Jun 20, 2026
“Some people say that the climate crisis is something we have all created. But that is just another convenient lie. Because if everyone is guilty, then no one is to blame.” —Greta Thunberg It is hard not to notice that most of the world’s authentic movers and shakers are women. For the last ten years I have been asking myself and other people why this is. Surely it is not only because women are increasingly better educated than men. True, they make up the greater percentage of university graduates. But look at who’s attending protests for the rights of Nature or human rights. Visit classes that focus on the climate and ecological crises, and you’ll see that 75% or more of the participants are women. Why have men marginalized themselves to such a degree as to be almost irrelevant to social justice movements that include community participation? Certainly the chief aspiration of men is not to be a trillionaire or a half-baked authoritarian. This is extremely dangerous for an increasingly fragile democratic society. This article zooms in on how women have reinvented partnership societies and are leaving patriarchal type people bewildered. It wasn’t always like this. Read on. One of the most important books of the 20th century was The Chalice and the Blade, written by Riane Eisler in 1987. Its focus on Minoan civilization, which flourished in Crete from about 3000 BCE to about 1100 BCE, brings to the forefront what can be achieved by a society that cherishes the contributions of women. Over a thousand years of peace prevailed there. Eisler writes: “But with all of this, the many images of the Goddess in her dual aspect of life and death seem to express a view of the world in which the primary purpose of art, and of life, was not to conquer, pillage, and loot but to cultivate the earth and provide the material and spiritual wherewithal for a satisfying life… Contrary to the prevailing view of power symbolized by the Blade—the power to take away or to dominate—a very different view of power seems to have been the norm in these Neolithic Goddess-worshipping societies.” Listen to an exploration of the book at https://tinyurl.com/chalice-blade It should not come as a surprise, then, that after the destruction by male invaders of Crete more than 2000 years ago the Goddess’s followers would rise again to begin transforming present dominator societies. Through the last 60+ years women such as Rachel Carson and Jane Goodall have persevered in protecting Nature as well as human society from undemocratic and rapacious behaviour. They have been at the forefront of standing up to male dominance that would otherwise have destroyed the ecological fabric of many societies. It has become apparent that women have overwhelmingly become the leaders to protect local and regional communities from grotesque ecological and social inequities. Women like scientist Rachel Carson had to overcome enormous prejudice from the male dominated chemical industry in the 1960s, which launched campaigns against her solid scientific research
Jun 8, 2026
“Clearly, right now, climate change and environmental issues are not perceived as being high priorities for Canadians, and therefore they’re not priorities for the government.” —Steven Guilbeault The UN designated June 5 as World Environment Day (WED) in 1973, and it is hoped that by holding discussions on that day each year on a particular Nature-oriented theme even ordinary people would join in by making the protection and health of Nature an ongoing priority. Each year, a new country is the ambassador for a highlighted major world ecological concern, and actions are put into place to mitigate those concerns. This year Azerbaijan focuses on climate action and various biodiversity solutions that need to be initiated in light of the ongoing climate crisis in that country. https://tinyurl.com/nature-day We now find ourselves at a critical crossroads: current climate science is not being considered by governments’ economic policymakers. The University of Exeter and Carbon Tracker have released a report, “Recalibrating Climate Risk,” whichexplains “why economic models used by governments, central banks and investors are increasingly understating climate risks as the world moves towards 2°C. It shows how this can create a false sense of security—and why decision-makers should act now rather than wait for perfect models.” https://tinyurl.com/tracking-risks Let’s take two examples that highlight the need to bring together urgent climate and biodiversity concerns that clash with persistent economic growth models. Earth’s largest creature, the endangered blue whale, is on the cusp of not having enough krill (their main source of nutrition) to eat in the Antarctic, for two reasons. Climate is changing rapidly there, so the sea ice is melting, leading to a lack of protection for baby krill to feed. Furthermore, huge factory ships are sucking up thousands of tonnes of krill in the very areas that blue whales and other marine animals go to for sustenance. The craze for krill oil as a nutritional supplement has led for a demand to double the legal catch limit. For individuals to help blue whales recover, the remedy is simple: don’t buy krill oil. Some major pharmacies are already discontinuing stocking it. Rhona Kent, polar oceans programme manager at WWF-UK, explains: “Antarctic krill are the powerhouse of the Southern Ocean, and mismanagement of the krill fishery is having a major negative impact on species which depend on krill. WWF is calling for an immediate moratorium on krill fishing and a review of the sustainability certification issued by the Marine Stewardship Council.” Last October, states Yale University’s E360 report, “Norway began lobbying the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which manages the krill fishery, to double the allowable take in the Southern Ocean. The krill industry is worth as much as US$900 million annually.” https://tinyurl.com/krill-whales On the other side of the world, Iceland’s pristine cold waters are being contaminated by a burgeoning business of intensive aquatic farming. There, too, rising climate heating is contributing to a crisis for the Icelandic salmon. Currently, new Icelandic legislation is about to capitulate to the salmon industry and permit an increase in the size of the cages used in salmon
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
