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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Solidarity, resilience, mutual aid in the Great Unraveling
“Minneapolis’s rapid mobilization against ICE was aided greatly by a community with a tradition of mutual aid. Minnesotans’ solidarity didn’t just spring up when Trump’s goons came to town. It was forged by generations of consistent, need-blind aid to anyone that happens to be close by. You can — and should — start building this resilience where you live.
“Today, I have a new appreciation for what we’re seeing in Minnesota, which stems from knowing that everyone is at risk — whether we know each other at all. It is impossible to get through a Minnesota winter without help, and only sometimes does that assistance come from your neighbors.
“The stories about people shoveling out an entire block’s driveways without being asked and with no compensation are true. But the real miracles (and just as common) are the times when strangers stop to help someone shovel out a car caught in a snowbank, or bring out the kitty litter from their trunk put there just for this kind of emergency.
“People offer assistance without hesitation and without question. I don’t think I ever even heard someone dismiss thanks with, ‘Just pay it back someday’. Of course you will — everyone knows it. You don’t help people out because you like them. You just do.”
In the prospect of collapse
“Yesterday evening, I attended a screening of the film ‘The Empathy Project’, which left me in a pondersome mood. Then earlier today, I saw a report posted on Linkedin, which the title alone is scary – ‘Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and national security’.
“And all the more so, since it is from a UK government intelligence committee, and warns of an increasingly likely collapse of essential natural systems, ushering in mass migration, food shortages, increased prices, and disorder on a global scale.
“The report identifies that some vital ecosystems could face collapse within just 5 years. Further compounded by a UN report that we are in ‘an era of water bankruptcy’, I am left with a visceral sense of unease, of a broken global system that hyperconsumes — nature, animals, people — driven by money, and which is unfixable within the present paradigms.
“Collapse is an inevitable fate for an extractive system on a finite planet, and indeed, I wonder if it may be the only force powerful enough to drive change. In which case, mitigation alone (‘carbon tunnel vision’) is insufficient, and we must also adapt to the shocks that will come.
“[When] tracing the lines of a whole, out of kilter, system of interconnected, interdependent components that needs realignment, empathy is probably the best way forward. However, empathy does not square well with a ‘growth’ mindset, which is one of acquisition and conquest. Is ’empathetic growth’ even possible, or [is it] another oxymoron, such as ‘green growth’, ‘sustainable agriculture’, let alone ‘friendly fire’?”
Safe streets designed for people, not cars
“Fully one third of Americans do not have a driver’s license. Plus, non-drivers are children and young people and seniors; non-drivers are disproportionately Black, Native American, and Native Alaskan, as well as immigrants and anyone who can’t afford to own and fuel a car.
“The Disability Mobility Initiative understands the benefits of policies that shift away from the entrenched systems that privilege cars, to those that center on people who need — and want — more choices about how to get around. The benefits are big, broad, and game-changing: connected, accessible neighborhoods; freedom of movement and mobility; cleaner air and water and a protected climate; less pressure to sprawl; safer streets and public spaces; thriving local businesses; and more equitably-shared economic opportunity.
“For our towns and cities to work for non-drivers, we must reduce the distances people need to travel. This means building housing with greater densities, and zoning laws and parking requirements that incentivize retail, groceries, offices, health care and childcare facilities interspersed with housing. At a fundamental level, fifteen-minute walkable cities are key to making communities work better without driving.”
Dopamine: ever greater stimuli to crave more and more and more
“Dopamine: the most famous neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure, motivation, and (perhaps most importantly) addiction. When examining why our society is hooked on consuming more and more of everything – food, clothes, videos, news, vacations – it’s imperative to look at how our modern environments hijack our brain’s dopamine, sending it into overdrive at nearly every turn.
“New York Times bestselling author and professor of psychiatry, Anna Lembke, explains how dopamine works as our brain’s reward signal and why our ancient wiring is mismatched for today’s level of high-dopamine stimuli in everyday life – leading to tolerance, withdrawal, and even anhedonia. Dr. Lembke is author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.
“What are the key practices individuals can use to reduce their addictive tendencies, even as our culture continues to prioritize quick dopamine hits and consumption? If we acknowledge that information alone isn’t enough, what cultural shifts can we make to foster more connection, digital mindfulness, and authenticity, in order to return to a slower, lower throughput way of living?
“Dr. Lembke: What I argue in Dopamine Nation is that essentially we have drugified our lived experience by making everything more rewarding, more potent, more accessible, more bountiful, more novel, such that we’re all vulnerable to addiction, not just to drugs and alcohol, but also behaviors including engagement with digital media.
“It’s very clear that digital media activates the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. It releases dopamine in the reward pathway. The more dopamine that’s released and the faster that it’s released, the more likely it is that substance or behavior to be reinforcing for our brains. And digital media is just like our reward pathways turned inside out.
“I actually use the word digital media and not social media. Digital media is the bigger umbrella. And then subsumed within that, you’ve got social media, you’ve got pornography, video games, online shopping, and now the sort of uber-potent form of social media is AI.
“When you look at human evolution, our brains essentially evolved for a world of scarcity where we would have to do a lot of upfront work for a tiny little bit of reward. What’s happened now is essentially we’ve created an environment where we don’t have to do any work at all, and we’re flooded with a huge reward.”
U.S. losing in North America’s EV futures
“[Canada’s] Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has signed a landmark agreement with China to significantly reduce tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for China dropping duties on Canadian agricultural products. The deal will allow China to export up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles per year into Canada at a reduced tariff of 6.1%, down from the 100% imposed in 2024.
