Environmentally Inspiring Quotes

In your hands winter is a book with cloud pages that snow pearls of love.

We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth from our parents to do with it what we will. We have borrowed it from our children and we must be careful to use it in their interests as well as our own. Anyone who fails to recognise the basic validity of the proposition put in different ways by increasing numbers of writers, from Malthus to The Club of Rome, is either ignorant, a fool, or evil.

To only responsible choice I can make is to be love and happiness." Vincellent "Love the world as you love yourself".Lao Tze "The next step in mans evolution will be the survival of the wisest.

At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers?

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

A NATION'S GREATNESS DEPENDS ON ITS LEADER To vastly improve your country and truly make it great again, start by choosing a better leader. Do not let the media or the establishment make you pick from the people they choose, but instead choose from those they do not pick. Pick a leader from among the people who is heart-driven, one who identifies with the common man on the street and understands what the country needs on every level. Do not pick a leader who is only money-driven and does not understand or identify with the common man, but only what corporations need on every level. Pick a peacemaker. One who unites, not divides. A cultured leader who supports the arts and true freedom of speech, not censorship. Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist. Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies. Most importantly, a great leader must serve the best interests of the people first, not those of multinational corporations. Human life should never be sacrificed for monetary profit. There are no exceptions. In addition, a leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader. And lastly, pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

You say that you love your children above everything else. And yet you are stealing their future.

Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out.

No matter how dark the cloud, there is always a thin, silver lining, and that is what we must look for. The silver lining will come, if not to us then to next generation or the generation after that. And maybe with that generation the lining will no longer be thin.

A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand

I have a little different definition of evil than most people. When you have the opportunity and the ability to do good and you do nothing, that's evil. Evil doesn't always have to be an overt act, it can be merely the absence of good.

What melody will our rivers remember if songbirds forget how to sing?

The real power belongs to the people.

You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?

In trying to explain this linkage, I was inspired by a traditional African tool that has three legs and a basin to sit on. To me the three legs represent three critical pillars of just and stable societies. The first leg stands for democratic space, where rights are respected, whether they are human rights, women's rights, children's rights, or environmental rights. The second represents sustainable and equitable management and resources. And the third stands for cultures of peace that are deliberately cultivated within communities and nations. The basin, or seat, represents society and its prospects for development. Unless all three legs are in place, supporting the seat, no society can thrive. Neither can its citizens develop their skills and creativity. When one leg is missing, the seat is unstable; when two legs are missing, it is impossible to keep any state alive; and when no legs are available, the state is as good as a failed state. No development can take place in such a state either. Instead, conflict ensues.

An environment of infinite economic expansion is unsustainable in a world of finite resources.

Plant a tree in your lifetime.

...But it is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of a few.

use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Our existence and our environment enclose entities of divinity.

The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. Its a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone who wishes to enlist, will be honored and welcomed. Every kind of warrior will be needed. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, journalists, students, sportsmen, painters, actors, singers, lovers . . . The borders are open, folks! Come on in.

We face so many overlapping and intersecting crises that we can't afford to fix them one at a time. We need integrated solutions, solutions that radically bring down emissions while creating huge numbers of good, unionized jobs and delivering meaningful justice to those who have been most abused and excluded under the current extractive economy.

So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today. So everyone out there: it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.

It will be impossible for us to maintain the health of the organism called the earth unless we feel and care for other organisms as we do for ourselves—and unless we take action.

Every time you see your belly button, remember that your life is connected with the life of the planet,

You are an indispensable and irreplaceable asset to the human family.

We must experience Heaven on earth; May your homes, surroundings and work places portray a safe clean environment.

If we don't protect what we have, it will be destroyed.

A vision is not a static picture but a process that gets refined over time

The future of the next generation relies on astronomers obtaining a full understanding of the rapidly changing human environmental conditions and the halting of biologically toxic corporate government policies. The overloading of the electromagnetic environment is one of these disastrous policies that must stop.

Life on earth can never be fully understood. Life and all it holds is too big for humans to understand. There is the possibility for more joy than they ever comprehend and there is the same possibility of pain and suffering. Humans have embraced pain and sorrow much more fully than they have embraced joy. This why the world suffers.

We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Our natural inclination to do right by the world is stifled, breeding despair when it should be inspiring action.

We live in a strange world, where we think we can buy or build our way out of a crisis that has been created by buying and building things. Where a football game or a film gala gets more media attention than the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. Where celebrities, film and pop stars who have stood up against all injustices will not stand up for our environment and for climate justice because that would inflict on their right to fly around the world visiting their favourite restaurants, beaches and yoga retreats.

