O Pantanal brasileiro é a maior área úmida tropical do mundo, cobrindo uma área quase do tamanho da Grã-Bretanha. Só que hoje, não está tão molhada. Após um verão de seca, estão ocorrendo incêndios catastróficos que já devastaram 2,4 milhões de hectares de terra este ano. (Isso é mais do que queimou na Califórnia, Oregon […]
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World on Fire
Brazil’s Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland, covering an area nearly the size of Britain. Only today, it isn’t so wet. After a summer of drought, catastrophic fires are raging that have devastated 2.4 million hectares of land already this year. (That’s more than has burned in California, Oregon, and Washington combined.) Its precious […]
We Can Do Better Than This
My wife, Stella, recently shut down her account on the social-media-platform-that-must-not-be-named. “It feels like I’m walking away from a fight,” she said. “Almost everything I read there is a signal as to what side the poster is on. Or an attempt to promote the idea that, ‘I’m smart!’ Or, ‘I’m right.’ It’s all ego. I’m […]
The Conspiracy Myth
The other day I was amused to read a critique of The Coronation in which the author was absolutely certain that I am a closet conspiracy theorist. He was so persuasive that I myself almost believed it. What is a conspiracy theory anyway? Sometimes the term is deployed against anyone who questions authority, dissents from dominant paradigms, or thinks that hidden interests influence our leading institutions.
The Amazon: How do we heal a burning heart?
Like a lot of people, I’ve been deeply affected by what’s been happening in the Amazon in 2019.
Deforestation has reached double the rate of last year, as the red line of logging and fires, many of them set deliberately to clear land for soybeans and cattle, encroaches deeper and deeper into the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
Armed land-grabbers are dislocating Indigenous people and killing those who resist. Even legally protected lands are getting logged and destroyed. It’s just horrifying. And I feel, sometimes, these waves of helplessness, like watching a car wreck in slow motion. The grief is so strong – what do I do with it?
Building a Peace Narrative
The word narrative is bandied about a lot today, so that it’s almost become a cliché. But cliches are born from insight. In this case, it is about the power of the stories that we tell about ourselves, each other, and the world to cohere us in a common purpose.