Sublime

We are a sacrifice, and no matter how much we run from it, our lives are a sacrifice for the sake of the whole, for the sake of Gaia. This

Traditionally, science seeks order by understanding the simplest parts of a system. How does a single gas particle behave given a certain temperature? Which gene in our DNA determines eye color? Scientists then try to develop theories that explain more general observations based on their detailed understanding of the individual parts.

An international collaboration among ecological economists and scientists that attempted to define safe operating zones, or what they term “planetary boundaries,” reported in 2009 that of the nine they identified, we’d already exceeded three (climate, biodiversity, the nitrogen cycle), and were approaching limits on four more (freshwater use, land

Life, in all its evolutionary wisdom, manages ecosystems of unfathomable beauty, ever evolving toward more wholeness, complexity, and consciousness. Change

The Gaia scenario is built around the idea of “earth democracy.” It’s a transition toward bioregionalism, toward boundaries instead of borders.

Any view of financial systems must recognize that they are ecosystems, linking agents, stocks, and flows. Just as an ecosystem ecologist is focused on the cycling of crucial elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, so too might a “financial ecologist” focus on the sustainable cycling of crucial elements like capital, labor, and financial

They appear to want some of the same things most of us want: recognition from their peers and communities and better lives for the people they care about. Being

When we do, we assume the politicians are clients in a patron–client relationship, and we assume their obligations will cloud their impartial judgment.

As the American ecologist Aldo Leopold deftly put it, we need to transform the way we see ourselves, ‘from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it’.41 Thanks to forty years of Earth-system research, we have a rapidly improving scientific understanding of how the Holocene epoch – with its stable climate, ample fresh water,