Vile Chinese Authoritarian Tyranny Threatens All

The Chinese system of government has shown monstrous disdain for free speech, truth, and basic human rights; most recently bringing disease upon its citizens and threatening the health of the entire world. It is time for Chinese Democracy, and for totalitarian communist tyranny to end, starting with President Xi Jinping’s resignation.

Hong Kong protestors foretold the type of Chinese deception that has caused the coronavirus epidemic

“A healthy society should not have just one voice.” – Dr. Li Wenliang

“There are no rioters, only a tyrannical regime” (沒有暴徒 只有暴政) and “Five demands, not one less” (五大訴求 缺一不可) – Hong Kong Democracy Protestors

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” – Winston S. Churchill

“The Chinese communist party cannot be trusted to tell the truth and must step down.” – Dr. Glen Barry

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To start, let me express my most sincere condolences for Chinese and other victims of the Wuhan Coronavirus. The whole world hopes for swift containment and recovery. Yet this is a manmade crisis that with a decent, functional government could have been avoided. Instead Wuhan, China, and the world are terrorized by a disease spawned by the Chinese government’s disdain for truth and stifling of free speech.

The coronavirus epidemic did not arise out of nowhere. It is the logical consequence of a deeply authoritarian government, a casual disregard for truth and freedom of speech, and Xi Jinping’s recent strengthening of tyrannical rule. Xi and the Chinese government bear full blame for the coronavirus outbreak and must be held to account.

Failed Chinese Communist Dogma

Most cultures have a combination of a storied and horrifying past and China is no different. Throughout Chinese history epic human constructs and monumental battles have been wrought upon the back of the degradation of the common person. Even within the past century the nation has jumped between enlightened thought and despotic tyranny, at any time seemingly moments away from further wide-scale state genocide.

Contemporary China is a plutocratic criminal state based upon banning free speech and other human rights, in a vile system that imprisons its citizens, so that the small group of Chinese communist party leaders and their families can live opulently. The term “communist” which implies equality has long been nonsensical in such an inequitable and corrupt system.

A maelstrom of threats emanates from Red China that threatens to kill Chinese and global citizenry under the mantra of dated, self-serving communist dogma (which few believe, and fewer adhere to). The communist party (which is in fact neither) maintains its grip on power through the constant threat of an iron fist in its citizens’ face.

There is an epic battle underway between liberal democracy (now with its own tendencies towards authoritarianism), and the communist police state that is Red China. At stake is all humanity’s basic human rights and dignity, freedom of thought and speech, liberty and privacy, and protection from dangerous government secrets.

State Terror and the Rights of Man

The litany of contemporary Chinese tyranny runs the gamut of conceivable intrusions upon human well-being meant by the state to inspire terror. Minority, ancient cultures such as the Uighurs and Tibetans are imprisoned in their own homelands and brain-washed to love red China’s promise of imprisoned consumption. Entire ancient cultures are being eliminated in acts of slow-motion genocide.

Much of China is constantly surveilled as a dragnet of cameras connected to sophisticated machine learning databases permeates every crevice of individual’s lives. What sort of vile voyeuristic artificial intelligence seeks to spy upon every action of their citizenry? What a depraved system that deems to algorithmically score the social worthiness of the myriad types of human self-expression, as if obedience to authority is the only measure of a person.

How long until drone assassins use this surveillance infrastructure to wage war upon individual thought, murdering free thinkers for daring to believe in free speech and the rights of wo(man)?

In China we are witnessing the fulfillment of Orwell’s big brother and it is terrifyingly real and dangerous. This escalating assault upon the hard-fought rights of man must not stand.

China will be free. Hong Kong protests will grow and spread to China post-coronavirus

In Hong Kong a proud, un-servile people demand the rule of law, the maintenance of freedom of speech, full democratic rights including to vote, and freedom from the constant threat of state violence. This modern proclamation of the rights of man; and simple, sincere requests to be heard and to vote, face unremitting police violence. We must all stand with Hong Kong as this is the proxy struggle between truth and lies, justice and injustice, freedom and tyranny, and decency and vileness.

There is not a moment to waste. The human family chooses now between a future of bright democratic liberty or dark autocratic tyranny.

