rewilding

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pages: 424 words: 122,350

Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot

Chance favours the prepared mind, cognitive dissonance, en.wikipedia.org, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, land reform, Nelson Mandela, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, place-making, precautionary principle, rewilding, seminal paper, social intelligence, trade route

While conservation often looks to the past, rewilding of this kind looks to the future. The rewilding of both land and sea could produce ecosystems, even in such depleted regions as Britain and northern Europe, as profuse and captivating as those that people now travel halfway around the world to see. One of my hopes is that it makes magnificent wildlife accessible to everyone. I mentioned that there are two definitions of rewilding that interest me. The second is the rewilding of human life. While some primitivists see a conflict between the civilized and the wild, the rewilding I envisage has nothing to do with shedding civilization.

It foresees large areas of self-willed land and sea, repopulated by the beasts now missing from these places, in which we may freely roam. Perhaps most importantly, it offers hope. While rewilding should not become a substitute for protecting threatened places and species, the story it tells is that ecological change need not always proceed in the same direction. Environmentalism in the twentieth century foresaw a silent spring, in which the further degradation of the biosphere seemed inevitable. Rewilding offers the hope of a raucous summer, in which, in some parts of the world at least, destructive processes are thrown into reverse. Nevertheless, like all visions, rewilding must be constantly questioned and challenged. It should happen only with the consent and enthusiasm of those who work on the land.

They have lost not only their physical structure–the trees, shrubs and dead wood which provide habitats for so many species–but also many of the connections between the species which build an ecosystem. Most of the strands of the web of life in these places have been broken. At first I struggled to identify the scientific principles that might inform rewilding. To formulate principles you must know what outcome you are trying to achieve. But rewilding, unlike conservation, has no fixed objective: it is driven not by human management but by natural processes. There is no point at which it can be said to have arrived. Rewilding of the kind that interests me does not seek to control the natural world, to re-create a particular ecosystem or landscape, but–having brought back some of the missing species–to allow it to find its own way.


pages: 473 words: 124,861

Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, British Empire, carbon footprint, clean water, dark matter, illegal immigration, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, mass immigration, meta-analysis, oil shale / tar sands, phenotype, rewilding

., Jain, M., et al. ‘Facilitation between bovids and equids on an African savanna’. Evolutionary Ecology Research , vol. 13, pp. 237–52 (2011) Soulé, M. and Noss, R. ‘Rewilding and biodiversity’. Wild Earth , pp. 1–11 (Fall 1998) Van de Vlasakker, Joep. ‘Bison Rewilding Plan 2014–2024 – Rewilding Europe’s contribution to the comeback of the European bison’. A report by Rewilding Europe (2014) 10. Purple Emperors Bartomeus, I., Vilà, M., and Steffan-Dewenter, I. ‘Combined effects of Impatiens glandulifera [Himalayan balsam] invasion and landscape structure on native plant pollination.’ Journal of Ecology , vol. 98, pp. 440–50 (2010) Hejda, M. and Pysek.

