Tag Archives: Brazil

The Quadra Project: Humanity’s Choice

Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, said in his introductory comments at the COP 27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022, “Humanity has a choice: either co-operate or perish.”

This is simply because we are one humanity, living on one planet. Whether we recognize it or not, the time for differences is over. All the imagined parts that we thought were separate, are interconnected. Whatever happens in one place has an effect everywhere.

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The Quadra Project: Eco-Morality

The global environmental crisis is creating a paradigm shift in human consciousness that will change the moral tenor of everything we think and do for the foreseeable future—not just for decades, but for centuries as we become the de facto regulators of our planet’s climate. As the media guru Marshall McLuhan noted, “There are no passengers on spaceship Earth—everyone is crew.”

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Quadra Project: the Lottery

“The Lottery” is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26th, 1948, edition of The New York Times. It’s a fictionalized account of a chilling ritual carried out on one day each year throughout villages in the “corn belt” of the United States. Everyone in each community gathers in their local square. Beneath the folksy greeting and meeting with friends and neighbours is a brooding seriousness. Some folks have talked about giving up the ritual but, as an old timer says dismissively, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” Then, each person draws a folded piece of paper from a black box. The one with the black dot “wins” the lottery, and is summarily stoned to death. Even little Davy, the son of Tessie, this year’s “winner”, is given pebbles to throw at his mother.

Jackson’s story, of course, is about a ritual fertility sacrifice, and it’s shocking because the practice is placed in a modern rather than a primitive context. But when considered as a symbolic story, the different circumstances echo with different meanings.

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What is ecocide, and why does it matter?

By Morgan Sharp, National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Jamie Hunter has just returned from defying a court injunction to protect old-growth forest in Fairy Creek and is going to Glasgow next month to push for a major change to international law that would provide another tool against environmental degradation.

The 21-year-old from Nelson, B.C., sees the actions as two fronts of the same battle to confront forces otherwise damaging the planet and imperiling its inhabitants.

“To me, Stop Ecocide is a really tangible solution,” said the co-founder of its Canadian chapter. “Obviously, it’s not the only solution, but it’s a big piece of the puzzle because it really says that causing this damage to the environment is not OK.”

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Canada’s climate plans ‘highly insufficient’ in global ranking

By John Woodside, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The independent Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has crunched the numbers on countries’ updated 2030 Paris Agreement targets and found Canada’s “highly insufficient,” pouring cold water on Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s campaign emphasis on expert endorsements.

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