Filthy Live Markets and State Secrets

And now the filthy, vile habit of slaughtering wildlife of all types in brutal “live markets” for falsely purported benefits – including a limp dick – has the world poised on the brink of pandemic. This widespread Chinese bloody, unsanitary mess has no counterpart in the world for incubating new diseases. Virtually anything that is alive including endangered species are at risk of a merciless, brutal death before being thrown in the cooking pot.

What sort of despotic, self-serving force knowingly allows viral outbreaks to exponentially cascade out of control to maintain power and save face for a while? People speaking truthfully of the virus outbreak such as Li Wenliang and others have been silenced and even imprisoned by government censors. If those giving notice had been heard early in the disease’s spread, almost certainly coronavirus would have been stopped before spreading widely.

Free speech could have limited the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak

The monstrous manner the Chinese system allowed the Wuhan Coronavirus to knowingly spread shows the evil, self-serving, and insecure nature of Chinese power. Limp dick indeed.

Thankfully at this moment the coronavirus mortality rates are low. But as exponential growth in the spread of the disease continues, the greater risk is overwhelmed medical facilities and social disorder. Weeks into exponential growth of new cases and mass quarantines, the Chinese government has been too proud to accept WHO and CDC assistance. Now avoidance of a global pandemic appears to require further Chinese totalitarian human rights atrocities.

Chinese Ecocidal Tyranny

China is the central organizer and buyer for the global trade in illegal logging of ancient forests. Globally all standing rainforest are threatened by the insatiable greed of a corrupt government that will do anything to amass further power. The only relief for Chinese citizens from brutal tyranny is to consume ever more cheap throwaway consumer goods based upon the destruction of dwindling ecosystems.

While paying lip service to climate change, the Chinese government ramps up its coal use, and backs away from controlling the size of its population (itself a component of the coronavirus’ spread). Chinese crowded conditions across degraded over-populated landscapes create optimal conditions for the spread of diseases as Gaia fights back.

Chinese growth alone threatens to pull down the biosphere.

China is the center of the global illegal rainforest logging market

Truth Matters

The Chinese system of government is a monstrous taint upon humanity’s progression towards realization of universal human rights, and equitable and just ecological sustainability, based upon scientific truths and the inherent rights of men and women to be free.

The Chinese government’s spying, imprisonment, ecocide, police brutality, and callous disregard for the health of their own citizens (indeed the global population) makes the communist party an illegitimate government.

The Chinese communist party cannot be trusted to tell the truth and must step down. It is up to every Chinese and non-Chinese citizen to demand democratic reform and an unraveling of authoritarian single party tyranny. China will only ever fully realize its greatness when it is a democracy and its citizens can express themselves freely and be heard.

Never has it been more important to stop buying Chinese goods as a means of depriving such a monstrous political system of its wealth.

Imperfect Democracy

On the other hand, stands Western style imperfect quasi-democracy that glorifies militarism, was built upon racism, and depends upon a foundation of elitist over-consumption at the expense of nature. Liberal democracy is the worst form of government ever, except for all the alternatives.

Yet in America’s and Europe’s unrealized testbeds of democracy one finds a sense of freedom that remains unparalled in human history. And continues perpetually to better itself and overcome past evils. Clearly the systems of government found in the United States and Europe are far preferable to Red, or shall we say Dead, China.

In America you have the right to be free, and that means something, and it is worth fighting for such liberty for the entire human family. Yet none of our freedom is guaranteed as long as some remain unfree,

All humans are born radically free and are meant to enjoy forever an unfettered personal liberty.

For the most part citizens in liberal democracies are free from random state violence (though it does occur, particularly for non-whites). Except for the constant barrage of advertising for democratic over-consumption, diminished but not yet banished religious idolatry, and military dogmatism; generally, those living in liberal democracies are not programmed as to how to think.

In Western Democracy there exists personal and societal space to seek and find truthful thought. To listen to the music and read the books you like. To say and write what you wish. To move about mostly freely. To vote your desires. And to make something of yourself based upon personal merit.

