The contemporary, consensus understanding of life as a characteristic of individuals is giving way to something more expansive. Life makes more sense when viewed as a planetary process and this has important ramifications for human identity and our relationship with other species.

The concept of an individual living organism is a projection of our modern, atomistic sense of self. A sense of separateness may, at least, reduce well being and, at worst, be considered the root trauma of modernity. This suffering manifests, at the planetary level, as the collapse of biodiversity.

Where reductionist science leads, education is compelled to follow. Children are taught that living things eat, shit, fuck and die. Apparently, our principle characteristic is survival in an uncaring universe; the ubiquitous battle against entropy.

Worse, fundamentalists like Dawkins insist we are selfish automatons, dancing to the beat of a maniac drummer who pounds on a xylophone of DNA that coils, inexplicably out of the Big Bang, through our minds and into the inevitable big chill of thermal death.

No wonder our kids plugin to digital dystopias for light relief.

If life was a characteristic of individual beings we might expect to find some, randomly floating in space. Clearly, this is impossible. Life requires the support system we call a biosphere in order to exist. This is not a trivial point, if you are dragged into space you will die in seconds.

The biosphere regulates against the harsh extremes of space principally via an energetically activated atmosphere. Within this, it provides for every other biological need.

As new creatures on an extended branch of the tree of life we have evolved out of billions of years of prior evolution that has literally laid the ground for us. The fertile soil we walk on, is everything that lived before us, dead. Most species that have ever existed are extinct. Those that remain are our natural bed fellows. We are perfectly nestled within this unfathomably rich, living matrix.

No planet could be only partly alive. If a dead planet suddenly had a miraculous life event in a cave – what would be the chance of it surviving just there? A single hit from a meteorite, violent solar activity, a gamma ray burst, any random celestial event could wipe it out. Over a long enough time period extinction is inevitable.

The only way a miraculous life event can become an effectively immortal living process is to spread over the entire planet and turn into Gaia.

Once a planet is alive, it creates an atmosphere that shields and protects. It creates myriad forms. It digs in, lays soil and reaches up to collect more light. The increasingly complex living fabric of the world is resilient. A meteorite may tear up one part but it grows over, heals and diversifies.

Our biology of eating, breathing and excreting is the continuous cycling of matter through the network of beings that is the planet’s living fabric. Separation is a temporary illusion. When we die our atoms continue, “Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.”

Understanding ourselves to be a small part of something bigger is both humbling and ennobling. Domination is not only impossible, attempting it is self defeating. Nature isn’t a resource to be chopped up and sold. In a very practical sense, it is us.

Industrial, technologists may think that we can afford to lose a significant chunk of the biosphere’s diversity. Perhaps we can muddle on without those little known fish, plant or amphibian species? Perhaps we will find a technological replacement to fulfil their ecological function? Perhaps not.

These vague assumptions underly the rubric of the ideology of a continuous growth economy and to say it is risky is the understatement of the aeon. The fire-sale of the life-support systems that sustain us ends with a collapse of civilisation. This isn’t sensationalist indeed it has been the destiny of all civilisations that don’t become planetary.

Rather than trying to achieve absolute ecological control as a “god species” we can acknowledge the innate, tried and tested genius of the natural world. It has successfully held the ravages of space at bay for billions of years.

The surest way of being sustainable is simply by leaving natural systems in place – by preserving vast tracks of wilderness. As Gregory Bateson put it, “I surrender to the belief that my knowing is a small part of a wider integrated knowing that knits the entire biosphere or creation.”

We can use the genius of our technology to live thrilling lives in the spaces in-between the crucial life-sustaining ecological zones. Our planet can remain largely forested, large terrestrial mammals can roam the land and the seas can be full of life – surely the world most of us actually want to live on?

With the natural infrastructure of our world in place we gain stability. We can slow and then reverse global warming and reverse the acidification of the oceans. We can preserve biodiversity and ensure healthy food supply. This opens up the future to our civilisation – the time we need to become a multi-planet species. Human technology could be the means by which Gaia becomes fertile. Fertilising a distant planet will require extended time in space. To stay alive, our vessel must contain a mini-ecosystem to provide air, food and water.

A NASA designed space colony from the 1970s housing about 10,000 people

To our single-planet perspective, space may seem inhospitable. But individuals are to the biosphere as living planets are to the universe. Gaia creates the conditions that enable life and the universe creates the conditions that enable Gaias – the “anthropic principle.” Does this universe want to be alive?

Living processes may seem to contradict the second law of thermodynamics but biology emerged out of physics. The laws of  physics dictate the structure of DNA, and is stability and computational properties all flow out of that structure.

If our universe seems acutely poised as a crucible of life, and if life appears to be gravitated towards complexity, it seems a wilful blasphemy to insist life is random, pointless and will end in darkness. Couldn’t life actually be the driving force of the universe? A process by which the cosmos awakens and knows itself?

Billions of years hence mightn’t our decedents, using technology we cannot fathom, bypass the universe’s entropic, thermal death by seeding a new universe that contains again, the fine-tuned physical laws that will bring forth life. This biocentrism solves the anthropic conundrum and the God Delusion.

