Fresh Ground for Ideas and Action - Responses to Climate Change
Is COVID-19 teaching us about Climate Change? Can we let go of preconceived conceptions of how we walk on this earth. We will literally need to reinvent so much. There is no one who wants to damage the fragile ecosystem of our green planet.
Yet, the earth has warmed only by one degree and already there are vast wildfires scorching the earth, while hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away. What will happen at three degrees when the heat starts to decrease food production and increase climate refugees?
If we can let go of preconceived notions, what is the transformation that will rebirth our communities into places that care for the earth and our own local soil.
There is so much to do. Our natural life-supporting systems need help from soil regeneration, to recreating forests, to building green housing, to installing green energy, to making it possible to produce more things for ourselves and our communities.
Thomas Homer Dixon, a good friend of our guest of honour Frances Westley makes the same point:
Today’s emerging pandemic could help catalyze an urgently needed tipping event in humanity’s collective moral values, priorities and sense of self and community. It could remind us of our common fate on a small, crowded planet with dwindling resources and fraying natural systems. (THD)
Joe Mancini, 2020 Virtual Mayors’ Dinner
How can we become the people who are capable of acting to make these changes? At the Working Centre ecological sustainability and care for our common home are at the center of our philosophy, and through each of our projects we are working out what it can look like to reshape our relationships to the rich ecologies around us.
We seek to consider the forces that are changing the climate, and to learn how we can collectively build a sustainable way forward.
Resources to Explore:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an international assembly of climate scientists who collect and assess the latest science about climate change: https://www.ipcc.ch
Carbon Brief is a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy: https://www.carbonbrief.org/
The Solutions to Climate Change that No One is Talking about with Robert Reich is a great overview of the systemic change that is needed and ideas for a way forward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuXURo0FUjM
Renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben advocates the end of the fossil fuel industry in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2020/apr/22/fossil-fuel-industry-stop-the-money-pipeline
Soil regeneration and renewing our food systems have a major part to play in our responses to climate change. Here are some videos that introduce some ideas:
Kiss The Ground – The Soil Story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08TI1RKj54g
Farmers Footprint – Regeneration: the Beginning https://farmersfootprint.us/watch/
One of our favourite books is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This lyrical book about the deep reciprocal nature of the living world firmly situations humans into the ecological cycles in a way that challenges and entices us to rethink our world view.
This book is available on our online catalogue:
https://catalogue.theworkingcentre.org/books/braiding-sweetgrass.
We also published a review of it in the June 2016 issues of Good Work News. The article starts on Page 6: https://www.theworkingcentre.org/sites/default/files/article_files/June2016GWN.pdf
Activities to Join:
- Climate Resilience Workshop Series
Weekly discussion where we explore the science and the ways that each of us can take action to create a hopeful and regenerative future. These conversations explore how the climate crisis is not only a material crisis, but also a social and spiritual crisis. They are a space of learning and reflection where we examine the impacts of climate change on our world and on ourselves. Climate change is impacting us at a global, local, and even personal level. In these discussions we examine the impacts at each level and in so doing explore pathways for building local resilience.
Each session has a set of readings and/or images to guide our conversation and online discussion. This is a forum for gathering to get to know our neighbours and foster community solidarity even while we are practicing physical distancing.
Come and swap ideas, gather resources, and build solidarity and creativity as we sort through these complexities. All are welcome!
The workshop runs for four weeks with each session focused on a different theme: 1) Introduction and Lament for a World Lost: Reflections on a Way Forward; 2) Food as Ecology and Nourishment: Strengthening Our Food Systems; 3) Rethinking Transportation, Community Bonds and Changing our Relationship to Space; 4) Building Local Resilience.
The next session will begin May 7. To register or for more information, send us an email at freshground@theworkingcentre.org
To join the conversation, to register for activities, for more information, or to share ideas, send us an email at freshground@theworkingcentre.org