Certainly, the project of Western Democracy remains incomplete. Expenditures on militarism to fund continued global resource thievery ensure that education, health care, job training, and other social needs remain unmet. The promise of equal rights for all races and sexes remains incomplete.

And vile, filthy authoritarianism in the face of environmental scarcity is bearing its ugly face in no less than Brazil and the United States, where environmental rollbacks threaten ecosystem collapse.

Yet the choice is clear. Democracy, despite its faults, is the far preferable system over vile authoritarianism, wherever it bears its heads, and most particularly now in communist China.

Humanity stands at a pivotal juncture as the coronavirus threatens mass murder because of the communist party’s lust for power and rejection of those who speak truth. We recommit to human rights, democratic values, and to together finding a way towards ecological sustainability; or we descend into the techno-invasive, violent and disease ridden, police state future as espoused by Chinese capitalism.

Bring Necessary Manufacturing Home

“Made in China” is synonymous with a system that wages surveillance, torture, murder, and disease upon its own under-paid, over-worked, and ultimately disposable citizens. No longer can state murder and torture be paid for with the ill-gotten gains of selling cheap consumer goods in the West.

It is time to bring back locally to the place of consumption all necessary manufacturing from China and discontinue the rest.

China Will Be Free

For the welfare of the human family, let’s demand a Chinese political system that tells the truth and lets its citizens speak freely.

That shuts down live markets massacring wildlife, creating the filthy environment that incubated coronavirus and other diseases, and threatens to do so again. That rebukes and dismantles the state driven spying and flawed judgements upon everyday lives of its citizens. And that implements a new Democratic China of liberty, freedom, truth, and basic human decency absent from the current vile and evil Communist Inc.

Let’s demand a Chinese government that lets people speak freely so that never again will Chinese tyranny threaten global health.

And let us hope that despite such a horrendous, irresponsible system of government; that the coronavirus is brought under control to avoid more Chinese suffering and a global pandemic.

President Xi Jinping has failed the test of leadership causing the coronavirus to needlessly spread and is called upon to resign immediately

President Xi Jinping and the entire senior communist party leaders are called upon to resign immediately, given their mishandling and attempt to cover-up a disease of their own making. They have failed the test of leadership and their corrupt, power-hungry leadership is not fit for the challenges the country faces containing coronavirus.

Green Liberty is humanity’s shared future. Think of your children. Your planet. And your loved ones. And embrace human rights, democracy, and ecological sustainability for all. Before Dead China gets you.

Global Ecological Restoration: The Leaves of the Tree Will Heal the Nations

Global ecological sustainability requires large scale tree planting to restore natural ecosystems

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” – Revelation 22: 1-2

“Ecosystem restoration of landscapes across bioregions can ultimately lift the souls of dispirited citizens, provide continuously for their righteous livelihoods, regenerate the health and well-being of entire nations, while ensuring sustainability of our one shared biosphere… Only more leaves on the trees can heal your and our many nations’ brokenness. Please plant trees, restore ecosystems, and love nature and others.” – Dr. Glen Barry

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The End of Being Looms

The ecological fabric of being is fraying and Earth is at imminent risk of become uninhabitable. The collapse of major ecological systems that provide for the well-being of all life is intimately entwined with the personal despair, and political and social chaos, roiling global societies. Many growing social ills such as poverty, violence, and addiction are ultimately driven by environmental decline; and can only worsen if nature is not protected and restored.

Here I will first review our ecological predicament, before referring (as an atheist) to biblical wisdom as to the role trees play in our healing.

The Age of Industrial Affluence whereby illusory human material advancement briefly occurred through the liquidation of natural ecosystems is ending. We are well into the Age of Ecocide as drawdowns of natural capital – water, soil, atmosphere, fish, wildlife – have exceeded their regenerative capacity. Everywhere the ecologically attuned eye looks, tawdry natural plant communities and wildlife populations are collapsing and dying.

Humanity has surpassed the carrying capacity of the atmosphere, ecosystems, and the biosphere.

Simultaneously, and as a direct result, human societies are distressed. Shocking levels of inequality exist whereby billions lack basic needs as a small group of billionaires live a life of grotesque opulence. Both extremes further squeeze the Earth.

