As I write this, another holiday season is passing into memory while the current year expires and a new one waits to be born. With the Winter Solstice just past, the days are once again lengthening even as they turn colder in the long months before the green pulse of spring quickens and growth returns to the land. This particular…
The trail through the snow was easy enough to follow at night, without a flashlight to show the way. Pausing occasionally, I’d wait until my eyes could discern the subtly darker shadow that snaked through a stand of fir and pine: a trail carved by my boots and supplemented by occasional moose, maybe elk or coyote. On the blackest nights,…
Blackness, darkness, emptiness–this time of year, where we are at the apex of the slumbering sunlight, gives us permission to enter the realm of soul and emotion. It is time for a cyclical death. Not too long ago, I chose to forego the winter holiday celebrations with friends and family each year, and instead, hibernate. It was a deliberate space…
During this illuminating talk and slideshow at ABC Home in New York City, Paul Hawken circles back with us 18 months after the launch of Project Drawdown, a living research effort to reduce and sequester carbon as outlined in his book, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. What has the response to his extensive research been from…
The following is an excerpt of a talk Charles Eisenstein gave about his new book, Climate: A New Story. The key concept of my new book, Climate: A New Story, sees the earth as a living planet, unlike the conventional climate discourse, which is heavily influenced by a geo-mechanical view of the world. From that view, fixing the planet becomes…
Adam Frank is an oddsmaker on the grandest scale. Thirty years ago, he says, science did not even know that planets existed outside the Solar System. But a revolution in data and observations has changed that. In a big way. We now know, he says, that not only are there other planets but that a few of them, like Earth,…
I still remember the event that made me into an environmentalist. I was seven or eight years old, standing outside with my father watching a large flock of starlings fly past. “That’s a big flock of birds,” I said. My father told me then about the passenger pigeon, whose flocks once filled the skies, so vast that they stretched from…
“Only the contemplative mind has the ability to hold the reality of what is and the possibility of what could be.” -Richard Rohr Reading the headlines these days is a sure way to experience fear and despair. This is especially true about climate change and the environment. After all, what good news is there when Scott Pruitt is finally forced…