Imagine if all the car makers in the world were to sit down together to design one extremely simple, embellishment-free, functional car that was made from the most environmentally-sustainable materials, how cheap to buy and humanity-and-Earth-considerate that vehicle would be. And imagine all the money that would be saved by not having different car makers duplicating their efforts, competing and trying to out-sell each other, and overall how much time that would liberate for all those people involved in the car industry to help those less fortunate and suffering in the world. Likewise, imagine when each house is no longer designed to make an individualised, ego-reinforcing, status-symbol statement for its owners and all houses are constructed in a functionally satisfactory, simple way, how much energy, labour, time and expense will be freed up to care for the wellbeing of the less fortunate and the planet.

Mother trees have an effect on the oceans as well, as Katsuhiko Matsunaga and his team in Japan had confirmed. The leaves, when they fall in the autumn, contain a very large, complex acid called fulvic acid. When the leaves decompose, the fulvic acid dissolves into the moisture of the soil, enabling the acid to pick up iron. This process is called chelation. The heavy, iron-containing fulvic acid is now ready to travel, leaving the home ground of the mother tree and heading for the ocean. In the ocean it drops the iron. Hungry algae, like phytoplankton, eat it, then grow and divide; they need iron to activate a body-building enzyme called nitrogenase. This set of relationships is the feeding foundation of the ocean This is what feeds the fish and keeps the mammals of the sea, like the whale and the otter healthy.

Zeena Schreck is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, author, musician/composer, tantric teacher, mystic, animal rights activist, and counter-culture icon known by her mononymous artist name, ZEENA. Her work stems from her experience within the esoteric, shamanistic and magical traditions of which she's practiced, taught and been initiated. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist yogini, teaches at the Buddhistische Gesellschaft Berlin and is the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement (SLM).

We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do. We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.

No one who isn't us is going to destroy Earth, and no one who isn't us is going to save it. The most hopeless conditions can inspire the most hopeful actions. We have found ways to restore life on Earth in the event of a total collapse because we have found ways to cause a total collapse of life on Earth. We are the flood, and we are the ark.

Those of us who are still children can’t change what you do now once we’re old enough to do something about it.

The truth is: political reality changes quickly, so it's best to pick the things you want to see happen, and do your best to try to make them happen.

Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

There are no sh*thole countries. There is only one Earth and we all arose from her water and mud.

We have a duty to care for the environment.

We must not only observe but listen to the sound of nature.

Healthy ecosystems promote healthy life.

You have a responsibility to keep your homes, surroundings and city clean.

An interesting journey never follows a straight path

People can heal themselves, and also during that process they can work together and focus on healing the planet.

The history of the world will, one day, be defined by the people who witnessed the tragedy of impending extinction and were able to turn humanity's destructive patterns into creative solutions.

The key to solving problems such as violence, discrimination, inequality, human rights violations, and environmental destruction is to be found not in systems or technology but in recovering empathy.

By “global ethics,” the Dalai Lama means that all people must take personal responsibility for ensuring human rights, fairness, equality, and environmental protection, regardless of their belief system.

I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift. We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Our natural inclination to do right by the world is stifled, breeding despair when it should be inspiring action. The participatory role of people in the well-being of the land has been lost, our reciprocal relations reduced to a KEEP OUT sign.

When the air is angry, we have hurricanes. When the water is angry, we have typhoons. When the land is angry, we have earthquakes. When the sky is angry, we have thunderstorms. When the universe is angry, we have death. When the air is happy, we have warmth. When the water is happy, we have springs. When the land is happy, we have rivers. When the sky is happy, we have rain. When the universe is happy, we have life.

How we allow ourselves to be fed is a metaphor—if ever there was one—for the vibrational quality of what we're willing to 'take in' that goes well beyond the act of filling our bellies. It's an energetic statement of intent.

I’m lying on the ground looking up at the branches of an oak tree. Dappled light is shining through the canopy, the leaves whisper ancient incantations. This tree, in its living stage, rooted in sights and sounds that I’ll never know, has witnessed extinctions and wars, loves and losses. I wish we could translate the language of trees – hear their voices, know their stories. They host such an astonishing amount of life – there are thousands of species harbouring in and on and under this mighty giant. And I believe trees are like us, or they inspire the better parts of human nature. If only we could be connected in the way this oak tree is connected with its ecosystem.

We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.

So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today. So everyone out there: it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.