The economic bubble of an industrial growth economy based upon ecocide has burst. Violence, drug dependency, sexual abuse, depression, suicide, perma-war, racism, and even a resurgence in slavery are rife. All are related to the lessened prospects of material comfort for the lower and middle classes as there exists fewer natural areas to plunder for money. And to a general sense of lack of meaning in lives devoid of nature. The entire premise of capitalism, that an economy can grow forever by razing natural systems, has been revealed to be nonsensical malarkey that threatens to kill us all.

Exponential growth in population and consumption drive the fatally unsustainable resource consumption that liquidates natural ecosystem habitats. This relentless growth in everything at the expense of the natural world is the ultimate source of biodiversity loss, ecosystem diminishment, a fatally diminished climate, and ultimately a decline in human prospects for meaningful, universal, and lasting advancement.

Entering this new era of natural scarcity had led to greater competition between both individuals and nations, and to spiraling conflict and malignancies of all types. The final assault upon the Planet’s last natural ecosystem engines can only lead to collapse of societies and the biosphere.

And the end of being.

The key point: human well-being (and indeed all life) is intimately dependent upon natural ecosystems. Indeed, humanity is part of the ecological whole, as goes nature goes humanity. Critically we have gone from a state of nature surrounding humanity, to humanity enveloping sickened natural remnants. As ecology has dwindled under a centuries old assault, human mid-to-long term prospects have declined in tandem.

After years of human advancement in liberty, human rights, and equality; the current rise of authoritarian fascism is the natural consequence of a sick global environment. In the global rise of right-wing anti-science populism we are witnessing fits of petulance when people and nations hit the limits to growth and can’t have infinitely more of everything for everybody. Ignorance, including regarding ecology, has lead to serious misdiagnoses of societal problems.

Humanity is hell-bent upon destroying their habitat and the natural capital which makes possible and enriches their existence. As the collapse of global ecosystems intensify, together we face a brief period of unimaginably grim social strife that threatens decades of conflict and pain; before humanity, all life, and the biosphere die.

Unless we plant more trees to restore the environment and our culture.

The decline in natural ecosystems, and the reduction in economic opportunity from their clearance, is a driving force behind a range of social ills including perma-war, violence, addiction, depression, suicide, and poverty. Only widespread tree planting to regenerate natural and agro-ecosystems in an Age of Ecological Restoration can avoid collapse of societies and ultimately the biosphere.

Leaves Heal Nations

As an atheist rejecting worship of mythical ghosts, I’m not one to quote scripture. My spirituality is found in self-evident truths such as nature. Yet I recently became aware of the bible verse “The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,” and it deeply resonates with me. The quote occurs within the context of Revelation’s grim self-fulfilling prophecy of the end of the world as a result of sinful pestilence and war.

Stripped of Abrahamic myth, the quote contains an important secular truth that nations and their peoples are ultimately dependent upon the productivity and ecological health of their land, water, air, and seas. From trees and related natural ecosystems come the food, fiber, air, water, and livelihoods upon which the well-being of human and kindred life is utterly dependent. And when societies are in despair, it is ultimately nature and trees which can best heal the wounds of greed, war, and personal pain.

Innumerable cultural traditions – many of them massacred by christians – have understood humanity’s oneness with, and utter dependence upon, trees and nature. Destroying your shared environment is the ultimate sin for which redemption may not be possible if you wait too long.

The core nugget of universal, objective truth found in this bible verse is that tree leaves can heal nations. Tree planting will heal all nations and restore a personal state of natural awe and well-being. More tree and other plant leaves will lead inexorably to more fertile soil, plentiful water, full stomachs, sustained wildlife, full employment, peace, prosperity, and an operable climate.

While planting trees is good, doing so with the intent of restoring natural forest and agro-ecosystems is even better.

There exists tremendous potential to restore local ecosystems in a manner that improves landscape health and ultimately allows nature to once again provide the context for humanity. Remaining natural ecosystem fragments can have their margins secured to allow natural succession and their expansion to occur. This natural regrowth can be augmented with the planting of dominant natural tree species. Ecosystem restoration along with simultaneous rapid reductions in fossil fuel emissions (covered in other essays) are humanity’s only remaining hope to avoid destroying our one shared biosphere home.

