It’s Urgent: We’d Better Slow Down

Slow down enough to see the
simple beauty in a small leaf.

Things are getting urgent, aren’t they? The average global temperature is getting dangerously close to the 1.5 deg C limit signed in the Paris Agreement. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz has shown just how unstable the world’s oil supply is. The divide in political polarisation is growing precariously wide. The Arms Race has not abated. Geopolitical tensions are on the up.

In our own personal spheres, levels of anxiety, depression, and isolation are rising. The mental health of people is deteriorating, sometimes at an alarming rate.

We’ve got to do something.

The train known as humanity is rushing headlong, and with great urgency, toward a precipice. For some members of the human race, the train they were on has already tipped into the chasm.

The urge to do something may be the very factor that impels us closer towards disaster.

The words urgent and urge contain within them the dubious assumptions leading towards the abyss. The Latin word from which the words originate – urgere – means to press hard, push forward, force, drive, compel…

Yet, it is this pushing forward, characterised imprudently as progress, which has been one of the major features driving us to this point.

Thus, urgent as it is, we must slow down.

That’s a contradiction, isn’t it? Surely, if it’s urgent, we have to hurry up and do something about it.

Contradiction – no. Paradox – yes.

Paradox is ubiquitous. Our own lives attest to it. We see paradox almost everywhere we look. At the macro level of the multi-level crises alluded to above it is no less prevalent.

Yet, we do not seem to be capable of recognising the paradox that we should be awake to.

Simply put: Everything is Urgent: We Must Slow Down.

When we examine the various crises, we can see that one of the drivers of most, if not all, these crises is speed. Getting somewhere quicker. Obtaining material objects at a faster and faster rate. Speeding here, speeding there. Rush to work, speed through the in-box, get things achieved quickly (there’s a deadline to be met – urgently!) Rush home, maybe pick up the kids from school on the way. Buy fast-food for dinner, or a pre-cooked meal that can be prepared quickly. Take the dog for a quick walk around the block. Switch through channels on the TV or surf the internet. Head to bed and turn on the alarm; no time to sleep-in. Do it all again. Faster, faster, faster.

At an industrial level the same patterns get repeated. Make more and more stuff, at a quicker, more efficient, speed so that more money can be accrued. Exploit the earth and extract so-called “resources” to get ahead of the opposition and position the company at the head of the pack. Pay no attention to “externalities” (such as the birdlife, water quality, air quality, or soil erosion), so long as the “fuel” for continuous growth of the economy is ever present.

What if we slowed down enough to recognise and acknowledge the beauty in the world? Slowing down we would notice more beauty, like the beauty in a small dying leaf as shown in the illustration accompanying this blogpiece. What if we slowed down enough to feel love and empathy for our human and non-human co-inhabitants of this planet? What if we slowed down enough to listen to our children? What if we slowed down enough to sit quietly with an elderly relative? What if we slowed down enough to feel the beat of our own heart?

If we did these things, would we continue to exploit, destroy, and degrade the natural world?

I somehow don’t think so.

We would probably also enjoy our lives a lot more.

We would probably also allow many others around the world to enjoy their lives a lot more also.

Slowing down would also slow down, and in same cases halt, the crises that surround us.

If this all sounds too much, perhaps start with just one day a week. Make one day a Slow Day.

Sacred Revolt (a Review)

I began writing this weekly blog over fourteen years ago. In that time more than 60 book reviews have been posted. Never before have I reviewed a single academic paper, although many have been referred to. This review, however, is of an academic paper. I am reviewing it because I think it is one of the most important contributions to the discourse about the poly-crisis (aka, multi-crisis, ecological-social collapse) and/or sustainability issues.

The author, Sam Alexander, Ph.D., is the Director of the Simplicity Institute and lecturer in Environmental Programs at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

The full title of the paper is Sacred Revolt: Why Reverence Before Restraint Transforms the Limits-To-Growth Predicament. The paper was published just one week ago, on 8 July 2026. At the end of this review is a link to the paper where it can be downloaded. I strongly suggest reading the entire paper.

The Review

As the full title alludes, the current ecological crisis is often framed in terms of limits, how we keep within them (if at all) and thus become sustainable. Framed in this way, the questions that are asked are of the nature what do we do? These types of questions often comprise technological and mechanical answers on the one hand. Or, the answers suggest restraint, limitation, and self-control.

Neither answer satisfies Sam Alexander. We are failing with both approaches he claims. We need to ask an entirely different sort of question. We need to ask, he states, ‘How might humanity learn once again to love the world enough to not destroy it?’

A simple sounding question, isn’t it? Deepening the question poses more questions and a variety of answers.

Much of the literature in this field offer technological/mechanistic answers to the question, what do we do? A smaller section of the literature present critiques of these answers.

An even smaller segment of the library suggests kerbing consumption and the growth imperative.

Both these approaches are failing Alexander tells us.

