Environment
Why should we care that humans have set in motion the sixth mass extinction of species in earth’s history and a degree of climate change that risks our civilization? Rationally speaking, species come and go, including our own. Caring about the environment is a matter of the heart, about what we truly value, what is sacred to us. Tikkun holds that an environmentalism that doesn't explicitly challenge the ethos of materialism and selfishness generated by global capitalism, which leads people to consume recklessly and without regard to the consequences for the planet, will fail. A successful environmentalism must also consciously connect with and draw on the deepest wells of spirituality in our culture, our awe and wonder at the universe, and our ability to care for each other. In these articles, scientists, activists, spiritual teachers, and others cover the territory.
Eco-Spirituality
Earth Democracy and the Rights of Mother Earth
by Vandana Shiva
The ecological and economic problems we face are rooted in a series of reductionist steps, which have shrunk our imagination and our identity, our purpose on the earth, and the instruments we use to meet our needs. We are first and foremost earth citizens.
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Environment
The Loss and Recovery of Relatives
by Winona LaDuke
The headwaters of both the Mississippi and Red River watersheds emerge from our territory, here at Anishinaabe Akiing, and from these same waters come our sturgeon. The most majestic of fish lived well with our people, and sustained us through many of the coldest winter months. It was, however, not to last.
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Environment
We Are All Facing Extinction
by Susan Griffin
We live in a society that pits the needs of human beings against nature. Over and over again, through advertisements and public pronouncements, we’re urged to sacrifice forests, mountaintops, rivers, wholes species, or even the quality of the air we breathe so we can have energy, jobs, economic well-being. But the conflict that is conjured by corporate interests between what we need and the needs of the earth should not be confused with the human condition.
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Environment
Transforming the Economy: Linking Hands Across the Social and Environmental Divide
by Helena Norberg-Hodge
Climate change and extinction are both too narrow. We need to move beyond ecological concerns to reach out to the ever-larger proportion of society focused on eradicating injustice and poverty. We need to reach out to those who now live in fear of losing their livelihoods and homes.
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Environment
A Community Perspective on the Rights of Nature
by Shannon Biggs
Although we live two continents and nearly 11,000 miles apart, as community organizers, Desmond D’sa and I look at climate change from similar perspectives -- with our eyes on the ground in the places where we work. From these places, we see the results of the market-based global economic system as it transforms our communities and ecosystems into sacrifice zones for corporate profit.
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Environment
Why Extinction Matters at Least as Much as Climate Change
by Allen Kanner
The center of the ecological crisis is not the weather but the ongoing and wholesale destruction of life. We are in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction spasm, accompanied by unfathomable figures such as three to ten species, many of them millions of years old, being extinguished daily.
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Food/Hunger
Obama’s Deregulation of GMO Crops
by Robbie Hanna Anderman
Early this spring, while the world was distracted by Egypt’s uprising, President Barack Obama pushed the Secretary of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deregulate genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets in the United States. The USDA came through as he directed, totally deregulating these Monsanto-patented genes in early February.
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Environmental Activism
Shasta and Goliath: Bringing Down Corporate Rule
by Allen Kanner
Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process -- democracy.
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Eco-Spirituality
A Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World
by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack
Long before science, every tribe shared a "cosmology," that is, a big picture. If we construct a shared cosmology today, based on our best scientific understanding combined with a deep appreciation that in human brains the sense of reality is created by metaphor, it could transform our minds and thus our world.
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Food/Hunger
Tikkun of the Fertile Soil
by Ellen Davis
As a result of our current practices of industrialized agriculture, food chains and ecosystems are collapsing and extinction rates are soaring; human food systems -- involving food production, processing, transport, and distribution -- are strained, fragile, or broken; and hunger is again on the rise.
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