Sir John ref1 leafhoppers ref1 , ref2 Lennart von Post, Ernst Jakob ref1 , ref2 Leopold, Aldo ref1 , ref2 ref3 lesser redpoll (Carduelis cabaret ) ref1 , ref2 lesser spotted woodpecker (Dryobates minor ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 lesser water-parsnip (Berula erecta ) ref1 Lewes, Sussex ref1 Lewes District Council ref1 lichens and closed-canopy theory ref1 Ennerdale ref1 at Knepp ref1 Kraansvlak ref1 loss of habitat ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Norway ref1 and oak trees ref1 light-demanding trees and shrubs ref1 , ref2 , ref3 see also aspen , birch , blackthorn , bramble , broom , crab apple , dog rose , gorse , hawthorn , hazel , juniper , oak , rowan , sallow , Scots pine , wild cherry , wild pear , wild privet lime trees ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 Line, Craig ref1 Linnartz, Leo ref1 linnet (Linaria cannabina ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 little egret (Egretta garzetta ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 little owl (Athene noctua ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Littlehampton, Kent ref1 liverworts ref1 , ref2 livestock accumulation of chemicals in fatty tissues ref1 castration ref1 and handling systems ref1 loss to flooding ref1 and methane production ref1 regulations ref1 slaughter of ref1 stocking densities ref1 supplementary feeding ref1 tree fodder for ref1 Livestock Handling and Transport (Grandin) ref1 Living Landscapes ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 Liza, river ref1 lizard see common lizard , sand lizard , slow-worm lob worm (Lumbricus terrestris ) ref1 Loch Garten, Speyside ref1 Loddon lily (Leucojum aestivum ) ref1 long-eared owl (Asio otus ) ref1 , ref2 long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus ) ref1 longhorn cattle see old English Longhorn under cattle, breeds of Lord, Dr Alex ref1 lowland heathland, decline in ref1 lynx (Lynx lynx ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 McCarthy, Mike ref1 mackerel ref1 macromoths, and ragwort ref1 Madgeland Wood ref1 magnesium ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 magpie (Pica pica ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 maiden’s blush moth see under moths, species of Maidment, John ref1 Maidstone, Kent ref1 Making Space for Nature: a review of England’s Wildlife Sites and Ecological Network ref1 Malaysia ref1 , ref2 mallard (Anas platyrhynchos ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Malta ref1 Mammal Society ref1 mammoth see woolly mammoth mandarin duck (Aix galericulata ) ref1 mantle vegetation ref1 , ref2 , ref3 maple ref1 see also field maple (Acer campestre ) marbled white see under butterflies, species of Marlborough Downs ref1 Marlpost Wood ref1 Marren, Peter ref1 marsh fritillary see under butterflies, species of marsh frog (Pelophylax ridibundus ) ref1 marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus ) ref1 , ref2 marsh ragwort (Jacobaea aquatica ) ref1 marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata ) ref1 marsh tit (Poecile palustris ) ref1 , ref2 marshland ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 mast years ref1 mayflies ref1 meadow brown see under butterflies, species of meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis ) ref1 , ref2 Meadow Protection Plan (EU) ref1 meadows biodiversity of ref1 decline in ref1 , ref2 negative effect of Meadow Protection Plan ref1 Northern Block, at Knepp ref1 recovery of ref1 , ref2 sourcing native seeds ref1 support for ref1 meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria ) ref1 meat sales, at Knepp ref1 , ref2 medicinal properties of vegetation ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Medmerry, West Sussex ref1 megafauna ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 Melitta europaea see under bees, species of Mens Nature Reserve, Sussex ref1 , ref2 mental health ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Meon, river ref1 Merck’s rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis ) ref1 Merrik Wood, Knepp ref1 meta-populations, and habitat chains ref1 , ref2 methane production ref1 Mexico ref1 mice ref1 , ref2 , ref3 see also dormouse , harvest mouse , wood mouse , yellow-necked mouse micromoths ref1 Middle Block biodiversity ref1 , ref2 funding ref1 , ref2 and grazing animals ref1 location/scope ref1 , ref2 midges ref1 millipedes see under soil biota milk quotas, effects of ref1 , ref2 , ref3 milkcap mushrooms ref1 , ref2 mindfulness ref1 mining bees ref1 Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food ref1 mink see American mink mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio carpio ) ref1 Mississippi, river ref1 mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus ) ref1 mixed-farming systems ref1 , ref2 , ref3 mob grazing ref1 mole ploughs ref1 , ref2 molluscs, life cycle and habitat ref1 Monbiot, George ref1 , ref2 money spiders (Trematocephalus cristatus ) ref1 Montagu’s harrier (Circus pygargus ) ref1 monumental trees see landmark trees moorhen (Gallinula chloropus ) ref1 moose see Eurasian elk Morocco ref1 mosquitoes ref1 Moss, Charles ref1 mosses and beavers ref1 and closed-canopy theory ref1 decline in populations of ref1 at Knepp ref1 , ref2 Kraansvlak ref1 Norway ref1 moths decline in UK populations ref1 at Knepp ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 and ragwort ref1 , ref2 , ref3 see also macromoths moths, species of beautiful china mark moth (Nymphula nitidulata ) ref1 canary-shouldered thorn moth (Ennomos alniaria ) ref1 cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaeae ) ref1 coxcomb prominent (Ptilodon capucina ) ref1 dusky thorn moth (Ennomos fuscantaria ) ref1 figure of eight moth (Diloba caeruleocephala ) ref1 hummingbird hawkmoth (Macroglossum stellatarum ) ref1 maiden’s blush moth (Cyclophora punctaria ) ref1 rush wainscot moth (Globia algae ) ref1 waved black moth (Parascotia fuliginaria ) ref1 mud ref1 Mull, Isle of ref1 muntjac deer (Muntiacus reevesi ) ref1 , ref2 mycorrhizae/mycorrhizal fungi ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 names, origins ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 narrow-nosed rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus hemiotechus ) ref1 Nash, John ref1 National Farmers’ Union ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 National Health Service ref1 National Parks, UK ref1 , ref2 National Parks, US ref1 , ref2 National Trust ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 National Trust for Scotland ref1 Natterer’s bat (Myotis nattereri ) ref1 natterjack toad (Epidalea calamita ) ref1 Natura 2000 (EU) ref1 natural capital ref1 , ref2 natural capital accounting ref1 Natural Capital Committee ref1 Natural England Invertebrate Species and habitats Information System ref1 and Knepp Wildland project ref1 , ref2 , ref3 meadow loss report ref1 Natural Thinking ref1 and nightingales at Knepp ref1 Operation Turtle Dove ref1 and ragwort ref1 Wild Ennerdale ref1 Natural Environment Research Council ref1 naturalistic grazing systems ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 naturalistic livestock system see naturalistic grazing systems nature, accessibility to and effect on health ref1 nature conservation, disincentives for farmers ref1 nature conservation, history of ref1 Nature Improvement Areas ref1 , ref2 nature reserves, in UK ref1 necrophagous insects ref1 neighbours, attitudes to project ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 Netherlands ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 nettle see stinging nettle New Forest, Hampshire ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 New Forest pony see under horses/ponies, breeds of New Zealand ref1 Newhaven, East Sussex ref1 newts see common , great-crested and palmate newts NFU see National Farmers’ Union NHS see National Health Service nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos ) ref1 , ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus ) ref1 , ref2 nitrates ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 nitrogen ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 nitrogen-fixating crops ref1 , ref2 non-native species ref1 North American beaver (Castor canadensis ) ref1 , ref2 North Devon ref1 Northern Block biodiversity ref1 , ref2 creeping thistle outbreak ref1 funding ref1 , ref2 and grazing animals ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 location/scope ref1 , ref2 wild daffodils ref1 Norton-Griffiths, Michael ref1 Norway ref1 , ref2 Norwegian Fjord pony see under horses/ponies, breeds of Norwegian Institute for Nature Research ref1 Noss, Reed ref1 NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) see individual components nuthatch (Sitta europaea ) ref1 nutrition conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) ref1 , ref2 declining value in foods ref1 fatty acids ref1 , ref2 , ref3 omega oils ref1 , ref2 , ref3 pasture-fed meat ref1 oak trees ageing process ref1 , ref2 , ref3 ancient ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 and biodiversity ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 bog trees ref1 and butterflies ref1 , ref2 and closed-canopy forests ref1 coppicing ref1 , ref2 earliest presence of ref1 , ref2 and fungi ref1 , ref2 growing requirements ref1 , ref2 , ref3 and jays ref1 , ref2 at Knepp ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 root systems ref1 Oates, Matthew ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 oceanic liverwort see fingered cowlwort old English longhorn cattle see under cattle, breeds of old Knepp Castle (twelfth century) see also Knepp Castle (Nash/1809+) deer park ref1 , ref2 , ref3 location/origin ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 nearby water ref1 , ref2 , ref3 omega oils ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Oostvaardersplassen ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 open grasslands, existence in prehistoric times ref1 open wood pasture see wood pasture Operation Turtle Dove ref1 , ref2 , ref3 orb weaver spiders ref1 orchids ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 see also bird’s nest , common spotted , early purple , greater butterfly and southern marsh orchid Orians, Gordon ref1 osprey (Pandion haliaetus ) ref1 , ref1 , ref2 Otter, river ref1 , ref2 otter (Lutra lutra ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Ottery St Mary ref1 Our Vanishing Flora (2012) report ref1 Ouse, river ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Ouse and Adur River Trust ref1 over-grazing ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 over-production ref1 , ref2 owls ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 see also barn owl , little owl , long-eared owl , short-eared owl ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare ) ref1 Oxford University ref1 Packham, Chris ref1 painted lady see under butterflies, species of palmate newt (Lissotriton helveticus ) ref1 palynology ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 pannage ref1 , ref2 parasites, natural control of ref1 parasiticides ref1 , ref2 , ref3 see also avermectins parasol mushroom (Macrolepiota procera ) ref1 park restoration projects ref1 Parliament Oak, Sherwood Forest ref1 pasture-fed meat beef ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 