The restraint approach fails because it does not adequately address the psychological and spiritual underpinnings of modernity. Modernity constructs and reinforces a strong worldview in its subjects (us humans) that coerces us into believing that our purpose can be found in continued progress, a success orientation, and an eternal future hope of betterment. Our self-identity, modernity tells us, is wrapped up in more; more possessions, more money, more power, and ultimately, more growth.

Against this, the restraint message comes across as limitation and having to give up something. Rather than restraint, our psyche receives the message as deprivation and scarcity.

Psychologically then, the message of restraint gets interpreted as a denial of our human destiny, whether we understand this consciously or not.

So, what does Sam Alexander prescribe?

Prior to submitting a prescription, Alexander notes that modernity has desacralized the world. Alexander is not advocating a religious revival here. He makes his position clear. ‘A desacralized world is not merely a world without gods. It is a world emptied of wonder, awe, and intrinsic significance.’

Sam Alexander reminds us of psychotherapist Erich Fromm’s classic 1976 book To Have or to Be? in which Fromm declares that modernity promises happiness and freedom via material possessions and a domination over nature. This is the have mode. The Be mode, on the other hand, he posits as more fulfilling.

To Be is to partake in the world in a reverential manner. Furthermore, as Alexander notes, ‘reverence deepens rather than expands.’

He elaborates on this by explaining that ‘The ecological question cannot ultimately be separated from the question of what human beings consider sacred.’

This leads Alexander to offer the phrase Sacred Revolt, which he describes as ‘a cultural and existential rebellion against the reduction of existence to commodity, utility, and exchange-value.’

A sacred revolution then results in sufficiency becoming not just necessary, but beautiful.

How many of us are willing to hear this calling and become Sacred Revolutionaries?

This paper is only 12 A4 pages long, so can be read easily in a short amount of time. Implementing its invitation may take a little longer. The paper can be found at this link:

https://samuelalexander.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Sacred-Revolt-Samuel-Alexander-1.pdf

Prediction, Prophecy, or Probability

Nostradamus

This blog begins with a supposition that globally we are in a mess; although predicament might be a more technical term than mess. The mess is made up of environmental, social, personal, and familial elements.

Can we get out of this mess? The answer to that seems to clearly be “no!” The reasons for this answer are many, and a later blogpiece may address those reasons. One of the compelling reasons for answering “no” however is that collectively we do not appear to realise that we are in a mess.

If we are unable to get out of the mess, can we get through it? By that I mean can we pass through a bottleneck and emerge, as a living species, on the other side of the bottleneck. We have been through a bottleneck before, although most of us won’t remember doing so; after all, it happened almost one million years ago. At that time 98% of the Earth’s hominid population failed to survive, leaving only approximately 1,280 reproductive individuals to make it through.¹

So, it has been done before. Could it happen again? Could we get through this mess and pass through a bottleneck to a future in which Homo sapiens is one of the surviving species on the planet?

There are at least three major techniques by which we might answer that. We could predict the future, based on previous trends, and using a logical approach to analysis. We might approach a soothsayer or someone with special authority from a divine being to prophesise the future. Or, thirdly, we could assign probabilities to a range of scenarios.

As the Latin etymology of the word implies, prediction literally means to say before. Prediction usually implies one prescribed outcome. To say something will happen before it has happened is a recipe for being accused, at best of being wrong, at worst of lying.

In the current situation (in the midst of a mess) there are some who take the techno-optimist view that our future technological expertise will enable us to get through the mess. Others proclaim that this is the end of the road for humans. The Sixth Mass Extinction that is upon us, they say, includes Homo sapiens as one of the species that will go extinct. Then, there are many others who take a number of different positions between these two extremes.

All of them make a prediction that excludes all other possibilities.

What about prophecy? Can we reliably seek the announcement of a prophet to foretell the future. Some do. Etymologically, prophecy derives from the Old French word profete meaning a prophet or soothsayer. Prior to the Old French the word goes back to the Greek word propheteia which meant to have the gift of being able to interpret the will of God. Hence, prophecy has a spiritual or divine factor in its meaning, and a prophecy is passed on to a human prophet via some supernatural being.

For many early prophets the purpose of their prophecy was to warn of impending consequences should changes in behaviour not occur. For later prophets (e.g. the well-known Nostradamus) the prophecies were less about warnings and more about outlying future events. Some prophesies succeeded, but many (perhaps most) did not.

Prophecy too, is not a reliable foretelling of the future.

Finally, we could assign probabilities to a range of future scenarios. This is what most futurists do. Probability also has an interesting etymological history. During the 16^th century it meant that something was likely to be true. By the early 18^th century the word had taken on the statistical meaning of the frequency with which a proposition is true measured against experience. Hence, absolute certainty would have a probability of 100% and complete uncertainty would be 0%. The probability of something being true, in the statistical sense, lies somewhere between 0% - 100%, rarely being set at either of the extremes.

Thus, a number of future scenarios could be described and assigned a probability of accurately depicting what actually happens in the future.