I do not want to live in a world without butterflies. A place where they only exist in oil on canvas or silver trinkets on a chain, in language, legends we pass to the next generation of memory-keepers, a place where tiny ghosts have painted wings.

The earth is an arena of champions. We are all champions. We all did overcome millions of potential human beings’ before making it unto the earth. Our spectators watching our race of life are the Seen and the Unseen. Thought, attitude and choice are what bring the differences in the arena of mother earth. The real champions in this life are they that will run the race of life facing the storms, overcoming the hurdles, unraveling the puzzles of life, questioning the status quo in wit, over ruling environmental mediocrity and daring for great and indelible change out of comfort or discomfort.

I Creation and Union Imagine yourself sitting in a quiet place in nature, being still and silent inside yourself. Breathe in the power of the universe. Breathe out the power of universe. Breathe in the love of the divine. Breathe out the love of the divine. Breathe in the light of the Absolute. Breathe out the light of the Absolute. As you inspire the power, love, and light of the universe, you exhale sharing love and light with all living beings. As you breathe, experience yourself expanding into the eternal light of all life. You are not a separate entity, you are one with all that is. Imagine.

REVIEW: Like a master artisan, Weisberger weaves together threads of anthropology, botany, ecology and psychology in an inspiring tapestry of ideas sure to keep discerning readers warm and hopeful in these cold and desolate times.Unlike other texts, which ordinarily prescribe structural (ie. social, political, economic) solutions to the global crisis of environmental destruction, Rainforest Medicine hones in on the root cause of Western schizophrenia: spiritual poverty, and the resultant alienation of the individual from his environment. This incisive perception is married to a message of hope: that the keys to the door leading to promising new human vistas are held in the humblest of hands; those of the spiritual masters of the Amazon and the traditional cultures from which they hail. By illumining the ancient practices of authentic indigenous Amazonian shamanism, Weisberger supplies us with a manual for conservation of both the rainforest and the soul. And frankly, it could not have arrived at a better time.

Millions of people across the world live in a state of acute environmental crises caused by the lack of access to safe and usable water resources, because of natural disasters, socio-economic conditions, wars and conflicts. At Green the Gene, we are developing extremely simple yet highly technology and data intensive solutions tailored to address extremely specific problems faced by communities.

Many argue that individual action doesn't matter in an issue as global and enormous as the climate crisis. They are wrong. Individual actions matter, but perhaps not in the way you think. You alone will not solve the climate crisis. Neither will I. But if you intentionally live a more sustainable life and connect with your community about your practice of One Green Thing, you can build momentum for culture change to shift policy.

I like to ensure that I have music and art all around me. My personal favorite is old maps. What I love about old maps is that they are both beautiful and imperfect. These imperfections represent that some of the most talented in history were still very wrong (early cartography was very difficult). As the majority of my work is analysis and advisory, I find it a valuable reminder that my knowledge is limited. No matter how much data or insight I have, I can never fully “map out” any business. Yet, despite the incompleteness of these early cartographers, so much was learned of the world. So much done and accomplished. Therefore, these maps, or art pieces, serve as something to inspire both humility and achievement. This simple environmental factor helps my productivity and the overall quality of my work. Again, it’s like adding positive dice to my hand that are rolled each day.

This is our struggle: to re-bury the coal and slow the flow of petroleum from the earth," she counted them off from pinky to thumb on one hand, "To teach the farming way that cleans the soil and enriches the land. To bring the lore of machines run by energy of grass and waters and sun and wind. To place the love of silence and darkness again beside the love of noise and light. And to cause humans to greatly slow their breeding and breeding and breeding and breeding. This is our struggle.

I don't think I understand that," Meg insisted. "How can you lust yourself into oblivion. " "Oh, easily," Ekaterina answered. "The lust is for things, possessions. The weapon turns on the nature of possessions, the fact that every possession you own consumes a part of you. Tools, instruments, if they are more than conceits, these things do not defy the rule but they are exceptional enough they don't activate the weapon. Consequently, the mission of these alleged scientists is to create generalized lust, a frenzied lust for things unconnected to any sense of utility.