definition ref1 horse ref1 and methane production ref1 nutrition ref1 pork ref1 Pasture for Life accreditation ref1 pasture lands, biodiversity of ref1 Pauly, Daniel ref1 PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) ref1 peafowl (Pavo cristatus ) ref1 pear see wild pear pearl-bordered fritillary see under butterflies, species of Pearson, John ref1 Pearson’s draining plough ref1 , ref2 pedunculate oak (Quercus robur ) ref1 , ref2 penduline tit (Remiz pendulinus ) ref1 Penrith, Cumbria ref1 Percy the Peacock ref1 Père David deer ref1 peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus ) ref1 , ref2 perimeter fencing ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 permanent pasture acreage in UK ref1 reducing CO2 levels ref1 permeability indexes ref1 , ref2 permissive footpaths ref1 pesticides ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 Petworth estate, fallow deer ref1 , ref2 pheasant (Phasianus colchicus ) ref1 , ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Phellinus robustus (bracket fungus) ref1 , ref2 Philippines ref1 phosphate ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 phosphorus ref1 , ref2 , ref3 physical health, in humans ref1 Pickering, Yorkshire Dales ref1 , ref2 pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca ) ref1 pigs see also Tamworth pigs and wild boar and annual and biennial weed species ref1 diet ref1 herd mentality ref1 at Knepp ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 meat production ref1 and sallow ref1 slaughter of ref1 and visiting public ref1 pine marten (Martes martes ) ref1 pine-woods ref1 , ref2 see also individual species pink-footed goose (Anser brachyrhynchus ) ref1 pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus ) ref1 , ref2 place names, origins ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 plant communities, catastrophic shift ref1 plant-growth hormones ref1 Plant Succession (Clements) ref1 Plantlife ref1 plants see flora Platystomos albinus (weevil) ref1 Pleasure Grounds ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Pleistocene era ref1 ploughing ref1 , ref2 action of wild boar and pigs ref1 , ref2 , ref3 ancient meadows and pasture land ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Dig for Victory campaign ref1 early agriculture ref1 effect on soil ref1 effect on trees ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 ploughs ref1 , ref2 see also mole ploughs Plumpton, East Sussex ref1 poaching ref1 Podoscypha multizonata (zoned rosette fungus) ref1 , ref2 Poland ref1 polecat (Mustela putorius ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 pollarding ref1 , ref2 , ref3 pollen ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 pollinators ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 see also individual species pollution levels and beavers ref1 UK performance ref1 polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) ref1 Pondtail Farm ref1 ponies see horses/ponies Pontbren, Brecon Beacons ref1 Poorter, Ernst ref1 pop-up Knepps ref1 poppy (Papaver rhoeas ) ref1 , ref2 population densities, effects of species isolation ref1 Portugal ref1 potassium ref1 , ref2 Pound Farm ref1 Pownall, Thomas ref1 predators ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 , ref11 , ref12 , ref13 , ref14 see also large predators and small predators primal/primeval forest ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 priority species see biodiversity , UK Biodiversity Action Plan species privet see wild privet Prostomis mandibularis (beetle) ref1 Public Health England ref1 public relations ref1 public rights of way ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 Pumlumon, Wales ref1 purple emperor see under butterflies, species of purple hairstreak see under butterflies, species of purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea ) ref1 PWN (Dutch water company) ref1 Pyrenees ref1 quail (Coturnix coturnix ) ref1 Quammen, David ref1 Queen of Spain fritillary see under butterflies, species of rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 Rackham, Oliver ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Raeburn, John ref1 ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi ) ref1 , ref2 ragwort see common , hoary and marsh ragwort Ragwort Control Act, 2003 ref1 rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss ) ref1 , ref2 raptors ref1 , ref2 see also buzzard , goshawk , kestrel , owls , peregrine falcon , red kite , sparrowhawk , white-tailed eagle Rare Breeds Survival Trust ref1 , ref2 , ref3 rarity of species, and attitudes to ref1 rats ref1 raven (Corvus corax ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 raw materials/fibre, as ecosystem service ref1 Raymond, Sir Charles ref1 Raymond, Sophia ref1 recreation, as ecosystem service ref1 , ref2 red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 red bartsia bee see under bees, species of red clover (Trifolium pratense ) ref1 red deer (Cervus elaphus ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 , ref11 , ref12 , ref13 , ref14 , ref15 red fox (Vulpes vulpes ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scotica ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 red kite (Milvus milvus ) ref1 , ref2 Red Poll cattle see under cattle, breeds of red-spotted bluethroat (Luscinia svecica ) ref1 red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris ) ref1 redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus ) ref1 redundancies, at Knepp ref1 redwing (Turdus iliacus ) ref1 , ref2 reed-beds ref1 , ref2 , ref3 reed mace (Typha latifolia ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus ) ref1 , ref2 Reg (digger