Coming back now to the earlier question. Can we get through the mess? Furthermore, if we can get through, will those who do so emerge with a more healthy and sustainable culture?

I am extremely reluctant to predict the future, as being certain of what the future will bring is impossible for me to predict (if you’ll excuse the circular argument.) I do not have access to any divine or supernatural message and so I am unable to prophesy anything about the future.

It is, however, possible for me to assign probabilities towards differing future scenarios. Some of those possible scenarios hopefully will include societies and cultures that are wise enough to not make the mistakes we have made in getting ourselves into this mess. Hopefully too, those future societies will be able to inhabit the Earth in a sustainable and cooperative manner, respecting all the Earth’s creatures.  

For us now, on the edge of this mess and peering into the bottleneck we might ask ourselves: How can we skew the probabilities towards a higher chance of betterment in a post-collapse future?

The answer to this is not what we do in the future.

The answer lies in what we do here and now.

The answer exists in what seeds we sow today that may bear fruit tomorrow. The answer rests on our ability to plant the seeds, knowing that we will not be fortunate enough to eat the fruits thereof.

And that enterprise involves giving up the paradigms we have been living with and adopting new paradigms.

How we do that is the subject of another blogpiece.

Notes

1. Juliet Dubois, Daily Galaxy, 5 June 2025, Only 1,280 Survived: The Near-Extinction Event That Nearly Wiped Out Humanity 1 Million Years Ago

The Air That I Breathe

In 1974 the British pop-rock group The Hollies released their last major hit. The song The Air That I Breathe reached number 2 on the UK singles chart and number 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. It charted high in many countries, including number 1 in New Zealand, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

Written by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, the song was a love song declaring that all the singer needed was ‘the air that I breathe, and to love you.’

There can be no dispute that we all need the air that we breathe.

When the single was released the air that we breathe contained 330 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ (carbon dioxide). This level (330ppm) was the highest level the Earth had experienced for at least 800,000 years. Around 320,000 years ago atmospheric carbon dioxide levels peaked at 300ppm, and then settled back to around 200ppm. Two more peaks, around 250,000 years ago and 120,000 years ago saw CO₂ levels reach approximately 280ppm.

Thus, at no time during the existence of us (Homo sapiens) upon the Earth had the atmosphere contained more than 300ppm of carbon dioxide.

Until the 20^th century! The proportion of CO₂ contained in the Earth’s atmosphere reached more than 300ppm in 1911 and continued to rise continuously thereafter.

By the time the Hollies were stating that ‘all that I need is the air that I breathe’ carbon dioxide levels were around 10% higher than at any time in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens.

The levels were to go higher, and higher still.

Today (in March 2026), the proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere is 430ppm. 100ppm greater than it was when the song was released. In just over fifty years – two generations!

That may not sound much. 430ppm is 0.043%. Not much, some may claim. And, only an increase of 0.01% between 1974 and 2026. What’s to get concerned about?

We could ask the same of arsenic. Our bodies require arsenic – in tiny quantities. Yet, a very tiny increase in that quantity and the arsenic in our bodies becomes toxic, even fatal. Tiny differences can have significant outcomes. As it is with arsenic in our bodies, so it is with carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Most of us know that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have a direct bearing on the Earth’s climate systems. We do get concerned about that, although there are still large numbers of sceptics.

We could also get concerned about how increasing CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have a direct impact upon our health.

A paper published in January this year stated that, ‘There is mounting experimental evidence that lifetime exposure to these increasing atmospheric CO₂ levels can negatively impact the normal physiology of organisms.’¹

In typical scientific caution, the authors noted that ‘directly assessing this in humans is very difficult.’

They did, however, warn that if trends in increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued then our ‘blood bicarbonate levels could be at the limit of the accepted healthy range in half a century.’

Half a century. That is the same length of time that has elapsed since the Hollies sang that ‘all I need is the air that I breathe.’

There is little to no indication that the proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere is likely to decrease within the next half a century.

Let us keep singing, ‘all I need is the air that I breathe.’

Politicians, captains of industry, economists, and others need to hear us singing this song.

 

Note:

1. Alexander Larcombe & Phil Bierwirth, Carbon dioxide overload, detected in human blood, suggests a potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years, Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, 13 January 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5 accessed 8 March 2026

Reflecting On Refraction

A couple of days ago I was sitting at my favourite café early in the morning with a freshly brewed hot coffee in front of me. A light shower of rain began to fall. Within a minute or so a rainbow formed its arch across the sky. When I looked downwards at the creek that flows beside the café, I could see the rainbow reflected in the waters. (see photo)

The rainbow and its reflection in the water was a beautiful sight.

I was moved to reflect.

I recalled from my school days learning about the physics of how a rainbow is formed. Light is refracted, reflected, and dispersed into its constituent colours by the drops of rain. Most people know the colours of the rainbow from the initials: ROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. These are the classic seven colours of the rainbow. Most of us know that the section of the electro-magnetic spectrum that we see as light is made up of many more colours than these seven. It is though, these seven that we classically associate with a rainbow.

