well-being, but it’ll damage our understanding of environmental issues and therefore our understanding of science….
Read More about The dangers of separating science and environment
CLIMATE CRISIS
A new study provides one of the strongest cases yet that Earth has entered a new geological epoch. The question of whether humans’ environmental impact has tipped Earth into an “Anthropocene” – ending the current Holocene which began 12,000 years ago – will be put to the geological body that formally approves such time divisions….
Read More about Human impact has pushed Earth into the Anthropocene, scientists say
