From Dense Discovery and Rosie Spinks.

In How I became ‘collapse aware’, Rosie Spinks articulates something many of us sense but struggle to name – that persistent feeling that we’re approaching the end of a particular way of life.

“It’s a nagging sense that has hung over modern life since 2020, or 2016, or 2008, or 2001 – pick your start date – that things are not working anymore. And that waiting for them to get better after the next Most Important Election of Our Lives, or another war to end, or a new economic recovery cycle doesn’t seem to be having the desired effects.”

It’s this shared unease that leads Spinks to explore the notion of collapse and how to respond to it: “To be collapse aware is to live with the sense that something about the way we live is coming to end. And then to ask the next obvious question head on: If the incrementalist approach of our existing political and economic structures is not up to the task of improving things – climate, society, inequality, injustice – what comes next?”

At the heart of her essay lies a simple framework that captures the dual reality many of us inhabit: There and Here.

“There is where I earn a living, and it’s where I have a mortgage, and order groceries for pickup. It’s where growth is uniformly seen as good, and we’re told that social problems have to be ameliorated while still upholding shareholder value... It’s a place where most of us are very burned out, in a manner that mirrors the exhaustion of the earth.”

Meanwhile, “Here is where I’ve internally accepted that infinite progress and wealth are not inevitable... Where life is less concerned with status, and more with sustenance. It’s a place where the entire economy is not based on getting consumers exactly what they want, where cheap flights and next-day delivery are not available... Where we adjust our lives accordingly, and rely on one another by necessity, rather than forging ahead pretending that everything is fine.”

What makes her essay compelling to me is her subtle reframing of collapse not as an endpoint, but as a transition from There to Here. Spinks reminds us that collapse doesn’t mean the end to “sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity, and meaning – just that it’s an end to our ‘normal modes’ of acquiring all those things.”

This distinction seems crucial, especially when she notes that “a lot of people are already living under collapse. Throughout history to today, people outside the countries we call ‘developed’ have seen their homes and land destroyed, and have experienced no shortage of violence under this paradigm. Those people still manage to have rich lives as they fight for survival and meaning. They still have children, celebrate festivals, write stories, and fall in love. We have a lot to learn from them.”

From this view, Spinks points to a possibility – that being forced to move beyond our obsession with material wealth might actually present a chance for healing and a renewed sense of presence:

“While I believe my son’s life may be materially worse off than my own, I think about how it could possibly be better too – psychologically, spiritually, and collectively. I think about how many of the social problems we lament – the mental health crisis among young people, especially young men; the cruel isolation of new motherhood; the normalization of depression and anxiety; the growing number of homeless and destitute people in the richest cities in the world – would be ameliorated by the kind of collective consciousness change I describe above.”

Rather than a catastrophe to fear, collapse awareness becomes an invitation to reassess our relationships with consumption, community and care. As we enter a season typically marked by excess, perhaps there’s wisdom in pausing to consider how we might begin moving from There to Here – not in fear or resignation, but in somewhat hopeful recognition that different ways of living and connecting await our discovery. – Kai

Source: Kottke.

Via Kottke.

The pinnacle of running Doom on things™ ;)

Website & Report.

• Global greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.0% in 2022 to reach their highest levels in human history, driven mainly by a rise in coal, oil, and gas use.
• The world is failing to cut emissions and remains far off track from limiting warming to 1.5°C as outlined in the Paris Agreement goals.
• Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted since the Paris Agreement have strengthened ambition somewhat but are still insufficient to narrow the emissions gap by 2030.
• High-income and high-emitting countries like the G20 need to take more ambitious action to cut emissions and support developing nations in their transitions.
• Land-based carbon dioxide removal and novel removal technologies will need to play a stronger role later in the century to achieve net-negative emissions targets.
• Clean energy transitions present opportunities for countries but also challenges, including entrenched fossil fuel interests and the need for international finance.
• Low- and middle-income countries can develop roadmaps for ambitious low-carbon development and specify their finance and technology needs.
• Carbon dioxide removal technologies require strong policy support, priority-setting, and accelerated innovation to play meaningful roles in mitigation.
• Equity principles must guide responsibilities for deploying large-scale carbon dioxide removal between countries.
• The next Conference of the Parties (COP28) is an opportunity to strengthen climate action and support for developing nations.

PDF Summary via Kagi.

Via Kottke.