Several large contiguous large forest wildernesses, and significant fragments of natural ecosystems, remain and for now are the ecosystem engines that are powering the global environment. Despite the fragments being nearly universally distributed; they are often small, isolated, and are thus unable to provide the full range of ecological and economic benefits necessary for the well-being of human and all life. And wherever old trees stand they continue to be assaulted under the quasi-religious dogma of economic development.

These last naturally evolved ecological gems can be eliminated in a futile attempt to prop up continued exponential growth. Or the pressure can be taken off of the leaves of the trees; as natural ecosystems are assisted to regenerate, expand, reconnect, and ultimately become fully productive again.

Multiple goals can be pursued. Core ecological areas that are large and connected enough to maintain the entire panoply of life, and which provide ecosystem services upon which all life depends, must be protected and/or re-established. Within this landscape matrix areas of production of food and fiber can co-exist. This will run the gamut from perma-culture gardens of fruits, nuts, and vegetables; to natural plantations of fiber for shelter and other necessities, all enmeshed within the core areas. Local species and genotypes will be favored, yet due to abrupt climate change it may be necessary to use species assemblages that occur together in nearby hotter climates.

There exist hundreds of millions of denuded acres globally that can immediately be marked as zones of ecological restoration (given consent of local peoples and plans for their economic benefit). In many areas, small tawdry patches of naturally evolved plant stocks remain, that if the pressure were taken off, could quickly regenerate, particularly in the tropics. There will be millions of jobs for local peoples in plant nurseries; and tree planting, care, and harvest. While some core areas must remain involatile to remain ecologically intact, small communities of forest keepers will live sustainable, fulfilling lives throughout the rest. And critically indigenous land tenure, including to stolen lands,will be restored and solidified.

Ecosystem restoration of landscapes across bioregions can ultimately lift the souls of dispirited citizens, provide continuously for their righteous livelihoods, regenerate the health and well-being of entire nations, while ensuring sustainability of our one shared biosphere.

The Age of Global Ecological Restoration 

Please hear the clarion call of millions already working to usher in an Age of Global Ecological Restoration. We must come together as a global family to restore ecologically the places we inhabit and which we and our forebearers have senselessly allowed to be destroyed. One last time lets beat guns into plowshares, to make the shovels necessary to plant the trees whose leaves we need to cool the frustrations of diminished prospects and restore hope in a mortally threatened world.

By reconstituting ecology, society will reconnect to the wonders of nature. A sense of communal well-being will come; as guns, hard drugs, suicide, and over-consumption fade away. The focus will be upon shared advancement, well-being, and experience rather than insular, anxious lusting for the accumulation of more stuff.

In many a glen, after a day of hard work planting and caring for trees, people will gather in new forests of their making for feasts under the moon and stars; and again find community and make love.
We will marvel at creation and the miracle of being as we work for her continuation. Once again, we will feel in our very cells our own intimate connection with kindred species with which we share this billions of year long evolutionary journey. There will be a resurgence in self-expression as art, sport, music, theater, science (and other knowledge), and the written word rise in prominence. Emerging technologies will be used appropriately, and only to the extent that they augment ecology, and are used exclusively for social good.

Frequent long-distance travel, the military-industrial complex, fossil fuels, big government, abject despair, extreme poverty, and social want will fade away as a more just society based upon equitable and sustainable bioregional plenty re-emerges.

Together the human family has arrived at the point where only the leaves of the tree can heal the nations. We have one last chance, and a closing window of opportunity, to restore the ecosystems that humans need to both survive and thrive. We must power down, demilitarize, reject industrial ecocide, and embrace centuries of ecological restoration as the penultimate focus of human endeavors.

Only more leaves on the trees can heal your and our many nations’ brokenness. Please plant trees, restore ecosystems, and love nature and others.

On Amazon Fires: It’s the Ecology Stupid

Global Ecological Sustainability depends critically upon ending the logging and burning of old forests and letting them recover, expand and reconnect

“Each act of cutting and burning old trees diminishes and contributes to the pending collapse of the biosphere… The cutting and burning of old forests ends, as a prominent aspect of the coming Great Transition required for equitable and just global ecological sustainability, or together we all needlessly die .” 

