Predictions of ecological impacts as a result of global warming, inappropriate and destructive human development into vulnerable habitats, and unrealistic standard of living expectations have turned out to be disastrously accurate. The Colorado forest fires and the severe weather that has wreaked havoc through much of the Midwest, South, and Mid-Atlantic are indicators of the vastness of the changes underway, combined with our human inability to change our expectations about our lives even in the face of disaster. We have to start living differently. We have to start getting our lives back in synch with the planet before things really get out of hand.
Tags: climate change, coastal flooding, colorado forest fires, global warming, hurricane sandy, living beyond the end of the world, mountain pine beetle, national security agency, population growth, united nations world population prospects 2012 revisions, western drought
Fostering Ecological Hope Reflections on Culture and Meaning If you are engaged in work around our planetary crisis, it’s hard not to despair when you read NY Times front page articles like this one from Thursday: Relief in Every Window, But Global Worry, Too “In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line […]
Tags: air conditioners mumbai india, alienation from nature, china's economy slowing, climate change, global warming, heat waves, industrial growth, living beyond the end of the world, loaves and fishes, population growth, scarcity abundance
Fostering Ecological Hope Today from Margaret Swedish: Have you seen the scenes from Bangkok? This is a shattering event for one of the world’s major urban areas. [Video link] I can’t say this one unique event is due to global warming, yet, something inside tells us what we already know or intuit – these rain […]
Tags: christian parenti, climate change, immigration, increasing winter drought in mediterranean, living beyond the end of the world, migration, migration of mexicans to united states, noaa, stern review, tropic of chaos
Fostering Ecological Hope Today from Margaret Swedish: I have written of the Mississippi River before. It made up a good chunk of chapter one of my book, “Living Beyond the ‘End of the World:’ A Spirituality of Hope.” I recount there the long sad tale of our human efforts to channel, dig, levee, and otherwise […]
Tags: army corps of engineers, human hubris, levees, living beyond the end of the world, Mississippi River floods