Category: Commentary
Posts discussing social and political issues of interest
Cultural Burning as Caring for Country
When I tuned into the Q&A program that kicked off 2020 with an exploration of what we are calling our Black Summer of catastrophic bushfires, one of the speakers was Victor Steffensen, one of the founders of the Aboriginal Firestick Alliance. Victor’s voice was drowned out by the other members of the panel who were [...]
Coming Together for a Just Transition
Mridula Amin's article in ABC Online 9 February points to the way in which the summer bushfires have brought communities together across the political divide between those focused on coal mining jobs and cheap energy prices, and those concerned about the impact of global warming on the whole socio-environmental system, and the need to reduce [...]
Freya Mathews: The Epistemic and Cultural Challenge
Conflicting Worldviews Barbara Lepani—in her Opinion article on revisioning conservation for the ABC Religion and Ethics Report (18 Dec 2019), Professor Freya Mathews, a patron of the Wild Mountain Collective, also discusses the important difference between the modern Western idea of 'law' and the idea of 'Law' in Aboriginal culture. We see this playing out [...]
Finding our Inner Wilderness—Max St John
THE DARK MOUNTAIN PROJECT In this article, published by the Dark Mountain Project (https://dark-mountain.net/the-way-back-to-the-wilderness-within/) Max St John talks about his journey to find his own sense of the wilderness within, through the Daoist body practice of Nei Gong. He describes the profound alienation from our inner wilderness that is 'built in' to our modern consumerist, [...]
Ways of Thinking—The Great Challenge
I feel as if this book, Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta is one I have been waiting for all my life—a book that probes into a whole different way of thinking and making sense of the world, without falling into the inevitable trap of having to talk about it in the language of another culture [...]
Amitav Gosh—The Great Derangement
Amitav Gosh was born in Calcutta in 1956 and was educated in India, before moving to the United States where he has held professorships at Queens College, City University of New York and Harvard University. He has published many works of fiction, starting with his debut novel, The Circle of Reason in 1986. His Ibis [...]
Climate Change, Agriculture and Regeneration
The Economic Argument The value of the agricultural sector in 2017-2018 in Australia was $59 billion. It is expected to reach $60 billion in 2020, with the National Farmers Federation aiming for a $100 billion industry by 2030—based on the assumptions of modern industrial agricultural practices that include extensive use of irrigation, application of chemical [...]
EXPLORING CLIMATE CHANGE THROUGH FICTION
LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE Christopher Walker has developed a course in climate fiction at Colby College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1831. Colby is part of the US tradition of liberal arts education that has survived the trend for institutions of higher education to be driven by economic imperatives towards more [...]