Mar 26, 2026
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” —W.H. Auden “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” —attributed to Benjamin Franklin “Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.” —Paul R. Ehrlich “Where water flows, equality grows.” —UN World Water Day International Day of Forests is marked on March 21, and World Water Day on March 22. Water and forests are critically intertwined. When there is deforestation of large tracts of primeval forest, a steady decline in water accessibility takes hold. The land heats up and biodiversity languishes. An article in ScienceDirect,“Trees, Forest and Water: cool insights for a hot world,” points out that a solution for our forests and water conservation is reachable:“Forests and trees must be recognized as prime regulators within the water, energy and carbon cycles. If these functions are ignored, planners will be unable to assess, adapt to or mitigate the impacts of changing land cover and climate. Our call to action targets a reversal of paradigms, from a carbon-centric model to one that treats the hydrologic and climate-cooling effects of trees and forests as the first order of priority.” https://tinyurl.com/water-trees-and-forests Women and girls are the first to experience water scarcity. UN World Water Day 2026 looks at how gender inequality affects women’s lives. In a powerful TED Talk titled “Water is a women’s issue. Here’s why,” water and sanitation campaigner Eleanor Allen focuses on how it is vital for communities to have clean drinking water and sanitation near their homes, schools and places of work. When this happens in areas of clean water scarcity or inadequate sanitation, women’s and girls’ lives are almost magically transformed, enabling them to pursue education and be free of the scourge of waterborne diseases as well as violence perpetrated against them. As a result, men’s lives are also vastly improved. https://tinyurl.com/eleanor-allen-water The UN World Water Day website elaborates: “Where people lack safe drinking water and sanitation close to home, inequalities increase, with women and girls bearing the brunt. They collect water. They manage water. They care for people made sick by unsafe water. They lose time, health, safety, and opportunities. And too often, the systems that govern water leave women and girls out of decision-making, leadership, funding and representation. This makes the water crisis a women’s crisis. We need a transformative, rights-based approach to solving these challenges, where women’s voices are heard and their agency recognized. All women must be equitably represented at all levels of water leadership – helping design every pipe and policy. And women must drive change in water as engineers, farmers, scientists, sanitation workers and community leaders.” https://tinyurl.com/observing-water-day The great biologist, Nature activist and may I say soothsayer (who sometimes predicted wrongly) Paul R. Ehrlich died this month. Over the last 30 years I have had the good fortune to read his books on overpopulation, consumption and
Dec 20, 2025
“Close your eyes, prick up your ears, and from the softest sound to the wildest noise, from the simplest tone to the highest harmony, from the most violent, passionate scream to the gentlest words of sweet reason, it is Nature who speaks, revealing her being, her power, her life, and her relatedness.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Humanity now faces perhaps the biggest choice it will ever make: continue down the road to a future devastated by climate change, dwindling Nature, degraded land, and polluted air, land and water, or change direction to secure a healthy planet, healthy people, and prosperity for all.” —Inger Anderson, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme “Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality.” —Alexander von Humboldt The recent launch of a major UN report on Nature assesses global crises and spells out how our urgent need to look for unconventional non-status-quo solutions translates into doable actions that then become a catalyst for a transformation Nature can then thrive on. By looking at such topics as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and waste and land degradation, as well as desertification issues, we can find equitable responses. Over three years the UN’s Environment Programme brought together nearly 300 scientists to create the Global Environment Outlook (GEO). This is the seventh edition under that endeavour—hence the name GEO-7. The report is 1242 pages long. There are multiple chapters covering food, oceans and coasts, freshwater, land and soil, Indigenous and local knowledge, and the social, ecological and economic goals of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but also financial systems solutions are explored to underscore solid successes. https://tinyurl.com/unep-geo-7 After assessing present worldwide on-the-ground situations, the report delves deeper into the critical transformations needed for a resilient functioning global society. It even looks at how beneficial a circular economy (as opposed to an economy based on extractivism, like ours) can be by limiting everything from plastic waste to agricultural pollution. GEO-7 tells us: “A global shift to a circular economy is a leading solution to the interconnected environmental crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, and pollution and waste… A circular flow of resources in the economy will also contribute positively to socioeconomic development while safeguarding Nature and people.” A Future We Choose: Why investing in Earth now can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all is GEO-7’s title for remaking in many instances the global north’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples, the global south and the biosphere. Diversity and inclusiveness are necessary if the tapestry of society is to be equitable, and social and ecological justice to have a fair chance of success. GEO-7’s raison d’être is based on detailing our largest human-created planetary problems and asking the difficult questions regarding the outlook for transformation towards a more just future. It “calls on all actors, governments, nongovernmental and multilateral organizations, the public, including Indigenous Peoples, civil society, academia and professional organizations, as well