The science project, perhaps paradoxically, pushes humanity to the periphery. Copernicus shattered the babyish illusion that our species is at the centre of the universe. Every subsequent discovery pushes us further out. Not only are we not the pinnacle of complexity there may be at least 30 billion other planets in the universe capable of life and therefore sentience and technology. As our own glory fades the systems of which we are a part shine brighter.

Just as a baby’s life enriches when it becomes aware of others, so our civilisation can relish getting over itself. Consciousness does not reside solely in our skulls.

Alien God

There may well be galaxy-spanning civilisations out there, comprised of species that evolved beyond war with their own biospheres eons ago. These species may eye us with wary caution. Clutching our nuclear weapons for national “security”, fighting wars for “peace” demonising our own sexuality and systematically selling each other the life and culture we innately are.

We are not so much conflicted as poised on an evolutionary razor. We could just as easily tip into oblivion as ride out of the darkness of competition. As Bucky Fuller put it “We know now what we could never have known before — that we now have the option for all humanity to ‘make it’ successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.”

The anthropic principle groups thinking around why our universe appears fine-tuned to create life. It seems that we are what happens if you give a universe like ours enough time.

Today, civilisation hangs in the balance and our generation will determine the fate of life on this world for tens of thousands of years. Competition for economic growth or cooperation for planetary health? Our choices will make the difference.

Reinterpreting life, not as a property of individuals, but as a property of planets leads us to the inevitable conclusion. You, me, we… are Gaia. So what shall we choose?

The post Life is Planetary appeared first on EcoHustler.

“Our hearts know that a more beautiful world is possible; but our minds do not know how it’s possible”. In this intelligent and inspiring talk, writer and visionary Charles Eisenstein explores how we can make the transition from the old story of separation, competition and self-interest to a new Story of the People.

Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution.

His books (The Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics) as well as his other essays and blog posts on web magazines have generated a vast online following; he speaks frequently at conferences and other events, and gives numerous interviews on radio and podcasts. Writing in Ode magazine’s “25 Intelligent Optimists” issue, David Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World) called Eisenstein “one of the up-and-coming great minds of our time.”

Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, and spent the next ten years as a Chinese-English translator. He currently lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife and three sons.

And an old classic!

The post A New Story of the People: Charles Eisenstein at TEDxWhitechapel appeared first on EcoHustler.

DAMOCRACY: A documentary that debunks the myth of large-scale dams as clean energy and a solution to climate change. It records the priceless cultural and natural heritage the world would lose in the Amazon and Mesopotamia if two planned large-scale dams are built, Belo Monte dam in Brazil, and Ilisu dam in Turkey. DAMOCRACY is a story of resistance by the thousands of people who will be displaced, and a call to world to support their struggle. More info at http://www.damocracy.org

The post DAMOCRACY The Movie appeared first on EcoHustler.

I have that satisfied feeling of one whom has solved a niggling eco-conundrum.

You know that downer when you finish a container?

You have just managed to extract the last grams of product. You have cut it open with scissors and scooped what couldn’t be squeezed, and there it sits, in your hand… an abomination.

There remains a lump of petroleum, processed at great heat and expense into colourful plastic, designed to temp you, like a bee to a flower, to buzz over in the supermarket and part with your cash.

But we are not bees, and this is no flower. This colourful plastic is a toxic burden. Even if it is recycled a few times at great energetic expense  it will most likely end up clogging up a life process somewhere before breaking down into billion toxic bum-outs.

Perhaps our purchase will end up floating in a distant ocean and then fed to a starving albatross chick by its well-meaning mother? Perhaps the dioxins will show up in previously pristine arctic ecosystems?

I don’t want to be no Ancient Mariner and I don’t want to keep buying plastic. Enough! I want the brands I use to innovate new ways for me to access product without wrapping it in ecological harm.

This seems is a challenge most brands fiddle with, but do not fix.

I work in a busy, professional part of town. Everyday, I see well-groomed, highly professional captains of industry march purposefully out for their lunch. Amazingly, many of them trot into Pret-A-Manger and trot out gayly swinging sick little bags at their sides.

These bags are made of paper (yes, a chopped down tree) and contain a medley of paper napkins, a coffee cup / can / bottle, plastic lids and cutlery and a plastic sandwich box. It is a significant weight of material that these goons intend to toss casually into the bin 20 minutes later.

Pret markets it self as “Fresh and Natural”. I invite the marketeers to contemplate the vast waste stream pumped diurnally from Pret stores into nature. Its as fresh and natural as the River Styx.

Marks and Spencer’s take sustainability so seriously they have a Plan A (“because there is no Plan B”). Great work! But how come their packaging looks exactly like Tescos or Lidl or Iceland? When are the so-called “superior” supermarkets going to give us superior packaging? Better yet – reusable tupperware that can be refilled in-store.

Thank God for Lush – one of the few brands making truly sustainable products we can use everyday.

I just tried their shampoo bar for the first time. It comes in a neat reusable tin – a perfect handy size for stashing precious items. 