I am part of a lost generation and I refuse to believe that I can change the world I realize this may be a shock but “Happiness comes from within” is a lie, and “Money will make me happy” So in 30 years I will tell my children they are not the most important thing in my life My employer will know that I have my priorities straight because work is more important than family I tell you this Once upon a time Families stayed together but this will not be true in my era This is a quick fix society Experts tell me 30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce I do not concede that I will live in a country of my own making In the future Environmental destruction will be the norm No longer can it be said that My peers and I care about this earth It will be evident that My generation is apathetic and lethargic It is foolish to presume that There is hope And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it. There is hope It is foolish to presume that My generation is apathetic and lethargic It will be evident that My peers and I care about this earth No longer can it be said that Environmental destruction will be the norm In the future I will live in a country of my own making I do not concede that 30 years from now, I will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of my divorce Experts tell me This is a quick fix society But this will not be true in my era Families stayed together Once upon a time I tell you this Family Is more important than Work I have my priorities straight because My employer will know that They are not the most important thing in my life So in 30 years I will tell my children "Money will make me happy" Is a lie, and "Happiness comes from within" I realize this may be a shock, but I can change the world And I refuse to believe that I am part of a lost generation

In contrast to the historical-religious approach of the Reconstructionists are the modern Druids, practitioners of Druidry. Historically it is possible to trace the roots of this movement to the 18th century English revival, which had more in common with Freemasonry than with any ancient Celtic religion. The approach today has been influenced by the environmentalism of the 60’s and is altogether more wild and pagan than the Romantic gentry of England intended. Druidry is an ever shifting thing; to some a religion, to some a philosophy, to some a spiritual path. Although it includes historical inspirations from the ancient Celts, it is more focused on the present and exhibits more freedom in its innovations.

If this past election and our present political, social, and environmental upheavals have done nothing else, they have inspired a new generation of thinkers. From poets to activists to journalists to scholars, the raw and gritty realities we face as a nation and as global citizens are being exposed, dissected, and examined. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and the right to peacefully protest are not the luxuries of a free society, they are the defenders,supporters, and protectors of a free society. They are what make a free society possible. The solutions to our problems will no doubt be lengthy, complex, and difficult, but a generation awakened from the lethal sleep of apathy is a beginning. And that offers true hope for our future.

Explaining the rise of MSNBC, the Republican strategist Stuart Stevens said: “I think there are a lot of people out there who are dramatically troubled by the direction of the country, and they would like to be reminded that: (A) they’re not alone, and (B) there’s an alternative”. But loneliness isn’t the problem; the direction of the country is. And being alone together is not an alternative direction, just as a cancer support group does not shrink a tumour. It’s probably true that viewers of MSNBC are sometimes inspired to give money to progressive candidates, and perhaps there’s someone out there whose politics were changed, rather that their loneliness assuaged, by Rachel Maddow. It’s certainly true that a hybrid car gets better mileage than a traditional gas car. But primarily, these things make us feel better. And it can be dangerous to feel better when things are not getting better. […] Too often, the feeling of making a difference doesn’t correspond to the difference being made – worse, an inflated sense of accomplishment can relieve the burden of doing what actually needs to be done. Do the children getting vaccines paid for by Bill Gates really care if he feels annoyed when he gives 46 percent of his vast wealth to charity? Do the children dying of preventable diseases really care if Jeff Bezos feels altruistic when he donates only 1.2 percent of his even vaster wealth? If you found yourself in the back of an ambulance, would you rather have a driver who loathes his job put performs it expertly or one who is passionate about his job but takes twice as long to get you to the hospital?

In Desperate Need of a Hero   Dear red, white, and blue Is there still hope for you? I wonder   Perhaps with someone in power Who slaves by the hour To remain true?   A person of dignity Who’s not a give-me Or quota-fill   No reek of greed No corruptive seed Growing unchecked   A leader who can inspire Who raises people higher Than themselves   A soul with grace Not colored by race Of any kind   A take-charge warrior An environmental voyeur Who loves this planet   A Hero to lead With only one creed: America   Where do we find such belief? When do we get the relief? Of being loved in return   We’d die for the President Would he pay the same rent? Of course not!   Your sacrifice we do not require We serve willingly, sire If you’re worthy If you will get your hands a bit dirty To further our lives And enrich our minds To earn our trust It’s all or bust And always America first!

Hating the Rain She hates the ever-falling winter rain, the gray and endless humidity that bites to the bone and stings even after the hot bath and stiff struggle into bed and under the quilts, but the winter ferns, and the way they wave in a slight breeze as though happy like grandmother’s lace curtains can’t be abandoned or lived without. She hates the endless dripping like a clock ticking away life and the heavy fog that swallows light as though life itself were vanishing, but the tree frogs with their songs and their clinging to matching green like family holding together stitch her thoughts back to July picnics. She hates her complaining voice that discourages her children’s calls and encourages their urgings that she move, maybe to Florida citrus sun, but gray day softness steeps her patience and quiets her fear of loss into something like gratitude clinging like green to summer moss and this she knows: she loves the rain.