I reflected further.

The rainbow is a pleasing metaphor for life and its myriad forms. Individual lives do not exist in isolation. No matter what animal or plant you can think of in nature, it does not exist without interacting with other animals and plants around it. Together, all the various plants and animals combine in almost unimaginable complexity to co-create whole eco-systems.

Each eco-system supports and sustains all the plants and animals within it. Each plant and animal supports and sustains the eco-system.

We humans are part of these complex eco-systems. We are not isolated beings. Without the eco-systems we are part of we could not exist. We are like one of the colours of the rainbow.

Try to imagine a rainbow without one of its colours. Suppose the colour blue was missing. It would no longer be a rainbow, would it?

Sadly, much of humanity is acting (metaphorically) as if one or more of the colours of the rainbow do not matter. Species (and even genera) of plants and animals are being made extinct as an insane rate.

My reflection continued on.

If light is passed through a prism the entire visible spectrum of colours appears on the other side of the prism. The unity of light (what we call white light) is refracted and dispersed by the prism, and we see the diversity of colour contained in that unity. Unity creates diversity.

Now place another prism after the first prism. But invert it. Now pass the white light through the first prism and then the colour spectrum through the second. What happens?

The colour spectrum is returned to white light. Diversity creates unity.

It is a metaphor worth reflecting upon often, because it can be very easy to forget that everything in the world is co-created by everything else. Nothing arises or exists completely on its own. Nothing is independent of other things, although it may be unique (i.e. it may be the unique colour red in our metaphor).

Next time you see a rainbow think and reflect upon the diversity of life and how that creates the wondrous unity that life is.

Gaia’s New Year Resolutions

Today is the day that traditionally people write (well, at least think of writing) a New Year’s Resolution list. I started thinking of some for myself whilst walking along the beach this morning. Then I wondered, what New Year Resolutions might Gaia make?

In Greek mythology Gaia is the personification of the Earth. In the 1970s Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock proposed the Gaia Hypothesis. This hypothesis (aka Principle, Theory, Paradigm) recognises the entire planet as a synergistic, intricately interwoven and entangled, self-regulating system. This theory posits that each and every part of the Earth are co-dependent upon all other parts in a complex way that is impossible to fully comprehend, let alone describe.

As I strolled along the beach (one of the Earth’s many ecosystems) I wondered what resolutions the Greek personification of Gaia might come up with? If, as some suggest, humans are the Earth’s way of expressing herself through consciousness, then maybe I could come up with some possible Gaia New Year Resolutions. Here are some possibilities:

1. Make alliances with those humans who are the original human inhabitants of places to protect those places from exploitation, extraction, pollution, and destruction. Some places to start would be; the Amazon jungle, the Taiga (or Siberian boreal forest,) the Congo rainforest and all it’s inhabitants (including the chimpanzee and bonobo – humankind’s closest relative,) and the Atacama Desert.
2. Attempt to remove the massive dams impeding many rivers and disrupting the lives of many fish and other aquatic creatures that depend on the smooth flow of the rivers.
3. Try to plug the bores tapping oil and gas beneath my surface. Many humans are doing this with perilous results. Perhaps I (Gaia) can somehow seal these bores.
4. Continue to create beauty where and when I can. Rainbows, spring flowers, sparkling waterfalls, Auroras, moonlight, rolling waves are all spectacles and wonders I can craft.
5. Endeavour to ease the plight of hundreds of threatened species, some of whom I know will become extinct very soon.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly,

6. Convene a meaningful and all-encompassing conversation with the majority of my human inhabitants. The topics of this conversation will be to spell out the unhealthy and inconsiderate manner in which many humans are treating me and all those who depend upon me. I (Gaia) would also like to suggest to these humans that if they were to slow down, be mindful, consider others, reduce their dependence upon gadgets and trinkets, then they would find greater peace and harmony within themselves.

These are some of the possible Gaia’s New Year Resolutions that came to my mind while walking along the beach. There are, no doubt, dozens of others. You, the reader, may come up with a few more.

I know that these are my personified resolutions of Gaia, however, it may be worth all of us considering, on this New Years Day, what the Earth might like for herself.

The final resolution above – a conversation between Gaia and us humans – might be a way for us humans to approach the way in which we live. Perhaps before we do something, individually and collectively, we could sit down and converse with Gaia.

Conversations with Gaia reminds me of Council of All Beings workshop that is utilised in Deep Ecology retreats. The workshop is ably and fully described by Joanna Macy and Pat Fleming in the book Thinking Like A Mountain.¹

How about we all add this resolution to our New Years Resolutions this year: To hold meaningful and all-encompassing conversations with Gaia.