driver) ref1 reindeer (Rangifer tarandus ) ref1 reptiles ref1 see also grass snake Repton, Humphry ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Repton park Countryside Stewardship Scheme funding ref1 , ref2 deer ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 injurious weeds ref1 , ref2 land drainage ref1 , ref2 , ref3 oak trees ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 restoration area ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Second World War ref1 wildflower meadows ref1 rewilding attitudes to ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 costs ref1 , ref2 definitions ref1 , ref2 , ref3 and ecosystems services ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 effect on biodiversity ref1 , ref2 effect on landscape ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 in Europe ref1 in the US ref1 , ref2 tourism ref1 , ref2 UK government response to ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 as programme of soil restoration ref1 , ref2 Rewilding Britain (charity) ref1 Rewilding Europe ref1 Rewilding Institute (US) ref1 Rhode Island, University of ref1 rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Richard II ref1 ridge-cheeked furrow bee see under bees, species of rights of way see public rights of way ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri ) ref1 ringlet see under butterflies, species of River Adur Navigation Act ref1 rivers ref1 , ref2 , ref3 see also floods ; individual rivers, re-naturalization of roads, impact on wildlife ref1 robin (Erithacus rubecula ) ref1 , ref2 roe deer (Capreolus capreolus ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 , ref11 , ref12 , ref13 , ref14 , ref15 Romania ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Romney Marsh ref1 rook (Corvus frugilegus ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Rookery ref1 Room for the River project ref1 rotational farming systems see farming, rotational systems Rothamsted Research, Harpenden ref1 rough-backed blood bee see under bees, species of rowan (Sorbus aucuparia ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Royal Bank of Canada ref1 Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry ref1 Royal Society ref1 RSPB and beavers ref1 decline in UK bird populations ref1 and Knepp Wildland project ref1 , ref2 Natural Thinking ref1 and red-backed shrikes ref1 and turtle doves ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 rural tourism ref1 rush wainscot moth see under moths, species of Rutland Water ref1 ryegrass see Italian ryegrass SACs (Special Areas of Conservation) ref1 safaris ref1 Sahel zone, Africa ref1 , ref2 sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia ) ref1 St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum ) ref1 sallow ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 , ref11 , ref12 , ref13 , ref14 see also individual species salmonella ref1 salmonids ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 sambar ref1 sand, colonization of ref1 , ref2 sand lizard (Lacerta agilis ) ref1 sand martin (Riparia riparia ) ref1 sand wasps ref1 Gorytes laticinctus ref1 Sandom, Dr Chris ref1 saplings as food source ref1 protective value of thorny scrub ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 saproxylic beetles ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Dryophthorus corticalis ref1 Prostomis manibularis ref1 SARISA (Soil and Rhizosphere Interactions for Sustainable Agri-ecosystems) ref1 Savernake Forest, Wiltshire ref1 Savory, Alan ref1 Scandinavia ref1 , ref2 scarce chaser dragonfly (Libellula fulva ) ref1 scarce tortoiseshell see under butterflies, species of scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis ) ref1 scaup duck (Aythya marila ) ref1 scavenging animals ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 Schwab, Gerhard ref1 , ref2 Scotland ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 , ref11 Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Scottish Beaver Trial ref1 , ref2 Scottish Highlands ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 Scottish Natural Heritage ref1 Scottish Wildlife Trust ref1 scrub see also thorny scrub decline in ref1 , ref2 and grazing animals ref1 , ref2 at Knepp ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 Norway ref1 returning to agricultural conditions ref1 and specific conservation targets ref1 and turtle doves ref1 value of ref1 Vera theory ref1 , ref2 , ref3 sea trout (Salmo trutta ) ref1 Second World War ref1 , ref2 , ref3 seed-bearing weeds, decline in ref1 seeds sourcing native ref1 transportation of ref1 Serengeti ref1 , ref2 Serengeti: Dynamics of an Ecosystem (Norton-Griffiths/Sinclair) ref1 sessile oak (Quercus petraea ) ref1 , ref2 set-aside ref1 , ref2 setaceous Hebrew character moth (Xestia c-nigrum ) ref1 Severn, river ref1 sewage treatment plants, and worms ref1 Seymour, Jim ref1 shade-tolerant trees ref1 , ref2 , ref3 sharp-flowered rush (Juncus acutiflorus ) ref1 sheep collapse of, in Norway ref1 effect as grazers ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 farming ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 foot and mouth disease ref1 grain-based diet ref1 herd mentality ref1 Jacob ref1 , ref2 at Knepp ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 non-native to Western Europe ref1 as reason for large predator control ref1 , ref2 soil compaction caused by ref1 shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris ) ref1 shifting baseline syndrome ref1 , ref2 Shipley Parish Council ref1 Shipley village effects of Second World War ref1 and Knepp project ref1 location ref1 and ragwort ref1 and role of river ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 shooting, unauthorized ref1 Shoreham, Kent ref1 , ref2 short-eared owl (Asio flammeus ) ref1 short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus ) ref1 short-tailed/field vole (Microtus agrestis ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 shrew see common shrew Shropshire ref1 shrubs ref1 , ref2 see also individual species signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus ) ref1 sika deer (Cervus nippon ) ref1 , ref2 silver fir (Abies alba ) ref1 silver-washed fritillary (Argynnis paphia ) ref1 , ref2 Silwood Park, Imperial College ref1 Simard, Suzanne ref1 Simpson, Alf and Iris ref1 Sinclair, Anthony ref1 , ref2 Single Farm Payment see farming subsidies, Basic Payment sitatunga antelope ref1 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis ) ref1 skunk bear see wolverine skylark (Alauda arvensi ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 Slovenia ref1 slow-worm (Anguis fragilis ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 small copper see under butterflies, species of small heath see under butterflies, species of small-leafed lime (Tilia cordata ) ref1 small mammals habitat ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 predators of ref1 , ref2 , ref3 see also bank vole , common shrew , dormouse , field vole , harvest mouse , rats , short-tailed vole , squirrels , water vole , water shrew , wood mouse , yellow-necked mouse small predators ref1 , ref2 see also polecats , stoats , weasels , water shrew small skipper see under butterflies, species of small tortoiseshell see under butterflies, species of Smeaton, John ref1 smooth-leaved elm (Ulmus minor ) ref1 snails ref1 , ref2 , ref3 snake’s head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris ) ref1 snares, unauthorized ref1 snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis ) ref1 soil and carbon sequestration ref1 , ref2 , ref3 catastrophic shift ref1 and earthworms ref1 , ref2 , ref3 erosion ref1 , ref2 and glomalin ref1 at Knepp ref1 natural management of ref1 , ref2 role of soil biota/microbes ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Sustainable Development Goals (UN) ref1 topsoil depletion ref1 value of restoration ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 soil biota/microbes, role of ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 bacteria see bacteria centipedes and millipedes ref1 collembola, or springtails ref1 , ref2 earthworms see earthworms enchytraeid worms ref1 nematodes ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 mites ref1 , ref2 , ref3 protozoa ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 soil compaction ref1 soil erosion, ref1 , ref2 natural management of ref1 , ref2 Soil Food Web ref1 soil run-off ref1 Soil Science Association of America ref1 soil sterilization ref1 soldier beetles ref1 solitary bees ref1 , ref2 solitary wasps ref1 Somerset ref1 , ref2 Song of the Dodo, The (Quammen) ref1 song thrush (Turdus philomelos ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 songbirds ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 see also individual species Soulé, Michael ref1 South America ref1 , ref2 South Downs ref1 , ref2 Southern Block biodiversity ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 birds ref1 , ref2 butterflies ref1 , ref2 , ref3 funding ref1 , ref2 , ref3 fungi ref1 and grazing animals ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 location/scope ref1 , ref2 , ref3 neighbours’/visitors’ attitudes to ref1 , ref2 progress of ref1 , ref2 southern marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza praetermissa ) ref1 Southwater ref1 Spain ref1 , ref2 Spanish fighting bull see under cattle, breeds of sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 spear thistle (Cirsium vulgare ) ref1 , ref2 Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) ref1 Special Protection Areas (SPAs) ref1 species isolation ref1 , ref2 Spencer, Jonathan ref1 sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus ) ref1 sphagnum moss ref1 spiders ref1 , ref2 , ref3 see also crab spiders , money spiders horrid ground weaver spider (Nothophantes horridus ) ref1 spindle (Euonymus europaea ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia ) ref1 spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa striata ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Spring Wood ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 Spring Wood Pond ref1 Springwatch ref1 spurges ref1 squirrels ref1 , ref2 see also red squirrel SSSIs see Sites of Special Scientific Interest standing water, pollution levels ref1 Standish, Arthur ref1 Stapledon, Sir George ref1 , ref2 star moss (Tortula ruralis ) ref1 starling (Sturnus vulgaris ) ref1 starvation, as natural process ref1 State of Nature reports ref1 Status of World Soil Resources (UN) ref1 steely blue beetle (Korynetes caeruleu ) ref1 sterilization, soil ref1 Steyning ref1 Sting in the Tail, A (Goulson) ref1 stinging nettle (Urtica dioica ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 stoat (Mustela erminea ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 stock dove (Columba oenas ) ref1 stocking densities, livestock ref1 Stonehenge ref1 stoneworts ref1 storms, as natural process ref1 straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus ) ref1 Stroud Sustainable Drainage Project ref1 subsidies, see farming subsidies supplementary feeding ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre ref1 Sussex Flow Initiative ref1 Sussex University ref1 Sussex Weald agriculture ref1 , ref2 clay soil ref1 , ref2 , ref3 iron industry ref1 origins of name ref1 wildflower meadows ref1 , ref2 