Myth is also where the differences lie. Where Crusoe articulates a ‘foundation myth’ that shows Western Man asserting his autonomy and dominance as if from scratch, the Journal charts his encounter with a phenomenon he cannot understand or control. Crusoe celebrates the resourcefulness needed to create a world from new; the Journal, the endurance to watch it fall apart. For that reason it is arguably this book that among all Defoe’s works speaks most eloquently to early twenty-first-century readers attuned to imaginary landscapes of nuclear and environmental devastation, to grim fantasies of alien invasion, to the panic and policies that accompany epidemic disease... Turning an eye on the commercial and spiritual centre of empire rather than an island outpost, it dares to envisage London consumed not just by disease but violent self-interest that tears at the social fabric. It is that very modern phenomenon, an illness narrative, but one in which the patient is a whole city. Works inspired by it—Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, Albert Camus’s La Peste—do not so much dismantle its ideology as try to render afresh the uniquely disturbing impact. (David Roberts)

There are hundreds of examples of highly functioning commons around the world today. Some have been around for centuries, others have risen in response to economic and environmental crises, and still others have been inspired by the distributive bias of digital networks. From the seed-sharing commons of India to the Potato Park of Peru, indigenous populations have been maintaining their lands and managing biodiversity through a highly articulated set of rules about sharing and preservation. From informal rationing of parking spaces in Boston to Richard Stallman’s General Public License (GPL) for software, new commons are serving to reinstate the value of land and labor, as well as the ability of people to manage them better than markets can. In the 1990s, Elinor Ostrom, the American political scientist most responsible for reviving serious thought about commoning, studied what specifically makes a commons successful. She concluded that a commons must have an evolving set of rules about access and usage and that it must have a way of punishing transgressions. It must also respect the particular character of the resource being managed and the people who have worked with that resource the longest. Managing a fixed supply of minerals is different from managing a replenishing supply of timber. Finally, size and place matter. It’s easier for a town to manage its water supply than for the planet to establish water-sharing rules.78 In short, a commons must be bound by people, place, and rules. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, it’s not an anything-goes race to the bottom. It is simply a recognition of boundaries and limits. It’s pooled, multifaceted investment in pursuit of sustainable production. It is also an affront to the limitless expansion sought by pure capital. If anything, the notion of a commons’ becoming “enclosed” by privatization is a misnomer: privatizing a commons breaks the boundaries that protected its land and labor from pure market forces. For instance, the open-source seed-sharing networks of India promote biodiversity and fertilizer-free practices among farmers who can’t afford Western pesticides.79 They have sustained themselves over many generations by developing and adhering to a complex set of rules about how seed species are preserved, as well as how to mix crops on soil to recycle its nutrients over centuries of growing. Today, they are in battle with corporations claiming patents on these heirloom seeds and indigenous plants. So it’s not the seed commons that have been enclosed by the market at all; rather, the many-generations-old boundaries have been penetrated and dissolved by disingenuously argued free-market principles.

One idea that has been repeatedly tested is that low mood can make people better at analyzing their environments. Classic experiments by psychologists Lyn Abramson and Lauren Alloy focused specifically on the accuracy of people’s perceptions of their control of events, using test situations that systematically varied in how much control the subject truly had. In different conditions, subjects’ responses (pressing or not pressing a button) controlled an environmental outcome (turning on a green light) to varying degrees. Interestingly, subjects who were dysphoric (in a negative mood and exhibiting other symptoms of depression) were superior at this task to subjects who were nondysphoric (in a normal mood). Subjects who were in a normal mood were more likely to overestimate or underestimate how much control they had over the light coming on.7 Dubbed depressive realism, Alloy and Abramson’s work has inspired other, often quite sophisticated, experimental demonstrations of ways that low mood can lead to better, clearer thinking.8 In 2007 studies by Australian psychologist Joseph Forgas found that a brief mood induction changed how well people were able to argue. Compared to subjects in a positive mood, subjects who were put in a negative mood (by watching a ten-minute film about death from cancer) produced more effective persuasive messages on a standardized topic such as raising student fees or aboriginal land rights. Follow-up analyses found that the key reason the sadder people were more persuasive was that their arguments were richer in concrete detail (see Figure 2.2).9 In other experiments, Forgas and his colleagues have demonstrated diverse benefits of a sad mood. It can improve memory performance, reduce errors in judgment, make people slightly better at detecting deception in others, and foster more effective interpersonal strategies, such as increasing the politeness of requests. What seems to tie together these disparate effects is that a sad mood, at least of the garden variety, makes people more deliberate, skeptical, and careful in how they process information from their environment.

