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Robert Macfarlane: “the metaphors we use deliver us hope, or they foreclose possibility”
They say you should never meet your heroes. They’re wrong. I recently had the huge honour of spending almost an hour in conversation with Robert MacFarlane, author of 9 books including ‘Mountains of the Mind’, ‘The Old Ways’, ‘Landmarks’ and, most recently, ‘The Lost Words’. I have admired Robert’s work for many years, in particular his reflections on imagination and his determination to keep alive, in our minds and our culture, a whole library of words which help us better articulate our place in, and relationship with, the natural world. As well as being a writer, Robert teaches at Cambridge about language and landscape. As he told me, “the convergences of those two things, along with social justice and environmental justice, are the things I’ve written most about”.
Robert is one of the most fascinating people to follow on Twitter, and he had recently tweeted a quote by Rebecca Solnit where she said, “the destruction of the Earth is due in part to a failure of the imagination, or to its eclipse by systems of accounting that can’t count what matters.” So, I started by asking him how he would assess the state of health of our collective imagination in 2018? [Robert made a few changes to the transcript of our discussion, so you will find the transcript below more accurate, but we know how you love podcasts, so we’ll share the original audio too].
“Impoverished, vulnerable, but with surprising flourishings. In that quotation Rebecca challenges something she calls “the tyranny of the quantifiable”. Actually I suppose I would oddly say a word for the tyranny of the quantifiable. We need to quantify. It’s vital for change, not least how we measure our baselines – how we keep track of shifting baseline syndrome.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
If you care about changing society, focus on strengths
If you care about changing society, focus on strengths
Social movements, including those opposing globalisation, environmental destruction and racism, typically start with a problem; a sense that things aren’t right and that change is needed. Often, they are fed by anger at the injustice, the violence or the environmental destruction surrounding us. They are often premised on struggle and resistance.
In 2009, after both my daughters had started school, I was ready to become involved in social change groups again. A few years earlier I had become immersed in strengths-based approaches to working with communities and wanted to explore this approach in the context of social change.
The Transition movement offered this possibility. It addresses some of the big environmental challenges we face – including climate change, our addiction to oil, the skewed economy and the myth of endless expansion – by creating alternative visions for communities and starting practical projects that help get there.
It sees the crisis we face as an “opportunity for doing something different, something extraordinary”.
The aim of Transition is to help you be the catalyst in your community for an historic push to make where you live more resilient, healthier and bursting with strong local livelihoods, while also reducing its ecological footprint. (From What is Transition)
The Transition movement is an example of a strengths-based approach to social change. Rather than focusing on all the barriers we face in creating more sustainable communities, it focuses on opportunities and potential. Transition groups attempt to create the change they want to see.
They might create local currencies like in Brixton, UK; kitchen gardens like inAuroville, India; community owned power companies like in Fujino, Japan; or start local conversations exploring what neighbours can do together that they can’t do alone, as in Newcastle Australia.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Minority, Low-Income Communities Bear Disproportionate Share Of Risk From Oil Trains In California
People of color and low-income communities are bearing a disproportionate burden of risk from dangerous oil trains rolling through California, according to a new report by ForestEthics and Communities for a Better Environment.
Called “Crude Injustice On The Rails,” the report found that 80 percent of the 5.5 million Californians with homes in the oil train blast zone — the one-mile region around train tracks that would need to be evacuated in the event of an oil train derailment, explosion and fire — live in communities with predominantly minority, low-income or non-English speaking households.
Nine of California’s 10 largest cities that have oil train routes running through them have an even higher rate of “discriminatory impact,” the authors of the report found. In those cities, 82–100 percent of people living in the blast zone are in what they call “environmental justice communities.”
“In California you are 33 percent more likely to live in the blast zone if you live in a nonwhite, low income, or non-English speaking household,” Matt Krogh, ForestEthics extreme oil campaign director and one of the authors of the report, said in a statement.
New oil-by-rail rules inadequate
The Obama Administration released new oil-by-rail regulations in May that were heavily criticized as inadequate because the industry had too much influence over the final rules, which would not stop more incidents like the oil train derailment in North Dakota in May that led to an explosion and fire that burned for days. That was the fifth accident of its kind in theUS so far this year.
Massive fireballs and raging infernos often accompany oil train accidents because of the highly volatile Bakken crude they frequently carry. Yet, as Justin Mikulka wrote here on DeSmog, the US Department of Transportation’s new regulations are so weak as to be little more than “a guidebook for the oil and rail industries to continue doing business as usual when it comes to moving explosive Bakken crude oil by rail.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