Sussex Wildlife Trust ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Sustainable Development Goals (UN) ref1 swallow prominent moth (Pheosia tremula ) ref1 Swallows Farm ref1 swan mussel (Anodonta cygnea ) ref1 Swanson, Jim ref1 Sweden ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Swedish Gotlandruss pony see under horses/ponies, breeds of sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa ) ref1 , ref2 sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum ) ref1 swift (Apus apus ) ref1 Switzerland ref1 , ref2 sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 tagging livestock ref1 tall herb fen vegetation ref1 Tamworth pigs ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Tansley, Sir Arthur ref1 , ref2 tansy (Tanacetum vulgare ) ref1 targeted conservation interventions, effects of ref1 tarpan see under horses/ponies, breeds of taxation, and farming ref1 Tayside ref1 , ref2 TB testing ref1 teal (Anas crecca ) ref1 Ted see Green, Edward ‘Ted’ tenant farmers, at Knepp ref1 Tenchford ref1 , ref2 termites ref1 Texas, University of ref1 Thames, river ref1 Thompson, Ken ref1 thorny scrub see also scrub ; wood pasture and grazing animals ref1 , ref2 , ref3 intolerance for ref1 , ref2 at Knepp ref1 at Kraansvlak ref1 and land abandonment ref1 and nightingales ref1 and oak trees ref1 , ref2 , ref3 as protection for saplings ref1 , ref2 as protection for woodland ref1 regulatory protection of ref1 value of ref1 Vera theory ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 as wind break ref1 , ref2 3 Cs (Cores, Corridors and Carnivores) ref1 tidal marshes, reclamation of ref1 tiger beetles ref1 timber trade ref1 , ref2 toad see common toad Toe, Patrick ref1 Toll Rides Off-road Trust (TROT) ref1 topsoil depletion ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Tour du Valat, Camargue, France ref1 tourism ref1 Town Field ref1 tree fodder ref1 tree pollen ref1 tree sparrow (Passer montanus ) ref1 treecreeper (Certhia familiaris ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 trees dead wood ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 disease ref1 , ref2 , ref3 earliest presence of ref1 , ref2 and industrialized agriculture ref1 natural protection for saplings ref1 , ref2 regeneration ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 role of decay ref1 , ref2 as tree fodder ref1 see also individual species Trematocephalus cristatus (spider) ref1 Trent, river ref1 Trichomonas gallinae (bird disease) ref1 , ref2 trophic cascades see apex predator trophic cascades trout, migration ref1 truffles ref1 Tudor Vermin Acts ref1 Tumbledown Lagg ref1 tuna ref1 , ref2 Tunbridge Wells, Kent ref1 turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 , ref11 Uckfield, Sussex ref1 UK, potential effects of leaving EU ref1 , ref2 , ref3 UK Biodiversity Action Plan species ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Ulrich, Roger ref1 United Nations ref1 , ref2 , ref3 United States ref1 , ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 United Utilities ref1 University of California ref1 University of Exeter ref1 , ref2 University of Rhode Island ref1 University of Texas ref1 US Agricultural Research Service ref1 vaccinations, livestock ref1 Vegetation Ecology of Central Europe (Ellenberg) ref1 vegetation succession ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 Vera, Frans ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 , ref9 , ref10 Vera theory ref1 vermicompost ref1 , ref2 Vermin Acts ref1 Vermuyden, Cornelius ref1 Vertical Looking Radars (VLRs) ref1 Victorian era ref1 , ref2 , ref3 violas ref1 violet see common dog-violet violet click beetle (Limoniscus violaceus ) ref1 viruses, role of soil biota/microbes ref1 Vision for the Wildlife of Sussex, A (1996) ref1 Vlasakker, Joep van der ref1 , ref2 VLRs ref1 vocabulary, of nature ref1 volunteers, conservation reliance on ref1 Wageningen University, Soil Biology group ref1 Wainwright, Alfred ref1 Walker, Alice ref1 wall brown see under butterflies, species of Walpole-Bond, John ref1 , ref2 wapiti (Cervus canadensis , known as ‘elk’ in US) ref1 wasps ref1 , ref2 Crabro scutellatus ref1 see also sand wasps water see also floods and ephemeral ponds catastrophic shift ref1 , ref2 as ecosystem service ref1 , ref2 management of ref1 , ref2 pollution levels ref1 purification ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 storage ref1 , ref2 understanding ref1 water beetles, in ephemeral ponds ref1 water crowfoot (Ranunculus aquatilis ) ref1 water meadows (laggs) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 , ref7 , ref8 as flood mitigation ref1 at Knepp ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 and red deer ref1 Second World War ref1 water mint (Mentha aquatica ) ref1 water plants, decline in populations of ref1 water shrew (Neomys fodiens ) ref1 water starwort (Callitriche stagnalis ) ref1 water violet (Hottonia palustris ) ref1 water vole (Arvicola amphibious ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 Watkins-Pitchford, Denys ‘BB’ ref1 waved black moth see under moths, species of Weald Meadows Initiative ref1 , ref2 weasel (Mustela nivalis ) ref1 , ref2 , ref3 Weeds Act, 1959 ref1 weeds, seed-bearing, decline in ref1 weirs, removal of ref1 , ref2 West Grinstead ref1 , ref2 West Sussex County Times ref1 Westonbirt Arboretum, Gloucestershire ref1 wet dune slacks/hollows ref1 wetland ref1 , ref2 , ref3 , ref4 , ref5 , ref6 see also beavers ; Oostvaardersplassen whales ref1 Wharfe, river ref1 wheat crops ref1 , ref2 as fuel ref1 at Knepp ref1 price of ref1 yields ref1 wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe ) ref1 , ref2 Where Do Camels Belong?