Notes:

1. John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, Arne Naess, Thinking Like A Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1988

Time Is Running Out, We’d Better Slow Down

There are lots of articles, books, presentations, podcasts, and videos that point to a rapidly shortening of time before a cataclysmic future overwhelms us. We hear that by 2050, and perhaps by 2030, we need to have reduced our dependence upon fossil fuels significantly. We read that, if we don’t do something urgently, then one-third of species on the Earth will be extinct by 2100. We look at the increasing polarisation around the world and fear for the possibility of another world war, and note with terror the likelihood that such a war could include nuclear weapons.

Or, perhaps we think of ourselves. Each birthday reminds us that we are one year older, one year closer to the end of our time on Earth. Yet, there are many things we still want to do, much we wish to accomplish and achieve.

Time is running out.

We must act with urgency.

We gotta do something, and fast.

We must complete our bucket list.

We have to save the planet.

We have to reduce carbon emissions. We have to transition to green technology soon.

Each of these sentiments are understandable. Yet, more than likely, they are unhealthy and unwise. Speeding up might get us there faster, but when we get there we will find that it is not where we wanted to be or what we expected.

Just look at the current situation we are in with carbon emissions. It can be argued that we have got to this position because we wanted to hurry up. We built, purchased, and drove private motorcars because we wanted to get from one place to another quicker. We tapped into the stored sunlight of fossil fuels so that we could more rapidly heat our homes and cook our meals. Those same fossil fuel power stations enabled the elites of the world to more quickly build their fortunes.

The mobile phone, too, is a go faster piece of technology. We can more quickly contact anyone, anywhere on the planet. We can send text, photographs, and documents at the speed of light. That’s fast! Yet, those same phones have presented us with numerous problems; e-waste, cyber-bullying, cognitive decline, and the modern disease of nomophobia – the fear of not having access to a mobile phone.

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh names all this as Habit Energy which he describes as,

"We are always running and rushing. It has become a habit, the norm of everyday living. We run all the time, during our sleep, the time we are supposed to be resting and regenerating our bodies. We can be worst enemies, in conflict with ourselves, and therefore, you can easily start conflict with others..."

It is exhausting us. It is exhausting the planet as well.

‘But surely we have to do something quickly in the face of imminent and mounting crises. We are in the midst of a predicament of massive proportions. We can’t sit back. We have to get on with it. We have to save the planet, and ourselves.’

I hear such sentiments every week.

And, we are responding to this predicament in exactly the way described. We are quickly digging up not only fossil fuels, but also minerals to power the green energy transition. The speed with which we are doing this has not reduced electricity consumption at all – it has simply added to it. We are using twice as much electricity today as we were at the turn of the century. Wind and solar electricity production is 1/3^rd of that increase. Wind and solar have added to the consumption, they have not displaced it. They are not proving to be alternatives at all.

What if we slowed down?

What if, as a friendly psychologist told me about four decades ago, we stopped awhile and smelt the roses?

At an individual level slowing down has been shown, in numerous studies, to lower our levels of anxiety and stress, improve our cognitive responses, enhance our connection and relationships with other people, and elevate our body’s ability to heal and recuperate. In short, slowing down is good for our well-being.

For the planet too, our slowing down would have tremendous benefit. We have vastly overshot the carrying capacity of Earth. Overshoot occurs when the Earth can no longer recover from the effects of human waste and pollution quicker than the waste and pollution is created. Overshoot is also when the Earth can no longer replenish the stores of forest, minerals, water, and other components of an eco-system faster than humans are extracting and exploiting those components.

We have been in this state of overshoot for many decades, and the rate of overshoot is increasing. Globally, we now require 1.6 Earths to satisfy our rate of extraction and levels of pollution. This figure (1.6 planets) is unevenly distributed around the world. If everyone lived as those in rich nations lived, we would need between three and six Earths to satisfy our consumption levels.

Slowing down would assist the Earth in restoring its balance immensely.

The Earth is always seeking to restore balance and homeostasis. But it needs time to do that. We could greatly assist that process by simply slowing down.

One Second

When you are counting down to a catastrophe, or collapse, or a nuclear explosion, there is little difference between the second that separates 9 seconds and 10 seconds to go from the second that separates 89 seconds and 90 seconds to go. The ticking continues. The countdown goes on.

Anyone hearing that another second has ticked down towards doomsday should be concerned.

And that is what happened this week when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists¹ revealed how close to midnight the Doomsday Clock now is. (Midnight is the metaphorical time at which doomsday occurs.)

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been using the Doomsday Clock as a graphical way to illustrate how close the world is to doomsday since 1945. That is eighty years’ worth of watching the state of the world and how perilous it is, or isn’t.

This year (2025) they moved the clock from 90 seconds (one and a half minutes) before midnight to 89 seconds before midnight. A shift of just one second.

But, that one second is significant.

89 seconds is the closest the Doomsday Clock has ever been to midnight. The closest in eighty years!

In 2023 the hands of the clock were moved to 90 seconds before midnight; then, the closest ever to midnight. In 2024 the time remained at 90 seconds to midnight. Then this year, in a move of just one second, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have shown just how concerned they are.

