|
TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
______________________________________________________________________
CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
World Localization Day – 21 June
“Ever since 2020, a global organization called Local Futures has been organizing events in dozens of countries on June 21. There are films, webinars, and local events happening everywhere around the globe. Our featured interview this week is with Anja Lyngbaek, one of the principal organizers of these events.
“Michael Shuman: Tell us a little about the history of World Localization Day.
“Anja Lyngbaek: World Localization Day began as a one-off event to shine a light on localization as a powerful strategy for systemic change — especially highlighting the critical importance of strong communities and locally produced goods.
“We brought together over 100 diverse voices from around the world for an online event. The message was that we need to move away from a corporate-controlled global economy that serves the few, and toward place-based economies that serve people and the planet.
“Since then, it has grown into a month-long celebration throughout June. This expansion has made it easier for groups and organizations to participate, allowing Local Futures to better highlight projects, organizations, and independent local businesses working to build healthier, more resilient local economies and communities.
“MS: World Localization Day is that it amplifies voices from the Global South. Why is the Global South so interested in localization?
“AJ: Many countries in the so-called Global South have retained a higher degree of cultural and biological diversity, largely as a result of later industrialization, compared to those in the Global North. These regions are often home to more artisans, independent businesses, and people engaged in rural and land-based livelihoods.
“People in the Global South are also more acutely aware of the harmful impacts of the global economy, having experienced firsthand the destructive consequences of corporate-led development: polluting extractive industries, toxic pesticide use, plastic dumping, exploitative labor practices, and trade agreements that undermine local economies and livelihoods.” [click the links for the full articles]
An economics of kindness can supplant capitalism
“It feels like a pretty wild dream to imagine that we could disentangle everything financial and economic of capitalism.
The entanglement includes some 350 million businesses, 100 million corporations, 75,000 multinational corporations, 25,000 banks, 3,000 billionaires, millions of investors and shareholders, two million economists, and all the bond markets, commodities markets, futures markets, stock exchanges, global trade, and a thousand other things.
“These things operate together in a market economy that is extraordinarily effective in the delivery of goods and services. But capitalism is NOT that entanglement. So what IS inherently capitalist?
“Capitalism is driven by the agency of people who are uniquely selfish in their desire to accumulate capital. In pursuit of this goal they seek to dominate every political system that allows it. And nothing is off the table. Historically, capitalists have been able to accommodate slavery, conquest, colonialism, fascism, Nazism, democracy, even communism.
“These things are NOT true of most business owners, whose primary concern is to provide a product or service their customers want to buy, and whose secondary concern is to generate a profit. Ending capitalism does not require closing down the market economy, or taking 350 million private businesses into public ownership. So what does it require?
“For 300,000 years our ancestors managed to live cooperatively, suppressing those who tried to dominate. With the coming of food surpluses, however, some families began to accumulate wealth they did not want to share.
“Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, working people created trade unions, workers cooperatives, retail cooperatives, public banks, community banks, cooperative insurance companies, and so much more – AND they created democracies. Our work is not to despair, but to pick up our courage and complete the journey our ancestors started. This is unlikely to be an overnight achievement.
“Our governments should do as Scotland has done with its Community Wealth Building Act of 2026. It requires that every local government develop an action plan to support the generation, circulation, and retention of wealth in the local economy, strengthen local ownership, use procurement as a local economic engine, support good jobs and fair wages, and more. In the first of our ten years, we will need to write Community Wealth Building Acts, and get the legislation passed.
“What about the banks, pension funds and private equity funds? The same rules would apply: ten years to adopt the charter, or lose your license to operate.” [click the link for the full article]
Data centers by the numbers
“Huge windowless buildings housing thousands of data servers are termed data centers or, in some cases as an indication of their enormity, ‘hyperscale data centers’. Over 4,000 data centers have been built or are under construction in the United States, with corporations seeking approval for thousands more.
“Nearly half the world’s data centers are in the United States, with an annual electricity consumption of over 180 Terawatt-hours. This is estimated to reach 426 Terawatt-hours by 2030. That’s 1.7 times the electricity used by the entire state of Florida in 2023.
