Understanding our deep roots and the sustainability crisis

Sustainable Human was founded by Dawn and Chris Agnos as a way to explore the deep story-level roots of our many sustainability crises and offer alternative stories that are better able to meet the needs of not only humans but all of the biosphere as well.

Dawn and Chris said: “We work to expose the faulty thinking behind some of our common assumptions and create new stories that help us to live in harmony and peace with all life.”

Check out Sustainable Human.

The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere

Human industrial growth is systematically dismantling the natural ecosystems which constitute our life support system. Rightly so, there has been an enormous amount of attention given to climate change (though action to rapidly reduce emissions still lags far beyond what is required). Climate change  is becoming abrupt and runaway; and threatens just by itself to collapse societies, economies, and ultimately the biosphere.

At least 10 planetary boundaries exist that
 threaten to make the biosphere uninhabitable

Yet climate change is only one of at least ten global ecological catastrophes which threaten to destroy the global ecological system and portend an end to human beings, and perhaps all life. Ranging from nitrogen deposition to ocean acidification, and including such basics as soil, water, and air; virtually every ecological system upon which life depends is failing. Gaia is dying.

The threat to global ecological sustainability goes well beyond climate change, and represents a more systematic failing of current political and economic models. Namely, the commodification of natural ecosystems – that are our and all life’s habitat – and their unsustainable industrial clearance for short-term profit, is sheer ecocidal madness.

Read the essay by Dr Glen Barry on EcoInternet - “The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere.”

Talking 'Beneath the Wisteria' about being prepared

For more than a century now the Scouts of the world have aimed to be prepared.

Like the Scouts, we
 need to
 "Be prepared'.

That is an idea that each of us should heed and will be discussed at Saturday's gathering Beneath the Wisteria in Shepparton’s Maude St Mall, at which a local response to our changing climate will be considered.

Organizer, Mr Robert McLean, said there is an urgency and importance about responding to climate change; a need for decision and action with a haste that exceeds the imagination or understanding of most.

“We have seen less than a one degree increase in global temperatures over pre-industrial times and with a two degree increase already unavoidable, the damaging weather events never before seen in recorded history can only become even more destructive,” he said.

“Like the Scouts”, he said, “We need to be prepared”.

“That shift in our thinking, our way of living,” Mr McLean said, “is going to demand a wholesale reappraisal of how we live, how we co-exist with our neighbours, our communities and, more broadly, others throughout the world.”

The scouting movement, he points out, wants to contribute to the education of young people, through a value system based on the promise and law, to help build a better world, where people are self-fulfilled as individuals and play a constructive role in society.

“We can morph that set of values into our response to climate change and in doing so help create a beautiful society in which people understand that humanity, despite our often grandiose beliefs, is really just a small part of the total biosphere,” Mr McLean said.

The Saturday, October 27, gathering Beneath the Wisteria, which is free and open to all, starts at 11:30am. Some seating is available, but those attending should bring a folding chair, along with an open and inquisitive mind.

“The implications of our changing climate are so grave,” Mr McLean said, “that all should join the conversation to be at least mentally and emotionally prepared.”