I’m very fortunate to have a handful of new trees, some grass and public seating bookend the street I live in. One of my favourite times of the day to be out on my balcony is dusk, because when the sun starts setting and the hustle and bustle of the city subsides, a group of Indian myna birds, attracted by that greenery, playfully chirps and flies between the trees. The tweeting draws out neighbours, too, and creates a beautiful moment of connection through nature in an otherwise man-made environment.

An increasing body of research tells us that interaction with nature is associated with better body and brain health. Birds play a particular role in this, in part because they are some of the only animals able to venture into highly developed areas and give out calls audible to the human ear, providing a direct link to the natural world.

The pleasure we get from encountering nature can be explained through the biophilia hypothesis, the idea that humans have an innate affinity for life and living systems: “Human preferences toward things in nature, while refined through experience and culture, are hypothetically the product of biological evolution.”

This theory is guiding academic work but also urban and architectural design. For example, there is solid evidence that having a window looking out to living plants helps speed up the healing process of patients in hospitals. In educational settings, exposure to nature seems to help kids focus better, feel less anxious and improve memory.

It’s fair to conclude then that we need nature. But does nature need us? Probably not. Clive Thompson calls this the biophilia paradox: “Biophilia is asymmetric. We have biophilia, but nature doesn’t have ‘anthrophilia’. In fact, it’s the opposite: If humanity were to vanish tomorrow, the remaining plants and animals would set about rapidly reclaiming all the asphalted-over world we’ve created.”

There is a tragic irony here: our modern existence is largely incompatible with our biophilic need for nature. Our attempt to be closer to nature often comes at a cost to nature.

“We humans should be living a little more densely, to give nature more space away from us. Meanwhile, to satisfy our biophilia, we should be designing more nature into these denser human environments – using everything from an increased number of street-plants to town parks to ‘living walls’ on houses, and buildings that use more natural materials. … We need plants close to us – and far away from us. That’s the biophilia paradox.”

Source: Dense Discovery

Last week, an Australian climate protester, who blocked a lane of traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was sentenced to up to 15 months in prison under a new anti-protest law. It was one of many recent disruptive climate protests that seem to do little else than annoy and inconvenience everyone.

Our knee-jerk reaction to seeing someone throw soup at art or glue themselves to trains is usually contempt and anger. But I think when teenagers, grannies and scientists participate in activism that puts them at risk of going to jail and becoming the target of public scorn, it’s worth digging a little deeper.

First, we should remember that civil disobedience has long been a major tactic of nonviolent action. Whether in colonised Africa and India, in the American civil rights movement, or in the many labour, anti-war, social and racial justice movements, civil disobedience was used to provoke the government of the day, set a moral example and prompt broader discourse. It was also often loathed by much of the public because of its disruptive, divisive nature.

Most environmental movements have been around for a while. After decades of protests and marches, emissions are still going up, biodiversity loss is accelerating and hundreds of millions of people face an unlivable future. When the United Nations can issue a ‘code red for humanity’ and it’s only the third most important headline of the day, how effective is another courteous sit-in? When most of us have become numb to the daily shock and outrage in the news, how can activism cut through? Well, through theatrical, controversial actions.

But attention is not the only point. Our reaction to this sort of ‘performance activism’ also highlights a pretty major dissonance. We seem to be much more outraged about a defaced piece of art than a system that continues to trash and destroy the natural world we all depend on. The inconvenience of a delayed rush-hour commute infuriates us in ways that the prospect of frequent catastrophic ‘natural disasters’ does not. In reaction to the sentencing of the Sydney Harbour Bridge protester, the state’s conservative political leader said: “If protesters want to put our way of life at risk, they should have the book thrown at them.” It begs the question: who is putting our way of life at risk?

[...]

History tells us that harsher punishments do not stop activists. Considering what’s at stake today, I doubt it will this time. In the meantime, we can prepare for more disruption, keep the controversy in perspective, and think about where to channel our outrage. Like many protesters point out: if this kind of activism seems overly disruptive, we’ll be shocked to find out what climate change has in store for us. – Kai

Source: Dense Discovery

I admit I'm the first one getting annoyed at these protests when it impacts me -- because I already try to do my part, and am well aware of what's at stake. We should disrupt the industries and politicians over regular people.

But having it put in that way, and comparing it to previous protests, I agree we likely have little choice, and it has worked in the past, and will work again now.

At least, until everyone is aware and starts doing their part.