“Corporations are targeting some locales for multiple facilities because of their resources and vulnerability to economic incentives. But in many of these targeted locales, residents are resisting. Data center proposals have triggered a high-stakes resistance in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania’s Borough of Archbald.
“Archbald’s battle epitomizes what is occurring in hundreds of communities nationwide. Residents have questioned the motives of town leaders.
“Data centers will attract nearly $7 trillion in investment by 2030. This massive enterprise is in part due to the colossal computational needs of developing powerful LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Data center developers often seek out communities with massive power capacity, as these facilities require as much electricity as small cities.
“Furthermore, relieving the heat from thousands of computer servers requires vast amounts of water for evaporative cooling. Just one of the five data center campuses proposed for Archbald may need up to 3.3 million gallons per day. Around 80% of the water withdrawn for data centers evaporates. The remainder becomes wastewater.” [click the link for the full article]
Nations talk climate — banks contravene
“The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an ‘unfathomable’ increase in investment, locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat.
“The world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures. JPMorgan Chase is again the world’s leading financier of fossil fuels, after pushing $58bn to the sector last year — up 13% from 2024. Bank of America committed the second largest amount last year, followed by Japanese banks MUFG and Mizuho Financial. Citigroup rounds out the top five, with Barclays, at number eight, the highest placed British bank.
“Fossil fuel lending is becoming more concentrated among a selection of large institutions, the new report found, with what the green groups called the ‘dirty dozen’ responsible for 40% of all industry funding. Almost all fossil fuel financing comes from six jurisdictions — the US, Canada, Japan, China, the UK and the European Union.” [click the link for the full article]
Disproportionate impact of extreme heat
“In 2025, The Washington Post reported on a nursery worker in Florida who began experiencing headaches and nausea under extreme heat and eventually collapsed while working. Advances in extreme heat mapping have evolved through the use of warning signs and other tools. But we’re still missing a clear picture of who cannot escape the heat and how unevenly the risk is spread.
“Extreme heat affects an increasing number of people every year. Who appears in our heat coverage helps inform whether extreme heat is treated as just another weather story or a public threat we can’t ignore.
“The problem is that news coverage still tends to linger longer on the question of ‘how hot it is’, emphasizing record-breaking temperatures and impacts on infrastructure, while explanations of health impacts, high-risk groups, and protective measures remain under-reported.
“These figures lay bare a harsh reality: the deadliness of extreme heat depends as much on the resources a person can access to reduce that risk as on temperature itself. While for some people, extreme heat remains a matter of discomfort, for others it is also a matter of work that cannot be stopped, housing where cooling cannot be achieved, and delayed medical care.” [click the link for the full article]
Alienation necessitates modernity’s laws, unlike in ethnic cultures
“A rigid, codified legal system is an abomination, but a lawless modernity would be a chaotic nightmare for all sorts of reasons. I totally agree: modernity absolutely needs a legal system in place. So, sure: anarchy is no way to run modernity, but here’s the catch: modernity is no way to run humanity, or life on Earth more generally.
“Modernity, it appears, initiates a sixth mass extinction, and is synonymous with failure. Modernity has no deep-time ecological vetting, and has caused tremendous disruption to the prospects for a happy life for countless members of the Community of Life. So, ask not what modernity needs, because that’s asking what the sixth mass extinction needs.
“Most people in our culture believe that without laws, humans would behave like savages. But they only believe so because modernity is the only mythology they have ever heard. We need to recognize our staggering lack of authority on this point. Christopher Ryan’s Civilized to Death is a great entry point.
“One might worry that in the absence of formalized law, tribes were left with mob rule. But that’s just our modern ignorance spouting off again. Tribal people are deeply connected and anything but anonymous. Every member is important, and punishing any one member hurts the whole tribe: not only in terms of lost capability but also on the emotional front.
“Growing up in a supporting and familiar community of mutual cooperation and dependence does not promote the phenomenon of ‘crime’ as modernity knows it. Given that modernity emphasize competition, individual success, control, acquisition of materials and power, etc., is it any wonder that we’ve bred a culture of A-holes that make and require laws in a nearly-futile attempt to tame the resultant chaos?
