October 15, 2016

‘Good Anthropocene’: Grassroots Initiatives Worldwide Show Path Forward

"Looking for a ray of sunshine amidst seemingly endless news of the warming planet, global biodiversity loss, or ongoing war? You might want to head over to Seeds of a Good Anthropocene, a website developed by a team of international researchers to spotlight global initiatives or “seeds” from the grassroots that help pave the path towards a more just, sustainable world."

By Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.org
October 14th, 2016, posted Oct. 15 by popularesistance.org

‘Our legacy may not be as dark as we might think’

"Looking for a ray of sunshine amidst seemingly endless news of the warming planet, global biodiversity loss, or ongoing war?

You might want to head over to Seeds of a Good Anthropocene, a website developed by a team of international researchers to spotlight global initiatives or “seeds” from the grassroots that help pave the path towards a more just, sustainable world. Think the permaculture system developed from Australian researchers and designers Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, or The Leap Manifesto, a call to care “for the Earth and one another,” or the Ngäbe-Buglé Struggle to Protect Environmental Resources in Panama.

“We’re building these global pathways from the bottom up, by crowdsourcing a rich data base of ‘bright spots,’ real places that demonstrate one or more elements of a positive future that might serve as seeds of a good Anthropocene.”
—Elena Bennett, McGill University

One of the researchers, Elena Bennett, an ecosystem ecologist and geographer at McGill University, explained last week at the New York Times that “Unlike previous scientific efforts to build scenarios for future change, which typically rely on structures organized from the top down, we’re building these global pathways from the bottom up, by crowdsourcing a rich data base of ‘bright spots,’ real places that demonstrate one or more elements of a positive future that might serve as seeds of a good Anthropocene.”
Read original article here

And what is the Anthropocene, and why will we be rolling this term off our tongues in coming years?

The Anthropocene Is Here: Humanity Has Pushed Earth Into a New Epoch
by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer
Published on August 29, 2016 by Common Dreams

..."The epoch is thought to have begun in the 1950s, when human activity, namely rapid industrialization and nuclear activity, set global systems on a different trajectory. And there's evidence in the geographic record. Indeed, scientists say that nuclear bomb testing, industrial agriculture, human-caused global warming, and the proliferation of plastic across the globe have so profoundly altered the planet that it is time to declare the 11,700-year Holocene over."...