May 19, 2026
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,this is the best season of your life. —Wumen Huikai (1183–1260), translated by Stephen Mitchell “Our countryside is being drenched in pesticides, with devastating consequences for bees, birds, butterflies, rivers and the soil.” —Nina Schrank, campaigner with Greenpeace UK Adam Weymouth’s Lone Wolf: Walking the Line between Civilization and Wildness takes us on the journey of a wolf’s travels 1,600 kilometres through Europe in search of a mate. Guided by an electronic tracking device, Weymouth follows the wolf’s path through mountains and forests and along rivers. But this is more than a simple travelogue. We are privy to a history of grotesque wolf mythologies and witness the conversations of mountain farmers who for the most part would be more than pleased to kill the last European wolf. Here in North America ranchers even use helicopters and snowmobiles to kill these majestic and socially involved animals if traps and poison don’t find them first. Why, through many centuries, are we so obsessed with falsely believing wolves are Satan incarnate? Alaska’s bears are now sharing the same fate: no limits are placed on how many animals can be killed. There is no appreciation by Alaska’s government that the extermination of a local apex predator has catastrophic implications for a host of other species that rely on an intricate web of interactions. Well, of course they are well aware of the consequences, just as we are in our area when we witness deer populations rising due to a lack of predators. Scientists sometimes refer to the slow decline of a species to extinction as “death by 1,000 cuts.” This expression is more gruesome and graphic than you might expect. It links back to a centuries-old method of torture and execution in China that was practised until it was banned in 1905. The outcome of methodically cutting off portions of the body was a slow and excruciating death, but it was no particular cut that caused this. The expression as it is now used conveys just how difficult it is to know precisely the reasons for a species’ demise. The natural world is slowly being butchered at around 1.5 percent each year—and it is you and I who are doing the cutting. The planetary boundaries framework tells us what happens when humanity knowingly goes beyond what one analysis calls a “safe” threshold for “biotic intactness”—a measure of functional and genetic diversity (biodiversity). Biotic intactness has declined across at least 65% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface.https://tinyurl.com/world-boundaries Much has been written on this grim passage of the living to the dead. Insects in particular have been flagged as being on a life/death precipice. Because of their massive agricultural significance, bee species have come under immense scrutiny. Between pesticides and habitat destruction, bees are universally acknowledged as being endangered. https://tinyurl.com/1000-cuts-biodiversity On May 15, the 21st Endangered Species Day provided a global conversation to end the drivers of ecological
May 6, 2026
“There is a straight line of connection between the fossil fuel economy and armed conflicts at the global scale.” —Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister “To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of government; they create a desolation and call it peace…” —Tacitus, Roman historian AD 56 to c.120 “Somehow, I think, we need to find new kinds of imagining, new ways of being that will leave us less alone in this world, less the desolate lords of Tacitus’ victory field. Our aliveness, as well as all life that lies beyond the human, is at stake in this.” —Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive? For three decades Indigenous groups and the global south have been sidelined in favour of an industrial-based hegemony whereby the words “fossil fuels” never appeared (except at COP28 in 2023) in the final texts of UN COP summits, rendering the entire process farcical as well as profoundly flawed and tragic. The hopes of many at the COP30 in Brazil last November that fossil fuels would be vigorously exposed and repudiated for what they are were dashed. The frustration and disappointment voiced created a concrete demand for viable solutions on climate warming, and the despair changed to positivity and optimism last month when the first historically important Transition Away from Fossil Fuels conference took place in the city of Santa Marta, Colombia. https://transitionawayconference.com/home Jointly hosted with the Netherlands, it was attended by almost 60 countries as well as organizations such as the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative—which is a coalition of 18 countries, civil society organisations, 195 sub-national governments, 101 Nobel Laureates, 3,000 scientists and more than a million individuals. https://www.fossilfueltreaty.org/ The conference signals that the decades-long outrage about the disastrous effects of oil, gas and coal has finally borne fruit. Transition Away from Fossil Fuels actively aims to move us towards a renewable-energy-based future. Regarded as a breath of fresh air, the Santa Marta meeting focused on overcoming economic dependence on fossil fuels, transforming energy supply and demand, and advancing international cooperation and climate diplomacy. https://tinyurl.com/transition-away The debilitating consensus process that enables countries like Saudi Arabia and the accompanying oil lobbyists to sabotage the UN summits—and means that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has monumentally failed to steer the world away from a fossil-fuel-induced collision with climate breakdown—was duly eschewed by the Colombia/Netherlands initiative in favour of a system of decision-making that enabled the conference to come up with a clean, just and equitable way forward. There was no binding agreement on a specific time frame for action, but the attendees agreed to put into play climate frameworks that will bring the world closer to an end of fossil fuel dependency. The biggest immediate achievement at the conference was France’s commitment to implement a national roadmap to phase out its fossil fuels. Alongside the official programme, social movements and communities from across Latin America convened a two-day Conference for Fossil Fuel-Free Territories. This parallel process brought together Indigenous peoples, rural communities, Afro-descendant organizations, and environmental