“Due to short life-spans and faulty memories, humans have a poor conception of how much of the natural world has been degraded by our actions, because our ‘baseline’ shifts with every generation, and sometimes even in an individual. In essence, what we see as pristine nature would be seen by our ancestors as hopelessly degraded, and what we see as degraded, our children will view as ‘natural’.”

Source: Dense Discovery

In the US, since the first European settlers arrived, 90% of virgin or ‘old growth’ forest has been destroyed. Today’s forests could be better described as ‘tree farms’ as they do not resemble the richly biodiverse forests that once were.

Another example are whale populations: in just one century we managed to reduce whale numbers by a whopping 99%. The impact of this is hugely complex: apparently the lack of whale poop reduced the fertilising effect on ocean algae levels, permanently crashing the productivity of ocean food webs and even altering global climate.

The Twitter thread has a lot of examples.

A more current and more widely understood example is the recent, dramatic decline of the insect population. Thanks to SBS, our children will most likely never know how many bugs ended up splattered on windshields during a road trip taken just a few decades ago.

The Windscreen phenomenon.

- A new Chatham House report highlights that the global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss. 

- Biodiversity loss will continue to accelerate, unless we change the way we produce food. Further destruction of ecosystems and habitats will threaten our ability to sustain human populations. 

- The new report calls for an urgent reform of food systems, suggesting three interdependent actions: changing global dietary patterns, protecting and setting aside land for nature, and farming in a more nature-friendly and biodiversity-supporting way. 

- Policy makers are urged to take a system-wide approach to account for the impacts of food systems, develop global guidance for change, and translate this to national targets. 

Source: UN

We definitely need to rethink how we produce and consume food.

But also, while mostly interesting for space travel, scientist find a way to grow plants in total darkness (i.e.: without photosynthesis). This could help with vertical farming inside buildings. It's also ~18x more efficient this way.

While we should not take that as an excuse to get rid of trees and greenery, this could maybe be used to grow in larger scale with less land usage.

Source: Nerdland

While I am sadly allergic (... in my eyes, of all places) to moulds -- these things are super pretty. This is the time for humanityto do more research on moulds and mycelium. I am convinced there's hidden potential in fungi.

Via Kottke, via barrywebbimages.

Images copyrighted by Barry Webb. Check out the Instagram account. <3

Enter “immune amnesia”, a mysterious phenomenon that’s been with us for millennia, though it was only discovered in 2012. Essentially, when you’re infected with measles, your immune system abruptly forgets every pathogen it’s ever encountered before — every cold, every bout of flu, every exposure to bacteria or viruses in the environment, every vaccination. The loss is near-total and permanent. Once the measles infection is over, current evidence suggests that your body has to re-learn what’s good and what’s bad almost from scratch.

“In a way, infection of the measles virus basically sets the immune system to default mode,” says Mansour Haeryfar, a professor of immunology at Western University, Canada, “as if it has never encountered any microbes in the past”.

(Source)

I only got halfway in the book "Immune: a Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive" by Kurzgesagt and then got distracted and stopped reading (I tend to do that -- I'll pick it up in a few weeks/months when my distractions are gone :) ) -- but I highly recommend everyone to read that book. It's fascinating!

The wondrous (tiny) world of plankton.

Phytoplankton (small plant-like cells) are producing half of all oxygen on earth by photosynthesis, like plants and trees do on land. Zooplankton are forming the base of the food chain of aquatic life. Plankton are also playing an important part in the global carbon cycle. The plankton are threatened by climate change, global warming and acidification of the oceans.

(Source)

Octopuses, crabs and lobsters will receive greater welfare protection in UK law following an LSE report which demonstrates that there is strong scientific evidence that these animals have the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm.

The UK government has today confirmed that the scope of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill will be extended to all decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs.

by LSE

More like this, please.

I believe the EU (or some members of) already had similar laws. I am not sure if they go as far, though.

We have to rethink the food industry. And these laws help go into the right direction.

Seeing it summarised like this, is quite depressing.

Definitely time for humanity to act, ban one-use anything, stop dumping trash left and right, or exporting it to poor countries.

There's some hope with ongoing projects that attempt to catch (bigger) plastic before they reach the oceans, or fish it out when floating in patches -- but it does feel a bit like "too little, too late". And that won't help with the microplastics and beads that are generally too small to catch.

A million (!) animals die very year, just because of plastic. Let alone the effects on the surviving animals, and us, humans.

I'll be donating to The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, through my employer, that'll match my offer.