By Geoffrey Holland, writer for Transition Earth. Existential means consequential, on a global scale. By various estimates, there are ten massive threats looming over all of humanity.  In concert, these threats pack more than enough punch to destroy civilization on Earth. ***** Humanity faces an existential crisis consisting of ten, interconnected, mega-threats all bearing down
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By Geoffrey Holland, guest writer for Transition Earth. Take in the big picture.  It’s a story that is apocalyptic in scale, driven by arch villains defending the old order, against protagonists determined to forge a life-affirming, and sustainable transformation for humanity. It’s about survival on an epic, planetary scale. It is our story. We are
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By Geoffrey Holland, guest writer. The world we know is in a tailspin.  The immediate challenge, a pandemic, caused by a moderately severe pathogen, has driven our economy to near collapse, and put literally billions of people at risk the world over. Normal life in every corner of our Earth has been put on hold.
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By Geoffrey Holland, guest writer for Transition Earth. [Editor’s Note: This article was originally published with The Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere] A thoughtful examination of human history, boils down, more or less, to two steps forward, one step back. There is no written record of our beginnings.  For most of our history,
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By Suzanne York. It’s the type of story that should lead the news headlines all week.  But a report of critical significance for the entire world barely elicited a whimper from media, much less governments. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was compiled over the past three years by 145 expert authors from
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By Suzanne York, Transition Earth. (A longer version of this article was originally written for the online magazine, ReImagining, published by the Chicago Wisdom Project) Lately it seems as if the entire world is veering wildly off course. From climate change to species extinctions to rising inequality, many people – not to mention nature – are crying out
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By Suzanne York. It’s official, more or less – we have entered the Anthropocene epoch, a time when humanity’s impact on the planet is so transformational that it’s pushed the world into a new geological period. “New Age of Man” An international working group, after seven years of deliberation, voted unanimously (with one abstention) at
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By Suzanne York. Most people in the world will blithely go about their lives on August 8th, without knowing that on this day, we go into debt to nature. Otherwise known as Earth Overshoot Day, it is the day when humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish its natural capital.
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By Suzanne York, www.transition-earth.org “We are the first generation with the knowledge of how our activities influence the Earth System, and thus the first generation with the power and the responsibility to change our relationship with the planet.” That statement was written in 2011 in a journal article by a group of some of the
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Another day, another warning by scientists that human beings are pushing the planet to a tipping point. At the “Water in the Anthropocene” conference last week in Germany, 500 leading water scientists declared that water is becoming one of the most serious factors that could limit human development this century, with
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