It might sound dramatic to say the planet could be heading for a breakdown. But we do know beyond doubt that in all kinds of ways – technologically, environmentally, politically – the world is changing. And fast. So we need, more than ever, to know how to edit the world, so it can never break us down.

On November 25, 2011, outdoor clothing company Patagonia took out a full-page ad in The New York Times with the headline: “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” Though some cynics saw the headline as a publicity stunt by a high-priced brand that many people can’t afford, it is in the details of the ad that we can find clues about the kind of culture Patagonia has and that inspired such an ad in the first place. In the body copy of the ad, Patagonia did something most other companies would consider unthinkable. They explained, in plain language, the environmental cost of making their product, in this case the bestselling R2 Fleece. The copy read: “To make this jacket required 135 liters water, enough to meet the daily needs (three glasses a day) of 45 people. Its journey from its origin as 60% recycled polyester to our Reno warehouse generated nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, 24 times the weight of the finished product. This jacket left behind, on its way to Reno, two-thirds its weight in waste.” “There is much to be done and plenty for us all to do,” the ad concludes. “Don’t buy what you don’t need. Think twice before you buy anything. … Join us … to reimagine a world where we take only what nature can replace.

In the face of environmental challenges, innovation becomes our greatest ally in shaping a sustainable future.

Every small step we take towards environmental conservation paves the way for a brighter, greener tomorrow.

Bella inspired this book through a series of questions and conversations that circled around how people live together. Growing up on Maui (and in California), she has observed the challenges of food production, housing, global economies, and environmental losses. She has watched people lose their options, and people fall through the cracks in systems. As a father, it is emotionally cutting to see pain and heartbreak in your daughter's eyes, to witness her start to realize social equations do not calculate toward equity. Her brilliance across these conversations has been the ever-present solutions, her ingenuity and moxie, and the art for creating visions for change. She inspires me to be more present with each choice that circles around her future.

He'd been planting trees in the wilderness for 3 years. He'd planted a hundred thousand of them. Out of those, twenty thousand had come up. Of the twenty thousand he expected to lose half, because of rodents or the unpredictable ways of Providence. That still meant ten Thousand Oaks would grow where before there had been nothing.

the Airpocalypse didn’t inspire China to change its environmental tune. Beijing refuses to abide by any international agreement that might force it to prioritize environmentally responsible, long-term sustainable growth.

§417. The purpose of science is to be turned into technology, and the purpose of technology is to be used in the construction of the Overman. Any purpose other than this is false, at worst a challenge to our culture (since the Overman IS culture: its last and highest achievement), at best a mere misunderstanding. As for "pure science", this is as much of an absurdity as pure spirit: things we can't influence we have no interest in. And it is only because we can influence everything (because flux: either we can influence everything or nothing, since in a universe of flux changing one thing changes everything) that we are interested in everything. So if we help African children, it is only with a view to turning them into scientists and engineers to help construct the Overman. If we support the arts, we do so to inspire the Overman and help him to relax, or to use failed artists as waiters to serve the Overman his meals. Or McDonalds: to feed the subhumans who clean the toilets in the labs where the scientists and engineers are working on the Overman. Everything can be reduced to this. Every other conception of purpose is folly. Everything going the opposite way, e.g. environmentalism, artfaggotry, religions other than Overman worship, and so on, are threats to be suppressed, or better yet to be reinterpreted as opportunities for the Overman to challenge himself and exercise his powers. Only as intellectual exercises for the Overman are all these forms of decay justified, but once their workings have been fully grasped, as they will be by the time the present work is over, they are nothing but nuisances that serve no useful purpose and must be minimized or, if possible, completely eliminated.

The idea for the Green New Deal began with a group called the Sunrise Movement, started by recent college graduate environmental activists who drew inspiration from Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Some even say their roots can be traced back to Saul Alinsky, the gift to the right who keeps on giving. Alinsky, as you might remember, wrote a book back in 1971 called Rules for Radicals in which he cited Lucifer as the father of the radical movement. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both idolized Alinsky.

