The “Great Dying” Has Begun. Only Transforming the Economy Can Stop It

Extinction has threatened Earth’s plant and animal life several times over the planet’s multibillion-year history. During the mass extinction event called the “Great Dying,” around 250 million years ago, 96% of all marine species died out — gone forever.

Life is again headed for total collapse and only total
transformation of how we can live will slow it down.

Life is once again headed for total collapse. While coverage of last week’s major Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report on biodiversity loss rightly played up the dire numbers — an estimated 1 million species gone by 2050 — what’s truly remarkable are the solutions the authors offer in response. Ditching the timid pragmatism of technocrats, these scientists are calling for nothing less than the total transformation of the global economy. Producing for profit has failed us, they say, and failed the planet. We need a new system.

Only “transformative change” can stop massive species loss, according to the report’s conclusion. That means overhauling the global economy to prioritize human well-being and environmental sustainability rather than the pursuit of profit. “We’re not addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, which is the way we organize economies, production and consumption patterns, our institutions, and our rules,” says Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers, associate professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University and a coordinating lead author of the IPBES report. “We need to transform the sheer fabric of our society to become more sustainable.”

Read the One Zero story by Casey Williams - “The “Great Dying” Has Begun. Only Transforming the Economy Can Stop It.”

Slipping on the banana peel, now let's unpack that

Our supermarkets seem determined to prove the adage that life is stranger than fiction, or at least more absurd.

Bananas in nature's packaging.

Here I was, planning to write about recycling and casting about for the perfect metaphor to encapsulate our warped attitude to waste.

Enter Woolworths and the case of the pre-packed bananas. A Reddit user posted a photo of bananas in plastic packaging at a local Woolies, the thread went viral and the media followed up.

A Woolworths spokeswoman defended the packaging, saying customers preferred it and anyway it only happened in Queensland.

Let’s, er, unpack that for a moment.

Read the comment by Caitlin Fitzsimmons in The Age - “Slipping on the banana peel, now let's unpack that.”

Breakthrough explains a package of essentials for safe climate restoration

Breakthrough is a platform for organisations, and individuals who are seeking to explore and develop sounds strategies to restore safe climate conditions.

Breakthrough explores the concept of safe climate restoration through a range of forums that aim to ignite the energy to develop a coordinated effort to take action for safe climate restoration.

Breakthrough has emerged from a growing need to develop a more coordinated approach to climate action and seeks to help align and define high level emergency scale strategies across environmental and social movements.

Breakthrough provides a chance to explore leading work by those who are working with climate restoration at the core of their work.

Breakthrough has now released a chart explaining clearly what policy is needed if we are to restore a safe climate.

“It seems,” is says “that what is essential to achieve for our planet is impossible. At both the state and national levels our environment and way of life is facing unprecedented threats.

“We have to face it, conventional political change methods have not worked. Clearly a breakthrough is needed.”

We have run out of time for half measures it argues and it is now imperative that we work to restore a safe climate as fast as humanly possible. This will require action at emergency scale and speed.

“To help harness the desire for rapid change and to help energise the climate movement at this critical time, the National Centre for Climate Restoration (Breakthrough) has been established to engage with a range of groups and activists to create the groundswell needed to build a new momentum for urgent climate restoration,” it says.

Breakthrough is leading with an intention to reinvigorate collective action and help facilitate stronger collaboration.

Wisdom is our last resort

U.S. president Barack Obama was strongly
supported by the crowd at the University
of Queensland when he mentioned
climate change.

Wisdom is our last resort in fending off the worst of climate change.

Sadly it is a quality which has eluded many of the world’s leaders who are hostage to the idea that a burgeoning economy and its implicit growth will position all nations to deal with the unfolding dilemma of a damaged climate.

Unfortunately it is “game over” for the neo-liberals, who seemingly are unaware that nature bats last.

It takes a wise man to understand when a drought has started and someone of even greater wisdom to be able to comprehend that today’s behaviour is the foundation for the superstructure that will become your life.

Australia is presently governed by people who obviously understood that fundamentality and have risen to positions of power and influence, but like an in-grown toe-nail, that wisdom has lost its way, become painful and in terms of advancing Australia has become a burden, rather than a bonus.

Australia’s Treasurer, Joe Hockey, appeared on ABC24 today and struggled to answer questions from Barrie Cassidy about the importance of including discussions about climate change on the G20 Summit agenda.

Adhering to his government’s line that the G20 was about the economy, which he said would help lift people out of poverty, secure jobs for millions and enrich the world’s infrastructure, Mr Hockey appeared unable to connect a healthy economy to a stable climate; a climate that ensures humanity, and the countless other species we depend upon, can survive and prosper.

The wisdom Australia so urgently needs is not be found in Canberra, and so wasn’t at the G20 Summit, but the wisdom does exist and was on show in the audience for the world to see when U.S. President, Barack Obama, spoke at the University of Queensland soon after arriving in Australia.