Dr. Glen Barry

Old trees in old growth forests power the biosphere

A particularly malignant social and ecological disease sprung forth upon the Earth several centuries ago. A central component of European colonialism was the pernicious, ecocidal belief that wide scale cutting and burning of natural ecosystems was desirable. Indeed, cutting and burning natural ecosystems defined “civilization” and made the Western worldview superior to heathen naturalism.

This pantheon to “development” was created around murdering natural ecosystems and their inhabitants, which continues to be pursued with religious intensity. Enormous temporary growth and wealth were accumulated by some through the wholesale liquidation of vast expanses of naturally evolved life. Generations of children were born and indoctrinated into the fallacy that ecosystems existed to be cut and burnt and had no intrinsic worth.

In fact, as multitudes of indigenous cultures intimately understood, humanity is completely dependent upon natural ecosystem habitats to meet all our needs. Food, water, air, shelter, medicines, spirituality and more derive from old forests and old trees.

Humans and all life need naturally evolved ecosystems to exist and prosper. We are part of and utterly dependent upon the web of life found in the ecology of old forests and other natural habitats.

Yet we have derived an economic system of growth dependent upon their clearing. At a certain scale such habitat destruction could occur without impacting climate, soil, precipitation, and other ecological processes. Yet increasingly over recent decades landscapes, bioregions, and increasingly the global system are being thrown into disarray as terrestrial ecosystem processes and patterns are disturbed and ultimately eliminated.

Critical thresholds whereby natural ecosystems become disconnected, and are islands of habitat surrounded by devastation, have been surpassed. Abrupt climate change, lack of drinking water, soil infertility, dead oceans – all are contributed to by loss and diminishment of terrestrial ecosystems.
This European spawned disease of over-development, since embraced by many others, threatens an uninhabitable hell on Earth. Tremendous suffering awaits us all and has already begun as climate weirding, ecosystem collapse, food and water shortages, and authoritarian responses destroy centuries of progress. Ill-gotten wealth from ecosystem liquidation has enabled unsustainable growth in human populations and inequitable over-consumption.

Each act of cutting and burning old trees diminishes and contributes to the pending collapse of the biosphere. Continued clearing of old forests inexorably leads to the end of being.

The Amazon rainforest, along with a handful of other forest wildernesses in Africa, Canada, the Congo, Russia, and New Guinea, contain the last intact, contiguous terrestrial ecosystems that provide ecosystem services driving global ecological sustainability. These naturally evolved large-scale ecosystems contain a complex panoply of life that in sum power the biosphere and make Earth habitable. And at a smaller scale remnant habits along rivers, in wetlands, forest fragments, and even individual large trees continue to provide habitat for all life including humans.

Yet despite all that science has re-learned regarding the importance of natural ecosystems for biodiversity, ecosystems, and climate; these last planetary ecological engines continue to be sacrificed on the alter of mammon in an orgiastic spasm of ecological cruelty and derangement.

Ecology is the meaning of life (not development).

It is ludicrous to log old trees found in millions of year-old natural ecosystems. It is abnormal and a self-fulfilling death wish. Think of the suffering of wildlife as they are consumed by flames or die from lack of habitat.

Amazon rainforest fires threaten Brazilian and global well-being

Cutting and burning are both a cause and a symptom of the disease consuming the Amazon.

Rainforests are cleared for agriculture using fire, and the resultant micro-climate changes, particularly along exposed rainforest edges, make otherwise moist regions more prone to burning.

The current burning of the Amazon is the logical consequence of a wicked worldview’s pernicious logging of tropical hardwoods and clearing of land using fire for agricultural expansion. And most of this destruction is to feed the markets of the over-developed world which have already decimated their own natural systems.

You can make a difference in protecting the Amazon and other old forests. Your hunger for soy, beef, and timber are ultimately the cause of Amazon’s fires. Eliminate these rainforest destroying products from your life. For centuries settlers have threatened indigenous communities. Working as an ally to support indigenous land tenure is perhaps the most important thing you can do to help stop the Amazon fires. And work to support ecological restoration and regenerative agriculture in the Amazon and on all degraded lands including those near you.