“If I were a U.S. auto executive, I would greet this news with dread. China is the world’s leader in EV manufacturing, and Canada is the leading export market for U.S.-made cars and light trucks.
“Tariffs have kept most Chinese-made models out of the United States, but China is almost everywhere else, including Mexico and now Canada. This, along with the broader strains in trade relations with Mexico and Canada, is a bad sign for the U.S. auto industry.
“Canada was already trying to move away from its reliance on the United States because of the Trump administration’s aggressive, unpredictable trade policy decisions. Within five years, more than half of the Chinese electric vehicles will be affordable, with an import price of less than $35,000. The least expensive Tesla, by contrast, can be bought in B.C. for $55,000 to $60,000.”
Old dog, new tricks
“Why is strict materialism a hard sell for many in our dualist-dominated culture? Okay, so some are understandably pulled by the attractive idea of an immortal soul. But attractions aside, what are typical objections to a material-only existence?
“Part of it, we must recognize, is good-old-fashioned ignorance. Also contributing is that incomplete grasp of the new idea favors its premature rejection. But then again, most changes in worldview at the cultural scale happen via generational replacement rather than by changed individuals.
“For some matters, deeply-lodged understandings are thoroughly integrated into worldviews, and require a great deal of effort to disgorge. It’s just easier to imagine a flat earth sitting as still as it feels than complicated geometries of 3-D orbits. It’s far easier to tell a story about God creating Earth and all its life being created in six days than to follow the convoluted history of astrophysics and evolution.
“A common misimpression is that matter is inert, so that building from matter is like using lifeless Lego blocks. Life and conscious experience can’t possibly arise from all-dead ingredients, the word-thinking goes. But under this painfully insufficient ‘Lego’ model, real atoms are buzzing gobs of charge that literally jump at the chance to interact and bond via electromagnetism.
“Different molecular arrangements of atoms form different profiles for attracting select molecules. This is the basis of proteins and DNA and lots of other chemical/biological structures. Life avails itself of these interactive capabilities — using standard physics. The subtle trick is hidden in the deep underbelly of evolution. What looks like proactive agency is complex behavior shaped by success in feedback.
“The complexity of Life, the Universe, and Everything is so utterly overwhelming as to preclude end-to-end understanding. Highly-interactive large systems soon outstrip computational ability. The air particles in a room are far too numerous and vigorous to possibly model numerically (∼1036 collisions per second).
“It doesn’t take much complexity at all to bust our capabilities. Even designing a single novel protein to accomplish a novel job is beyond our means. We’re just not nearly smart enough and patient enough and vast enough (in time and space) to keep up with the universe.”
Subtlety is not El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago’s strong suit
“The United States is now engaged in what I am calling “smash-and-grab” diplomacy in Venezuela, and it will perhaps soon do the same in Greenland. The phrase seems more descriptive than the older one of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ in which the mere display of force was frequently used.
“What followed the era of gunboat diplomacy was a era of less direct bullying of weaker countries by major powers. As empires crumbled, newly independent countries were strongly ‘encouraged’ to install leadership friendly to American and European economic interests — or else! One of the ‘or else’s’ was detailed in a book called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [by John Perkins].
“The author began the book with this:
‘Economic hit men (EHM) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign ‘aid’ organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization’.
“With the return of scarcity of key metals, energy, food, and water, expect more countries to engage in some form of smash-and-grab diplomacy as shortages lead to military operations designed to alleviate those shortages and/or prevent future ones. What the current U.S. administration is doing, though probably unwittingly, is saying the quiet part out loud.”
Global fossil fuel corporations “major emitters” dig in their heels
“As fossil fuel-based carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise to record levels, a new analysis shows that a majority of these emissions can be traced back to a shrinking number of large corporate entities.
“Just 32 companies accounted for over half of global fossil carbon emissions in 2024, according to a report published Wednesday by the U.K.-based think tank InfluenceMap. That is down from 36 companies responsible for half the global CO2 emissions in 2023, and 38 companies five years ago. Nearly two-thirds of the 32 corporations responsible for over half of CO2 emissions in 2024 saw their emissions increase compared to 2023.
“Much of the global carbon emissions in 2024 came from state-owned entities, which represented 16 of the top 20 emitters. The five largest emitters overall — Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, Coal India, China’s CHN Energy, National Iranian Oil Co. and Russia’s Gazprom — accounted for 18% of the total fossil CO2 emissions in 2024. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and BP — the top five emitting investor-owned companies — together were responsible for 5.5% of the total emissions in that year.”
2025 U.S. emissions jump after 19 year downward trend
“The United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released Tuesday. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of data centers and cryptocurrency mining, and higher natural gas prices.
“American emissions of carbon dioxide and methane had dropped 20% from 2005 to 2024, with a few one- or two-year increases in the overall downward trend. But that changed last year with pollution actually growing faster than economic activity.
“The cold 2025 winter meant more heating of buildings, which often comes from natural gas and fuel oil that are big greenhouse gas emitters. A significant and noticeable jump in electricity demand from data centers and cryptocurrency mining meant more power plants producing emissions.
“Unfortunately, the 2025 U.S. emission increase is likely a harbinger of what’s to come as the U.S. federal leadership continues to make what amounts to a huge unforced economic error by favoring legacy fossil fuels.”
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