Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Christopher Ketcham writes on our continuing anthropogenic (human-caused) extinction, and the ineffectual and often misguided attempts at appeasement for the destroyers of wilderness and consumers of the Earth’s bounty. E.O. Wilson’s push for parks and wilderness connected by corridors: half for us, half for them, might just be the answer.
With the Keystone XL and Line 3 pipelines threatening to inundate the Earth with the dirtiest oil known to humanity, we survey a bird’s-eye view of the post-apocalyptic tar sands oil sacrifice zones in Alberta, Canada, by photographer Alex MacLean.
During the dry season in Sumatra, and hundreds of thousands of hectares of Indonesian peatland fires burn for months, releasing its massive storehouse of organic carbon. Those fires are a direct result of decades of forest and peatland destruction, which must be protected writes Loren Bell, saving ecosystems, air quality, and the global climate.
In Siberia, shamans combine a distinctive imagery of reindeer and of bird-flight. Their costumes sometimes include imitation reindeer antlers, occasionally tipped with wings or feathers, placed on the headdress. Like the participants in the Eveny (Evenki) midsummer ritual, shamans may ride to the sky on a bird or a reindeer.
The Earth has a voice. And the fact that any native people have survived on the planet should be a clue that there’s a way that does not include money and politics. We have survived by our relationship with natural force. Water is sacred. Air is sacred. If the tar sands isn’t stopped, we are going to have a whole new set of problems.