Entire criminal sectors have made some powerful interests rich, and provide temporary employment for workers growing soybeans, milling logs, and cattle ranching. Yet all such extractive enterprises based upon clearing millions of year old natural ecosystems ultimately prove tragically unsustainable in the mid-to-long term.

The collapse of natural ecosystems is made more tragic by a whole lecherous NGO sector greenwashing particular types of rainforest logging or farming as being “sustainable”. Should a hell exist other than in Amazonian infernos, a special place is reserved for such traitors to the Earth and ecological truth. You know who you are, shame on you.

Around the world social protest movements are emerging, strengthening, and coalescing into more than the sum of their parts; to demand democratic, just, equitable, and sustainable social change. Only through such a Great Transition can the global environment be sustained, and all enjoy freedom and decent livelihoods. Crucially, protest movements are emerging that acknowledge that the climate, biodiversity, and ecosystems crises are one and the same.

A central demand of those seeking ecology truths must be that all cutting and burning of old trees found in natural old forest habitats end immediately. And that an age of ecological restoration be embraced with all haste to reestablish mature natural habitats across the majority of Earth’s surface.

Entire industries feeding themselves upon the trough of global ecocide must be dismantled; and replaced with eco-enterprises based upon regenerative agriculture and allowing natural ecosystems to age and reconnect. There exists tremendous potential for good livelihoods built upon restoring natural forests, soils, wetlands, and waterways. All of which will prove important in restoring our global atmosphere by slowing climate change as well.

It is morally wrong to kill old trees.

The cutting and burning of old forests ends, as a prominent aspect of the coming Great Transition required for equitable and just global ecological sustainability, or together we all needlessly die.

I beseech you to dedicate yourself to living a life that does not consume products produced by burning and cutting old forests and other natural ecosystems. And commit yourself to restoring natural habitats, indigenous well-being, and sustainable agriculture.

Do so as if your and all life depend upon it. It does.

Regenerating Gaia: Imagine a Peaceful Rebellion that Regrows Nature

Gaia – the living global ecological system – is collapsing and dying as human industrial growth overruns natural ecosystems and climate. Yet the biosphere can regenerate, as it has done before, given the time and space, free from human burning and cutting. As the twin emergencies of climate and ecosystem loss threaten the end of being, I join in calls for a peaceful “Extinction Rebellion” whereby people together do what they can, do what they must, for Earth and our shared habitat. Let’s start by regenerating nature in order to sustain creation.

Regenerate Gaia, Regrow Nature

“Imagine all the people living life in peace… You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one, I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” – John Lennon, Imagine

“Imagine a peaceful rebellion that regrows nature… Let’s return to and tend our planetary garden. We once shared creation with other creatures, let’s do so again. Gaia can regenerate herself if given enough time, space, and love.” – Dr. Glen Barry

One of many amazing things about nature is it can grow back. 10,000 short years ago much of the Northern hemisphere was covered by a mile of glacial ice, scouring the land of all-natural vegetation. Before that, cataclysmic asteroid strikes virtually annihilated biological life, in moments of immense planetary scale death. In each case, fragmented life re-emerged – renewed and diversified – in relatively short order. Critically, enough natural remnants remained, and were able to recover.

For eons biological life of all sorts including natural terrestrial ecosystems have shown an innate, indomitable will to sustain itself. This is not necessarily the case. Gaia, the planetary organism that is the sum of all ecosystems, can – like all life – collapse and die. Yet creation has proven to be remarkably resilient. When adequate remnant nature remains, and once pressure is taken off quickly and long enough, life is able to regenerate; genes evolve, wildlife has babies, and natural ecosystems repopulate denuded land and sea.

Gaia is a living organism. And once again, all her organic and naturally evolved life is in peril. This time at the hands of humanity.

It is difficult to fathom the degree to which natural ecosystems and climate have been disrupted by human industrial growth, and the potential for spiraling collapse should natural ecosystems and climate not be allowed to recover. The biosphere is already bifurcating between extremes (a sure sign of impending collapse) – demonstrated by trends as diverse as climate weirding, rising authoritarianism, collapsing ecosystems, mass migration, and a state of perma-war – before settling into a new normal of a depauperate and perhaps lifeless planet.