Unscrewing the lid revealed something that looks like a cake of soap coated in 100s and 1000s. It smells of cinnamon. Because they contain no water, they are highly concentrated. One bar could give 100 washes – a significant plastic dodge.

I wanted this to work but I was braced for a disappointing, low-suds experience.

No need to worry. Rubbing the bar on my hair it immediately frothed-up satisfactorily. Once done it goes back in the tin – great for travel or the gym.

Stepping outside I feel good. Running my hand through my hair – that feels good too – soft and bouncy. But wait, thats not it. I feel great because I have one less albatross hanging around my neck.

Nice work Lush!

The post Lush Hair Dude!! appeared first on EcoHustler.

By Hannibal Rhoades

“Everyday when you’re walking down the street, everybody that you meet has an original point of view.”

Children of the late eighties/ nineties will no doubt recognize this as the astutely observational opening line of beloved TV show ‘Arthur.’ (See here if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.) But much has changed since this anthropomorphic aardvark was shuffling down the sidewalk in his mid-90’s heyday. Chances are that nowadays, when walking down the proverbial street, everybody that you meet will also be packing the latest piece of high tech gadgetry.

Personal technology has become an indispensable social appendage for residents of richer countries but with at least 5.9 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, the relentless spread of these gizmos is global. In Africa, for example, half of the continents population is believed to own a mobile phone and numbers are on the rise. Going by the latest stats, that’s over 500 million mobile owners.

Stats like these make mind boggling reading and considered alongside the advertising terminology surrounding our technology it is easy to get the impression that the whole world today truly is ‘connected’ (the tech industries favorite buzzword).

In some ways this is true. If you really wanted to you could email your brother in Papua New Guinea, chat with a long lost aunt in Texas and order an Ikea flat-pack breakfast bar at the same time. All from the comfort of your flat in London. But there is a downside to the technology sector many are not aware of.

Open pit copper mine

In a new publication concerning the impacts that our lust for gadgetry are having on the Earth, The Gaia Foundation draws our attention to the murkier side of this tale. Entitled ‘Short Circuit’ the report walks the reader through the lifecycle of our electronic products, flagging up inconvenient truths of their biographies at each stage, from life to death.

Ultimately it aims to highlight the irony that as we become more ‘connected’ by our technology, we are becoming disconnected from the Earth and the impacts we are having on it, some of which are directly generated by our thirst for gadgetry.

In order to mine the raw materials necessary for electronics manufacture, land grabs are being initiated on a huge scale by vast corporations world wide to secure resources. This process often goes hand in hand with dispossessing local communities of their land, destroying livelihoods.

Once ‘purchased’ land is then strafed for ores and minerals, pulled from the body of the Earth in mines across the globe. Needless to say these devastate local habitats, pollute water sources and create waste deserts where once life flourished.

The litany of elements necessary for production are then transported across vast tracts of ocean and land for manufacture in outsourcing hotspots such as China. Here workers are paid a pittance for dangerously long hours spent feverishly assembling circuit boards, computers and phones whose production proffers pollution and toxic waste.

This story of origin is subsequently hidden from the consumer behind the perfect packaging and super-sleek design of our gadgets, the cleanliness of which belies the environmentally noxious legacy they have left and continue to leave in their wake as the lifecycle moves on.

Given a helpful nudge by the obsolescence built into much of our tech we are upgrading faster than ever before. Australians, for example, replace their mobiles every 12-18 months. But where does the procession of obsolete gadgetry end up if not the draw of miscellaneous odds and ends which graces most households?

The answer can be found in the particularly harrowing ‘end-of-life’ phase of our electronic goods. In a section that reads like Dante’s descent into Hell, ‘Short Circuit’ describes how our electronic cast offs find their way to E-wastelands where burning computers conjure towers of choking smoke, the rivers are black and sooty shanties crowd the peripheries like corrugated teeth at the mouth of Hades.

e-waste circuitboards

By documenting this category of unacceptable practices ‘Short Circuit’ drives home the message that our chronic disconnection from Earth, our only home, must stop. These poisonous deserts, created by the shipping of the ‘developed’ world’s techno-garbage to economically poorer nations, are perhaps the clearest visual example of the true costs of our throwaway consumer culture.

The report calls all of us to reconsider our consumption habits, the real drivers of this unsupportable lifecycle and reminds us that we, the couple on the train, the businessman, the hipster, do have the power to make a change.

Including details of inspiring initiatives for change emerging around the world ‘Short Circuit’ ends hopefully… Which brings me back to Arthur’s glorious musical intro that, like ‘Short Circuit’, asks you to:

“Open up your eyes. Open up your ears. Get together and make things better, by working together!”

———————–

You will be able to download the ‘Short Circuit’ Report for free here from Wednesday the 24^th of April. Hard copies are available on request from the Gaia Foundation.

Hannibal Rhoades is currently interning with The Gaia Foundation in London and is a contributor to Indigenous news journal ‘Intercontinental Cry’ where more of his writing can be found.

The post We need to talk about tech… appeared first on EcoHustler.

The post Rogue weather girls speaks truth to the USA appeared first on EcoHustler.