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Sustainability

A Radical Way To Change The UN Security Council, Including Its Name

September 16, 2024 Stephen Crilly, Scheer Post. , , ,
What conditions might compel the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to relinquish their veto power? In exchange, what conditions might the other member states agree on to make it happen? These are important questions to pose to the public as the 193 member states negotiate a Pact for the Future for the upcoming Summit of the Future to ensure the organization’s usefulness for generations to come. Let us hope that the P5 — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — as well as other member states have the wisdom to institute reforms as soon as possible. Some Council reform proposals consider adding individual countries as permanent members, such as India or Brazil.

Young People Will Save The World; We’re The Last Generation That Can

September 14, 2024 Keara Sosa, Counter Punch. , , ,
The past 20 years have been critical in the fight for bold and sustainable climate solutions. The next five years will be even more vital — and young people like me are fighting hard to make sure our leaders get it right. Research shows we have about five years left to avert global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, the tipping point when even more severe climate disruptions could exacerbate hunger, conflict and drought worldwide. Climate change — long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil — impacts our livelihoods and our lives. It harms our health and well-being and threatens our access to vital resources, from water to food to housing.

A Tale Of Two Yarn-Makers Reviving The Local Mill

September 3, 2024 Marissa Tiel, Resilience. , , ,
For nearly a decade, the Spinsters were a fixture at the Bellingham Farmers Market. Their booth was easy to find: market goers just needed to look for their brightly coloured yarns in vibrant cyan and deep magenta. Founders Kate Burge and Rachel Price commuted to the market by bike — neither one owned a car at the time — and set up most Saturdays. The duo, who named their company Spincycle, specialized in a type of craft practised by few others in the early 2000s: kettle-dyeing and hand-spinning wool into beautiful skeins. Unlike most commercial yarns, which are spun and then dyed, the yarn Burge and Price create is dyed first, before it’s spun into yarn.

Human Rights Abuses In $40 Billion Tuna Industry Still A Major Problem

September 1, 2024 Greenpeace USA. , , , , ,
Fourteen out of 16 major US grocery retailers received failing grades in Greenpeace USA’s latest scorecard on tuna supply chain practices, highlighting ongoing issues in human rights and sustainability on the high seas. The new report, The High Cost of Cheap Tuna 2024, 3rd Edition, finds that while some retailers have made improvements in sourcing tuna, U.S. retailers’ current human rights and sustainability practices are failing. Of the 16 retailers, only Aldi and HyVee passed the scorecard and Trader Joe’s finished last, with a 12% score. Trader Joe’s score reflects the retailer’s failure to respond or complete a survey and its website providing almost zero transparency on its sustainability and human rights practices.

‘Sustainable Square Mile’ Tests Power Of Biden’s Billions For Climate Justice

August 28, 2024 Adam Mahoney, In These Times. , , , ,
Two days after a series of tornadoes ripped through Chicago’s South Side, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, Naomi Davis and Suzanne Waddell met in the front yard of Emmett Till’s childhood home to assess the damage. Fencing had been blown down. Their organization, Blacks in Green, founded by Davis in 2007, owns the historic landmark. It will open as a playhouse, community farm and museum in 2025, honoring the life the 14-year-old deserved to have. Even in 92-degree heat, people stopped by to take photos, a regular occurrence that reminds Davis of the larger duty marginalized people in America have ​“to remind each other of our greatness.”

Degrowth Aims To Achieve ‘Frugal Abundance’

August 26, 2024 Adrien Plomteux, Resilience. , , ,
Degrowth is about building societies in which everyone is rich – without much material. It is a desirable project to strive for. For critics, degrowth is not very appealing. According to them, it means impoverishment, restraint, scarcity, austerity or recession. It is seen as a project to reduce the overall prosperity of individuals and societies. In contrast, in a recently published academic article, I argue that degrowth aims to achieve abundance, prosperity and richness. Other degrowth advocates have reached a similar conclusion, but here I claim that it first requires rethinking the dominant meaning of abundance. It is impossible to promise everyone to achieve high levels of consumption.

The Messy Middle Paths Through Climate Breakdown

August 7, 2024 Jamie Bristow and Rosie Bell, DeSmog. , , , ,
In the escalating drama of climate breakdown — especially as we navigate the apparent crossing of the 1.5C warming threshold — a binary is emerging that wastes a huge amount of time, energy and passion, needlessly limiting our vision to confront and adapt to our situation at all levels of society: Are we (optimist) solutionists or (realist) doomers? As “optimists” we’re committed to the idea that it’s not too late to fix things (think ever steeper net zero pathways dependant on direct air capture). As “realists,” we’re committed to telling “the truth” of just how bad things are already (think cascading tipping points and trajectories towards Hothouse Earth).