“What’s happening in the U.S. right now is a fascinating example that ‘exposes the lie’ of legal validity. It’s impossible to play a game when one team basically says the rules are stupid and refuses to grant them authority. This leaves the other side blowing the whistle, saying ‘you can’t do that’. The response is, quite accurately: ‘but we just did’. The ‘game’ only works if both teams agree to the fabricated rules, or that there even are rules.
“Humans are much better adapted to common-sense, case-by-case judgment among intimately familiar ‘citizens’ based on norms that evolve with the group according to longstanding context and what works well for them in that place.
“Only when hierarchies, possessions, and writing emerged did law come into being: mostly motivated to protect the elites — and their acquired power — from the masses. If laws were to be boiled down to a single word, that word would probably be: MINE!” [click the link for the full article]
Military demand for strategic minerals is exploding
“Over the past decade, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spending for critical minerals transformed from virtually nonexistent into a major revenue stream, with the last five years delivering a dramatic surge in both contract volume and dollar value.
“Mongabay found that the DoD provided an estimated $621 million on grants for critical mineral projects for defense purposes between 2015 and 2025. Between 2021 and 2025, the DoD secured 24 agreements worth nearly $550 million (549.7 million) — up from just $31.3 million for three contracts in the previous five-year period.
“It poured the most funding into lithium projects ($124.6 million), followed by neodymium and boron combined projects ($94 million), graphite ($48.8 million) and aluminum ($45.4 million).
“Lithium batteries are required for almost every weapon system used by DoD. Neodymium and boron are used in magnets. Graphite and aluminum are critical for building lighter, stronger and more technologically advanced military applications.
“Indigenous peoples and other local communities Mongabay spoke to said that the government has implemented special permitting measures to shorten the authorization process. Inupiaq communities affected by the Graphite Creek Project in Alaska, for instance, said the community has received no information about the project. The company said it has had multiple meetings with local stakeholders.” [click the link for the full article]
Deep-ocean observatories to return to ocean
“The Trump administration has reversed course on its effort to shut down a network of floating scientific observatories off Alaska, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and Greenland. The reversal followed the U.S. Senate voting unanimously Wednesday to block the Trump administration from dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative.
“Crews aboard the R/V Sally Ride had removed a van-sized research buoy, its 7,000-pound anchor, and an autonomous ‘glider’ vehicle from the sea on Tuesday. Five other moorings had been quietly yanked from the waters off Oregon and Washington.
“The high-tech buoys, each worth about $1.5 million, keep the pulse of the oceans as their temperatures, currents, and chemistry change due to emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other pollutants.” [click the link for the full article]
Agriculture as community
“My grandmother’s rural Pennsylvania garden was teeming with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers. Grandma kept bees and chickens too. The forest on her doorstep was home to blackberries and jewelweed.
“The family ate fresh vegetables all summer and preserves well through the winter. These foods were gifted and traded down the gravel lane, ways to show gratitude for help given as Grandma aged.
“Years later, I found myself exploring these informal relationships of domestic work and shared foods in Dalia’s agrarian world in central Bosnia. Strawberries recruited village kids to fix the cracking sidewalk; strawberry jam paid a metalworker to fix her stove; preserves added calories to an elderly neighbor’s bread when winter arrived and her pension did not.
“These two women grew vegetables next to their rural homes in wildly different contexts informed by geography, history, religion, language, and ecology. But these women also share common ground, their gardens growing more than seeds. They provide joy and facilitate community exchange.
“But what if the purpose of farming were not to produce as many crops as possible but to farm as if people mattered? Instead of thinking of agriculture like any other kind of business producing a narrow set of commodities, this approach acknowledges that agriculture is a living landscape produced through communities of practice.
“In doing so, it sustains rich and diverse rural economies anchored by lots of farms that produce meaningful work and life-giving habitats. Agriculture is a fundamentally social and ecological act.” [click the link for the full article]
|