Amongst the reasons for the shift of that one second are:

·       Continued failure by national leaders and countries to address the issues raised by scientists over the past year.

·       The war in Ukraine

·       Conflict in the Middle East

·       Increasing size of nuclear arsenals

·       Rise in global temperature leading to increased climate impacts

·       Climate change given low priority by world leaders

·       Rapid advances in AI increasing the risk of terrorism

Any one of these threats is reason for concern. Lumped together we should be greatly concerned, for the threats do not function in isolation from each other. They interact and mutually enhance the dangers of each other.

One second may not sound like much. But when we are running out of time each second counts.

Notes:

1. https://thebulletin.org/

Small Is Beautiful: 50-year Re-reading

When I was 21 years old I read a number of thought-provoking and transformative books. One of these was Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher.¹ Published in 1973 Small Is Beautiful is one of those books that had an enormous impact on a generation that was beginning to realise the importance of environmental issues.

Now, fifty years on I have read it once more. How does this re-reading today compare with fifty years ago? What has changed? Did my initial reading really transform me? What did Schumacher have to say fifty years ago that still applies today?

As the sub-title - A study of economics as if people mattered – suggests, Schumacher was keen to examine, and possibly retrieve, economics from the morass within which it had mired itself. Indeed, is economics of any use at all was one of Schumacher’s questions:

“If (economics) cannot get beyond its vast abstractions, the national income, the rate of growth, capital/output ratio, input-output analysis, labour mobility, capital accumulation; if it cannot get beyond all this and make contact with the human realities of poverty, frustration, alienation, despair, breakdown, crime, escapism, stress, congestion, ugliness, and spiritual death, then let us scrap economics and start afresh.”

Challenging words fifty years ago. No less challenging today. Indeed, more so, if we consider the changes that have taken place over the past fifty years.

Although not primarily a book about environmental issues, Schumacher did have some apt observations to make. He noted that we are part of nature, yet in our battle with nature even if we win the battle, we will find ourselves “on the losing side.” He noted too that “nature always knows where and when to stop,” yet we (humans) continue to act as if economic growth can go on ad infinitum. Asking “what is enough?” Schumacher claimed that the economist is not in a position to reply, for the economist has no concept of enough.

Schumacher was keen to espouse ideas of appropriate technology and small, decentralised economies and technologies. In championing appropriate and small-scale technology he noted that our use of technology to solve problems often only generated more, and worse, problems. Citing a contemporary of his, Barry Commoner (an American biologist and ecologist) he noted that “the new problems are not the consequences of incidental failure but of technological success.”

Fifty years on and Schumacher’s warnings cannot be consigned to history. Indeed, many of them have come to pass.

Furthermore, things have sped up and additional harms and difficulties have come about. For example, when Schumacher was writing, the terms global warming, the greenhouse effect, and climate change had not entered our vocabulary. Nor had the basic cause of it all -overshoot. In 1973 when Schumacher was writing his book, humanity was still operating within the boundaries of one Earth. But only just! Within a year of publication our consumption, waste, and pollution activities required more than one Earth to cope. Fifty years later, at a global level, we require 1.7 Earths!! William Catton’s ground-breaking book, Overshoot, was a decade in the future.²

Had Schumacher known the full magnitude of these, would he have written a different book?

I suspect so. He would possibly have been more strident in his criticism of technology. He would probably have put greater emphasis upon our exploitation of nature and the Earth.

I doubt that he would have changed his mind about the underlying ills of the world. He said it then, he is likely to have said it today, “We are suffering from a metaphysical disease, and the cure must therefore be metaphysical.” Indeed, he may have stressed this much more, and have explored our metaphysical disease in greater depth.

Schumacher addresses our metaphysical disease not in great depth. However, what he does say about this disease is worth listening to. For example, he notes that, “The beginning of wisdom is the admission of one’s own lack of knowledge.”

Today, fifty years on, we have a lot more knowledge, yet we seem to have less wisdom. Wisdom askes the question, what should we do? Knowledge asks the question; how can we do this? without considering the possible consequences. Schumacher was correct fifty years ago, yet we have not yet acknowledged our lack of knowledge.

Perhaps the most important counsel that Schumacher can give us in reading his book fifty years on comes in the final sentences of Small Is Beautiful:

“Everywhere people ask: ‘What can I actually do?’ The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us. work to put our own house in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of (humanity.)”

Fifty years after I first read this book, I now think I understand Schumacher’s ideas with greater clarity.

Notes:

1. E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, Abacus, London, 1974. Previously published by Blond & Briggs Ltd., Great Britain, 1973

2. William R Catton, Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1982

Asthmatic Earth

When we (humans) breathe we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Trees do exactly the opposite. Via the process of photosynthesis, trees “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen. This cycle is crucial to our life on this planet.

This process often has trees and forests metaphorically characterised as the lungs of the world.

Normally, when we are healthy, our breathing is a relatively quiet activity. However, when we get sick or develop a disease of some sort, especially one that affects our lungs, we cough. Coughing is a symptom of some illness.