Cry, The Beloved World

August 5, 2024 Gus Speth, Resilience. , , ,
Here is a topic miles away from the 2024 elections, though it should not be. Its political salience is just about zero, but it concerns the future of life on Earth. I could be referring to the recent surge in spending on nuclear weapons, but the devastation I will write about is slower yet no less problematic. If you are of a certain age, you may remember the children’s book, The Wump World. It first appeared in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day. Its message was clear. The bountiful, bucolic world of the Wumps, with its lovely bumbershoot trees and plentiful grasses for grazing, was denuded and impoverished by the Pollutians, who had colonized the Wump’s planet because they had destroyed their own.

Repair Café And Darning The Planet

July 26, 2024 Anahi Martinez Encinas and Dora Napolitano, Resilience. , , ,
Getting dressed is a universal human trait, but the textile industry is collapsing environmental systems everywhere. Relearning basic skills and taking back the agency in what we wear and how we wear it is an act of resistance and an invitation to reimagine ways to inhabit the planet. Repair Café & Darning the Planet practice will help you learn specific skills for visibly mending your own clothes and textiles in community. It will also encourage you to reflect about what making an item of clothing means. Zurciendo el planeta (Darning the Planet) creates spaces to learn and practice various mending and recreation techniques, responding to the specific needs of the garments that participants want to mend.

Canada Makes An Unprecedented Push For Multifamily Housing

July 19, 2024 Akielly Hu, Scheer Post. , , ,
For more than a century, zoning ordinances rooted in segregation have encouraged the construction of single-family homes, often at the expense of apartment buildings and other structures that promote urban density. Beyond contributing to a mounting housing shortage and spiraling prices, such policies have contributed to sprawl and dependence upon automobiles. Canada has decided to try something different.  The government has taken the unprecedented step of offering provincial governments billions of dollars in infrastructure funds with one catch: To receive it, they must require cities to abandon single-family zoning laws and allow the construction of fourplexes.

Tompkins County, The Finger Lakes Hub Of Sustainability

June 22, 2024 Dave Rollo, Resilience. , , ,
The Finger Lakes region of western New York State is distinguished by a series of long and narrow glacial valleys, dammed by moraine, that now contain lakes. Glacial scouring created some of the deepest lakes in North America, including Seneca, Cayuga, and Skaneateles lakes. These spectacular natural features give the region its identity. The region features ample farmland and forest and a relatively sparse population. Tompkins County, in the heart of the region, has experienced a steady 0.5% per year increase in population. But nearly all the surrounding counties have stable or slightly declining populations.

Study Finds Indicators Of Economic Growth Without Environmental Harm

June 10, 2024 Diego Ramos, Scheer Post. , , , ,
A recent study conducted by researchers from China, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Britain, and South Africa has found evidence of separation between economic growth and environmental degradation in China’s most economically significant lake basin. The Yangtze River Delta, which was studied by the team, accounts for only 4 percent of the country’s land area but a quarter of its gross domestic product (GDP). Some of China’s major industries, including chip, electric vehicle, robot and battery manufacturers and developers in software and artificial intelligence are concentrated in the delta.

Over 160 Groups Call On UN To Stop Promoting Carnivorous Fish Farming

June 9, 2024 Michaela Herrmann, DeSmog. , , , , ,
Over 160 experts and civil society groups are calling on the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to remove carnivorous fish farming from its definition of “sustainable aquaculture” ahead of World Ocean Day on 8 June. As industrial aquaculture expands globally, concerns are mounting among academics, fishing communities, and campaign groups about the environmental and social impacts of farming species like salmon, shrimp, and sea bass  – carnivorous fish that are reared on wild-caught fish for feed. The FAO has advocated for the growth of aquaculture and claims the sector can play a bigger role in feeding the world “sustainably” in the face of climate change and a growing global population – a stance the EU and salmon companies have eagerly echoed.

How Working For Place-Based Solutions Can Change The World

May 28, 2024 Patrick Mazza, Resilience. , , ,
In a world of onrushing crises, where the level of change required to meet them boggles the mind, even as too many trends are moving in the wrong direction, questions of “What will be enough?” and “Can it come soon enough?” surge to the foreground. There must be a place to begin grappling with the complex questions of societal transformation. A place to grab hold and gain enough leverage to begin making fundamental changes. That place is the communities and bioregions where we live. We must begin to build the future in place. Clearly we are over the line ecologically, as the planetary boundaries study I recently covered underscores.

The Refillery Is Coming For Your Grocery Store Routine

May 7, 2024 Kate Ray, Portside. , , , ,
“This is slow shopping,” says Roque Rodriguez about his refillery grocery store, Seed and Oil, in Woodside, Queens. “It’s about slowing down, being more present, being more aware: What’s the impact of the choice I just made? We educate folks when they come in, we talk to them, and you see people getting into the rhythm of it.” I don’t think it’s that much slower to shop at package-free stores like Seed and Oil—you bring your own container and weigh it, then you fill it up with the amount of rice or walnuts or Peanut M&Ms that you want to take home. But I get what he means.
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