You have the power to affect environmental change on our planet by choosing to purchase organic fruits

The key to stopping the environmental apocalypse is not science but love. For decades now we have been staring at the scientific reports. They have not sufficiently inspired us to change our apocalyptic reality. But where science has failed, faith can succeed. We must help humanity rediscover [Mother Earth], their loving parent, the living world that sustains them. We must help them feel her love just as we show them how that love can be returned. And it can begin by gathering people around two simple questions: Where were you in nature when you experienced a vision of such beauty that it took your breath away? And how did that make you feel? If you can answer those two questions, you are on your way to meeting the Mother you may never have known before.

Environmental conservation is a collective responsibility to safeguard, and nurture the global ecosystem.

Though rarely acknowledged as such, LBJ is arguably the patriarch of our contemporary environmental movement, as Theodore Roosevelt was of an earlier environmental crusade. LBJ put plenty of laws on the books: Clean Air, Water Quality, and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments, Solid Waste Disposal Act, Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act, Aircraft Noise Abatement Act, and Highway Beautification Act. The 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects more than two hundred rivers in thirty-eight states;19 the 1968 Trail System Act established more than twelve hundred recreation, scenic, and historic trails covering fifty-four thousand miles.20 These laws are critical to the quality of the water we drink and swim in, the air we breathe, and the trails we hike. Even more sweeping than those laws is LBJ’s articulation of the underlying principle for a “new conservation” that inspires both today’s environmentalists and the opponents who resist their efforts: The air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by the poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. . . . The same society which receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities.21

But Anita Roddick had a different take on that. In 1976, before the words to say it had been found, she set out to create a business that was socially and environmentally regenerative by design. Opening The Body Shop in the British seaside town of Brighton, she sold natural plant-based cosmetics (never tested on animals) in refillable bottles and recycled boxes (why throw away when you can use again?) while paying a fair price to the communities worldwide that supplied cocoa butter, brazil nut oil and dried herbs. As production expanded, the business began to recycle its wastewater for using in its products and was an early investor in wind power. Meanwhile, company profits went to The Body Shop Foundation, which gave them to social and environmental causes. In all, a pretty generous enterprise. Roddick’s motivation? ‘I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community,’ she later explained. ‘If I can’t do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?’47 Such a values-driven mission is what the analyst Marjorie Kelly calls a company’s ‘living purpose’—turning on its head the neoliberal script that the business of business is simply business. Roddick proved that business can be far more than that, by embedding benevolent values and a regenerative intent at the company’s birth. ‘We dedicated the Articles of Association and Memoranda—which in England is the legal definition of the purpose of your company—to human rights advocacy and social and environmental change,’ she explained in 2005, ‘so everything the company did had that as its canopy.’48 Today’s most innovative enterprises are inspired by the same idea: that the business of business is to contribute to a thriving world. And the growing family of enterprise structures that are intentionally distributive by design—including cooperatives, not-for-profits, community interest companies, and benefit corporations—can be regenerative by design too.49 By explicitly making a regenerative commitment in their corporate by-laws and enshrining it in their governance, they can safeguard a ‘living purpose’ through times of leadership change and protect it from mission creep. Indeed the most profound act of corporate responsibility for any company today is to rewrite its corporate by-laws, or articles of association, in order to redefine itself with a living purpose, rooted in regenerative and distributive design, and then to live and work by it.

We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no sur- prise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Our natural inclination to do right by the world is stifled, breeding despair when it should be inspiring action. The participatory role of people in the well-being of the land has been lost, our reciprocal relations reduced to a Keep Out sign.

Antisthenes was not the first to differ significantly from the Hesiodic assessment of work. Rather, his proposition that ponos is a good rather than an unwelcome punishment was preceded by the emergence of an "industrious optimism" especially after the late fifth century. Optimistic man sets himself above environmental forces and asserts himself in the world as an indomitable force. Rather than accepting a god-given lot, he dares to "take fate by the throat." Rather than plodding the old furrows, he strikes out in a new direction, gives himself new tasks, implements his own plans, accepts his own failures. Some are more driven than others. The most ambitious impose upon themselves the greatest tasks and work incessantly for success. Some terrible restlessness goads these imperialists on, and as they hunt victory relentlessly they stamp down the weak and scoff at talk of justice. What do they want? It is hard to tell, since no success seems to satisfy them. Each triumph inspires new undertakings, each disaster resilient hope. They seem to toil on without end, as if human desire itself were infinite.

By “global ethics,” the Dalai Lama means that all people must take personal responsibility for ensuring human rights, fairness, equality, and environmental protection, regardless of their belief system. He believes that people need not embrace Buddhism to live good lives. Often he says that practicing Buddhism is unnecessary. Everyone can find the keys to a purposeful and moral life within their own culture and religious framework.