What if trees get sick? What if the normal process of photosynthesis becomes diseased?

Do trees also “cough”?

It seems that – metaphorically at least – they do?

A study released in November 2023 by a team of earth and planetary scientists from Pennsylvania State University reveals a disturbing trend. When trees get stressed by high temperatures and/or limited water then the process of photosynthesis gets impeded, and a reverse process commences.¹

This reverse process, known as photorespiration, means that trees no longer take up carbon dioxide; rather they begin to send CO₂ back into the atmosphere.

The lead author of the study, Max Lloyd (Assistant Research Professor of Geosciences) says that “Trees in warmer, drier climates are essentially coughing instead of breathing.”

This is a worrying condition. Continuous coughing in humans can be a sign of asthma. To stretch the analogy of trees breathing a little further we might ask: Is the Earth becoming asthmatic?

There is no known cure for human asthma. Is there one for an asthmatic Earth?

Not likely.

Plants and trees presently absorb around 25% of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans. If these “lungs” become diseased, and the world becomes “asthmatic” then the ability of trees to absorb this carbon dioxide will diminish.

Consequently, a positive feedback loop in the carbon cycle of Earth becomes established. Humans pump CO₂ into the atmosphere, trees absorb that, thus sequestering it. But now, a positive feedback loop gets launched, whereby trees no longer sequester the CO₂ – they contribute to the rising emissions. This form of “positivity” is not good for trees, it is not good for humans, it is not good for Earth.

Just as asthma sufferers worldwide find ways to cope with asthma, so will we as a species have to find ways to cope with an increasingly asthmatic world.

Notes:

1. Max K. Lloyd et al., Isotopic clumping in wood as a proxy for photorespiration in trees, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2023, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2306736120 accessed 25 June 2024.

Story Of Awe

This story starts a long, long time ago, in a place far, far away, and involves something very, very small.

How long ago? Up to 100,000 years ago. Homo sapiens was yet to move out of Africa when this story began.

How far away? Think of it this way: if you were to get in a car and drive at a steady 100 km per hour without stopping, it would take you more than 170 years to travel the distance. So, if you left at about the time Charles Dickens was writing some of his classic novels, you would only just be arriving now!

How small? Do this: place your thumb and forefinger together. Imagine the space between. This thing would fit inside that space, with room to spare.

What is it?

A Photon.

150 million km away in the core of our Sun, hydrogen atoms smash into one another in a process known as fusion. In doing so, energy is released in the form of quantum packets of energy. We call these photons, or more commonly as light. Because of the extreme density at the core of the sun, a Photon gets blocked and slowed so that it can take as much as 100,000 years to travel to the surface of the Sun – a distance of slightly less than 700,000 km. (Remember that car travelling at 100 km per hour. It would travel that distance in roughly nine and a half months.)

But, having spent that long, long time getting from the core to the surface of the Sun, this tiny Photon sprints to the Earth in just eight minutes, travelling at the speed of, well – light!

When it gets here, what does this highly energetic, very small Photon do? It lands on leaves in the forest. In those leaves Photon meets a character called Phil, first name – Chloro. Photon and Chlorophyll shake hands. Chlorophyll says to the Photon, ‘I’ll take all your colours, and just reflect back the green.’

Photon replies, ‘Okay, let’s make some energy too.’

And so, the dance of energy continues on. Wow!

From that dance something else emerges, is created, and is released. Oxygen. Literally, the air (along with nitrogen and a small number of other elements) that you and I breathe.

Thus, when I breathe mindfully, I am thanking the Sun, thanking Photon. I say thank you to the leaves of the tree, thank you to Chloro Phil.

Then when I breathe out, the tree in turn says thank you to me, for I am breathing out carbon dioxide, Tree uses this molecule in conjunction with Photon to make glucose and other organic molecules, which are used as Tree’s energy source.

Isn’t that Awesome?

When I enter a forest and stop and look, listen, feel, taste, and smell I know that I am part of this endless cycle that began a long, long time ago, far, far away, and with something very, very small.

But wait. There is more.

I can’t look into the Sun, I can’t see the Chlorophyll in the leaves, and, unless I dig, I can’t see what is beneath my feet in the midst of the forest. But, I can know.

When I sit under a tree amid a forest, directly beneath me there could be a network of 50 km of communications, resource sharing, and warning systems. A Wood Wide World of mycelia.¹ Staggering!

Mycelia are fine, thread-like, network of fungal strands that connect trees together. Through this complex and entangled network trees communicate with one another, share resources, nourish the young, and even send out warning signals.

That 50 km is just what is beneath me as I sit. Imagine the extent of this network throughout the entire forest. Marvellous!

When I take the time in a forest to consider all this, with a little knowledge, and my own 5 senses, plus inner senses, I am connected to a network of events that are thousands of years old, that are very, very tiny, and are very big.

