Resources for becoming an eco-citizen
Here you will find articles categorised using the model I have created for becoming an eco-citizen. They cover topics help me understand how I might make a useful contribution to a changing world. I hope they help you similarly; please let me know if there are other resources you think are worth including.
Energy is Everything
Increasingly we’re all experiencing storms. We’re all leaders all of the time apparently. It was with these two propositions that I began an exploration of leading through storms at the fantastic St. Ethelburga’s. Where I ended up was an unexpected and welcome surprise (if not a neat and tidy set of answers).
Adapting Deeply
What is your relationship with the unfolding climate situation? How are you processing the constant stream of extreme weather stories and apocalyptic predictions? Time spent in nature often provides me with insights that I don’t imagine getting otherwise, which is ironic given the battering the planet is receiving right now. Away from the mediated, on-line carnage there is a sort of peaceful wisdom in trees and fields that seems to inspire creativity in a very visceral way.
Nature Immersion For Climate Distress
The eagle-eyed among you will notice I’ve not published any articles on the environment for a few months. I tell myself it’s because I’ve become busy with work and life in this post-pandemic period. Or that perhaps I’m distracted by more imminent crises. The truth of it though is that I’ve got stuck in my own enquiry about what it means to be an ordinary person fully present to, and in service of, a changing world – a term I call being an eco-citizen.
Is It The Hope That Kills You?
Will Monday 9th August be the day the world finally woke up to the probable/inevitable impact of climate change on our planet and the lives of everything and everyone living on it? I’ve asked myself this sort of question many times in the past, a heart filled with hope. Each time I ask, my hopes end up being dashed and the nausea in my stomach grows. But perhaps this time will be different…?
Being A Citizen
In using the term eco-citizen as part of Still Waters I am tapping into a long-running and not entirely resolved debate about what it means to be a citizen. Scholars can’t even agree when the concept of citizenship began. The modern interpretation, based on a legal definition applied to being a member of a nation-state, is different to the more classic Greece-invented idea. For Still Waters I am going more with the Greek definition.
There Is No Planet B
“When the challenges are so global, and each one of us so small, it can be tempting, but wrong, to think there is nothing an individual can do to help humans get a grip. To do so is a cop out.” I was so happy not to have read this book before I thought up the section of Still Waters on becoming and eco-citizen. And I was even happier to read it almost immediately after my new website went live.
Climate Solutions 101
If you are looking for a powerful, easy to understand lesson on potential solutions to the climate change challenges we are facing then I would certainly try out this short series of videos from the good people of Project Drawdown.
Grappling with being green
I first got interested in the environmental movement in the run up to the 1987 election. It was the second time I could vote in a general election and already I had become sceptical about what the mainstream parties were saying. The Green Party in those days were very much a pressure group with electoral ambitions and I didn’t agree with everything they stood for. But in their environmental policies they spoke in a way that resonated with me. In essence, the way we were carrying on as a global human species was unsustainable and no-one was doing anything about it.
Deep Adaptation And The DA Forum
Deep adaptation, both as a concept and a movement start life in July 2018 with a paper written by Professor Jem Bendell of the University of Cumbria. It’s an academic paper so as a read not for the faint hearted, but I found it relatively accessible. It’s basic idea is that humanity needs to prepare for a possible, or probable, or certain collapse in the face of a changing climate.