If we first purify our souls, we desire to dwell in clean surroundings.

We act individually to collectively clean our communities.

If flowers can clean the air, and bacteria can clean the water, and ants can clean the land, we too can clean our world. Land is our gift. Water is our blessing. Air is our fortune. Life is our reward.

Clean communities, a cleaner country.

So in 2013, Patagonia launched a venture capital fund to invest in environmentally and socially responsible for-profit start-ups. We wanted to apply the many lessons we have learned in trying to conduct our business more responsibly to applications beyond the outdoor apparel industry. We were willing to sacrifice short-term returns for long-term financial and environmental gains. Tin Shed Ventures serves as a vehicle for the third pillar of Patagonia’s mission statement: “ . . . use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” But it also serves to do good in the world: providing funding for people who have business ideas that could help solve the environmental crisis. It is really the small private businesses we hope to influence. It is the tens of thousands of young people who dream of owning their small farm someday. All of us working together can create the change that we need.

Here is why the wellbeing economy comes at the right time. At the international level there have been some openings, which can be exploited to turn the wellbeing economy into a political roadmap. The first was the ratification of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The SDGs are a loose list of 17 goals, ranging from good health and personal wellbeing to sustainable cities and communities as well as responsible production and consumption. They are a bit scattered and inconsistent, like most outcomes of international negotiations, but they at least open up space for policy reforms. For the first time in more than a century, the international community has accepted that the simple pursuit of growth presents serious problems. Even when it comes at high speed, its quality is often debatable, producing social inequalities, lack of decent work, environmental destruction, climate change and conflict. Through the SDGs, the UN is calling for a different approach to progress and prosperity. This was made clear in a 2012 speech by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who explicitly connected the three pillars of sustainable development: ‘Social, economic and environmental wellbeing are indivisible.’82 Unlike in the previous century, we now have a host of instruments and indicators that can help politicians devise different policies and monitor results and impacts throughout society. Even in South Africa, a country still plagued by centuries of oppression, colonialism, extractive economic systems and rampant inequality, the debate is shifting. The country’s new National Development Plan has been widely criticised because of the neoliberal character of the main chapters on economic development. Like the SDGs, it was the outcome of negotiations and bargaining, which resulted in inconsistencies and vagueness. Yet, its opening ‘vision statement’ is inspired by a radical approach to transformation. What should South Africa look like in 2030? The language is uplifting: We feel loved, respected and cared for at home, in community and the public institutions we have created. We feel understood. We feel needed. We feel trustful … We learn together. We talk to each other. We share our work … I have a space that I can call my own. This space I share. This space I cherish with others. I maintain it with others. I am not self-sufficient alone. We are self-sufficient in community … We are studious. We are gardeners. We feel a call to serve. We make things. Out of our homes we create objects of value … We are connected by the sounds we hear, the sights we see, the scents we smell, the objects we touch, the food we eat, the liquids we drink, the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, the dreams we imagine. We are a web of relationships, fashioned in a web of histories, the stories of our lives inescapably shaped by stories of others … The welfare of each of us is the welfare of all … Our land is our home. We sweep and keep clean our yard. We travel through it. We enjoy its varied climate, landscape, and vegetation … We live and work in it, on it with care, preserving it for future generations. We discover it all the time. As it gives life to us, we honour the life in it.83 I could have not found better words to describe the wellbeing economy: caring, sharing, compassion, love for place, human relationships and a profound appreciation of what nature does for us every day. This statement gives us an idea of sufficiency that is not about individualism, but integration; an approach to prosperity that is founded on collaboration rather than competition. Nowhere does the text mention growth. There’s no reference to scale; no pompous images of imposing infrastructure, bridges, stadiums, skyscrapers and multi-lane highways. We make the things we need. We, as people, become producers of our own destiny. The future is not about wealth accumulation, massive

Loving the Earth with a fierce devotion can mean that we view the damage being done to nature as attacks on our own family and kinship group. The despair and rage we feel as witnesses to terracide, animal exploitation and the everyday callous disregard for the environment can be channelled into creating awareness, resistance efforts, the earth rights movement, and by rejecting the numbing and destructive values of Empire. By opening our hearts to the Earth in our thoughts, words, actions and cultural life we will find sacred purpose in the co-creation of an earth-honoring society. Our re-enchantment with the natural world is essential for devoting ourselves to eco-activism, environmental healing, earth restoration and rewilding, and the future rests with us!