the way forward on climate

[tielan]

The Library At The End Of The World

So. This is my country. The kind of people who'd buy farms in Tasmania and move down there to make their own 'bunker communities' are the kind of people I know. I think I might be that kind of people if I wasn't so rooted in communities here in Sydney. My people - my family, my friends, my social connections - are here. And, also, the world isn't large enough to sustain all of us moving to the country and eating a lot of peaches. Look, if I can grown more peaches on what isn't even a quarter-acre (1000sqm) block and hold down a full-time job, then so can a lot of other people.

But I may watch a little less telly in doing so. It's not terrible.

I like this article - yes, I've seen a lot of climate despair in my permaculture groups. I've seen a few people turn to a 'guns and guarding' mentality. I've seen the father of permaculture decide that it was more important to protest government than to protect the minorities who'd happily be thrown under the bus by the racists who organised those protests.

I'm reading (trying to read - I'm about as good at reading as I am at watching TV) a book called 'Active Hope', which was written ten years ago, and is about our present situation: how to move towards hopeful futures instead of the dire situations that our common entertainment likes to portray.

As Mark O’Connell recently observed of the vision of imminent social collapse that motivates the American prepping and survivalist community, this is ‘a prediction of the future that could be offered only by someone who was never fully convinced by the idea of society in the first place.’

Also, a rather hilariously apt line

Certainly it doesn’t seem to be coincidental that so many climate doomers are white men; as Mary Heglar quipped recently, ‘only white men can afford to be lazy enough to quit … on themselves.’

Well, damn, sister! :D

But there is something better than despair, desperation, or becoming desperadoes.

‘What makes … hope radical is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is. Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it.’

Like deep adaptation, radical hope is a psychological practice as well as a political position. It requires us to accept the past is gone, and that the political and cultural assumptions that once shaped our world no longer hold true. It demands we learn to live with uncertainty and grief, and to face up to the reality of loss. But it also demands what Lear describes as ‘imaginative excellence’, a deliberate fostering of the flexibility and courage necessary to ‘facilitate a creative and appropriate response to the world’s challenges’ that will enable us to envision new alliances and open up new possibilities, even in the face of catastrophe.

If there's anyone out there who's interested in futures of hope, I recommend 'Active Hope', '470' by Linda Woodrow, and 'Retrosuburbia' by David Holmgren. No, I'm not pleased with Holmgren's recent actions, but the concept of Retrosuburbia needed to be addressed in permaculture/prepping communities because we can't all tree change for survival; we don't all have the ability to do so, and the arable land component isn't large enough. We're going to have to make do with what we have, and that means cities - in some cases apartment blocks, in some cases low-medium density housing.

Anyway, I've had a morning. Chooken medication, catten to the vet, work issues, all of it all at once.

I just need a bit of time to recover. Some sleep would be good. I feel like I got a few nights of really good sleep and then I pulled something in my butt and the next thing I know it's all achey and hard to sleep again.