This magnificent network is what sustains me (literally) and allows me to write this story here and now.

Isn’t that Awesome?!

Note:

1. This excellent video by renowned forest researcher, Suzanne Simard, more fully explains the Wood Wide World and the role of mycelia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVK9TCXZz6I

Pillow Lessons

When I was a child, around the age of 6 or 7, the pillows we had to lay our head on at night were stuffed with feathers: possibly geese or duck feathers. Stuffed in this way the pillow was sometimes lumpy in places when I got into bed. I would spend the first minute or so pounding and manipulating the pillow so that it wasn’t lumpy – the technical term appears to be “fluffing.”

One of these nights it occurred to me that no matter where on the pillow I would pummel it, the feathers would shift to another part of the pillow. The contents of the pillow – the feathers – would remain. They just shifted position.

I cannot remember exactly what I deduced from this observation at the time, except possibly that my pummelling had no real effect upon the whole pillow. The feathers just shifted from one place to another.

Many years later I learnt what it was I was observing with my attempt to re-shape my pillow as a child.

I learnt the basics of systems theory and chaos theory.

I learnt that what we do to one part of a system (pillow) influences another part (the feathers move.)

I also learnt that systems have boundaries (the pillow slip) and limits.

These were important lessons.

We live on a planet where what we do to one part has consequences for another part. Todays globalised economy and interlinked supply chains ensure this. Furthermore, it may only be a small event or incident that we do in one part, yet the outcome in another part may be significant. Chaos theory calls this the Butterfly Effect.

We also live on a planet that has boundaries. Since 2009 the Stockholm Resilience Centre (based at Stockholm University) has been identifying and enumerating nine planetary boundaries (climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion, and novel entities.¹)

The latest (2023) update from the Stockholm Resilience Centre warns that “six (of these) boundaries are now transgressed, and pressure is increasing on all boundary processes except ozone depletion.”²

My metaphorical pillow is being torn apart.

We have known for some time too that Earth has limits. Exactly when we reached (or will reach) Peak Oil is still being debated. However, we do know from current reserves and expected new finds that oil is likely to run out within the next 50 or so years. We know too, that of all the Earth’s wild forests, only 25% remain.

Each year more than 90 billion tons of biomass, fossil fuels, metal, and minerals are extracted from the Earth.³ Alarmingly, this rate of extraction has more than tripled in just 50 years.

The feathers in my metaphorical pillow are being depleted, and not replaced.

Somewhere in my 7-year-old consciousness these concepts were embedding themselves. Today, decades later, I know what lessons my pillow was offering me.

Notes:

1. Novel entities are created and introduced into the environment by humans (e.g. chemicals, and plastics) that have a disruptive impact upon the environment. There are now estimated to be more than 144,000 such artificially created entities, with 2,000 new synthetic chemicals being released every year.

2. https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html  accessed 30 April 2024

3. This is more than 11 tons per person per year for every person on Earth. In the rich nations of the world the extraction rate per capita is staggering: 30 tons per person in North America and over 20 tons for those living in Europe. The extraction rate is highly disproportionate. Data mentioned in these two paragraphs from https://www.theworldcounts.com accessed 30 April 2024

Will Gaia Throw A Party?

Sometime on the afternoon of 15 November 2022 (GMT) a baby was born somewhere in the world.
That baby became the 8 billionth person upon this planet.

There are now as many people alive upon the Earth as the total cumulative number of humans to have ever lived during the first 150,000 years of human (Homo sapiens) existence.

It took virtually all the time we have existed upon this planet to reach the first one billion living human beings. We did so in 1804 – slightly over 200 years ago.

We then rapidly populated the Earth, adding the next six billion to reach seven billion around late 2011-early 2012.

Then, in a little more than a decade we added one billion people. One decade! It had taken us most of 200,000 years to reach our first one billion.

Do you think Gaia¹ will throw a party to celebrate?

Let’s look at some of the things we humans did on that day (the day on which the 8 billionth human arrived) to acknowledge the birth. Note: these figures are just one days worth.

• Almost 250 million tons of resources were extracted from the Earth.

• 5.8 million tons of waste was dumped.

• 118 million tons of CO₂ was emitted.

• Slightly less than one million tons of meat was consumed…

• Requiring 15 million tons of water to produce that meat.

• Almost 80,000 ha (800 sq. km) of forest was cut down (roughly the area of Barcelona, Spain, and more than the area of Beijing, China.)

• Almost 14 billion plastic bags were produced, and less than 1% were recycled.

• 137,000 tons of e-waste was thrown away.

• 1.1  million tons of hazardous waste was produced.

• 1,200 people were murdered by another person, with 650 of those killed with a gun.

Somehow, I don’t think Gaia is going to invite us to a birthday party anytime soon.

Note:

1. Gaia is the personification of the Earth in Greek mythology. Gaia is also the name James Lovelock gave to his hypothesis that the Earth acts as a superorganism and is a dynamical system regulating the biosphere and maintaining life.