Now living in New York City and working in financial IT, much of my formative years unfolded in close proximity to nature. Some of my most pleasant memories as a child include fishing for bass from a canoe with my parents, the smell of the Earth waking in a tent, and partaking in the symbiotic ecological cycles of animal husbandry and gardening as my family homesteaded. Over the past two decades I have restored a natural forest ecosystem on a few acres of denuded farm fields – a gratifying yet grueling task.

From an early age I sensed Earth was alive and gravely threatened, intuitions fortified by over a decade of graduate studies in ecology, and a lifetime of rainforest and climate activism. It has been 5 years since I published Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse, ground-breaking peer-reviewed science identifying a tenth planetary boundary. There I hypothesized that 66% of Earth’s land must be covered with natural and agro-ecological ecosystems to sustain the biosphere; and foresaw the need for a revolutionary response to ecosystem and climate emergencies, now being realized with global climate strikes and extinction rebellions.

Given such a massive and unprecedented global ecological emergency, surely an “Extinction Rebellion” is long overdue.

Imagine a peaceful rebellion that regrows nature.

The place for sufficient climate and ecosystem solutions to start is to let Earth rest and recover. And most importantly, to allow and assist natural ecosystems to regrow. We must once again put our faith in seeds, and the ability of nature to sustain all life.

Massive nurseries of natives plants from local genetic stock, nearby genotypes adapted to warmer conditions, and species suitable for forest gardens will be required to provide seed stock to re-establish intact and functioning ecosystems over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. Enormous deforested and ecologically diminished areas exist, particularly in the tropics, that must be quickly reforested. Replenishment planting surrounding and reconnecting natural remnants over vast areas will yield ecosystem services and store carbon, as well as provide massive employment. Science knows much regarding how to harness ecosystems’ natural restorative processes, carefully targeting for augmentation the re-establishment of dominant and keystone species, as remnant ecosystems are aided to expand and reconnect.

There exists enormous potential to carry out landscape scale ecological restoration activities which assist natural remnants to age, expand, and reconnect. Protecting and restoring old-growth forests, other natural ecosystems, and all kindred species are a huge part of the climate change and ecosystem solutions, and a prerequisite to solve a whole host of other ecological issues including biodiversity, soil, wildlife, and water crises.

We are speaking of restoring natural ecosystems, going well beyond tree farms. Such rewilding focuses upon assisting natural ecosystems to recover their full ecological integrity. This is demonstrated by their possessing the full range of natural species, composition, structure, and function. Diverse agro-ecological systems that emphasize organic perma-culture will play a vital role, when interspersed with intact and regenerating forests, in order to once again ensure ecosystems provide the ecological context within which humans and other species can live forever.

Of course, successfully regenerating ecosystems on a global scale presupposes that the damage to existing intact ecosystems ends. Much of the foundation-fed climate and environment movements have myopically focused upon technical solutions to climate change, failing to understand the role intact and regenerating ecosystems play in sustaining Gaia. Some go so far as continuing to sell logging primary forests as being desirable and even sustainable. We must go far beyond technophile solutions and end natural ecosystem loss and harness the Earth system’s amazing ability to regenerate herself.

This is what makes the Extinction Rebellion movement so exciting – it correctly diagnoses the threat to the biosphere, humanity, and kindred species as emanating from both climate change AND biodiversity/ecosystem loss.

Ecology is the answer.

There is no way humanity emerges intact from the climate and ecosystem emergencies and achieves global ecological sustainability unless we grow justice, peace, and equity as well. This will require powering down the industrial growth economy, demobilizing the military-industrial complex, and coming together as one human family to stop those destroying nature. Solutions include not only ending burning of fossil fuels and destruction of natural ecosystems. We must also make peace and demilitarize, promote greater fairness and justice, and limit human numbers and inequitable over-consumption.

Let’s return to and tend our planetary garden. We once shared creation with other creatures, let’s do so again. Gaia can regenerate herself if given enough time, space, and love.