It particularly unsettles scientists who like to test hypotheses, run computer models, tick boxes and fix goals. Rewilding – giving nature the space and opportunity to express itself – is largely a leap of faith. It involves surrendering all preconceptions, and simply sitting back and observing what happens. Rewilding Knepp is full of surprises, and the unexpected outcomes are changing what we thought we knew about some of our native species’ behaviour and habitats – indeed it is changing the science of ecology. And it is also teaching us something about ourselves, and the hubris that has led us to our current predicament. When we began rewilding the estate seventeen years ago we had no idea about the science or the controversies surrounding conservation.


pages: 348 words: 102,438

Green and Prosperous Land: A Blueprint for Rescuing the British Countryside by Dieter Helm

3D printing, Airbnb, Anthropocene, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, British Empire, carbon tax, clean water, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, digital map, facts on the ground, food miles, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Internet of things, Kickstarter, land reform, mass immigration, microplastics / micro fibres, New Urbanism, North Sea oil, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, quantitative easing, rewilding, smart meter, sovereign wealth fund, the built environment, Tragedy of the Commons, urban planning, urban sprawl

In Alladale in Scotland, a plan to introduce wolves is one that sees the Scottish uplands as a giant wildlife park, fenced in from the outside world (as is Knepp Castle).3 It would in effect be a large-scale extensive zoo, the Alladale Wilderness Reserve. This is not rewilding. It is very controlled, environmental engineering on a grand scale, in part because one person can own so much of the land. The animals that would be most strictly controlled are people, as paying safari travellers. The Alladale Wilderness Reserve has so far done much good conservation work, and has taken a more creative path compared with the conventional estate management for game. These are considerable benefits, as at Knepp, but wild it is not. For some rewilders, the key is about getting rid of human influences, as if there is a state of nature apart from us which must be protected from us.

This active management of nature by us, and with us very much in mind, is the opposite of rewilding. It is a man-made and man-managed nature, for which we take responsibility. It allows us to create something better for the future, and to maximise the benefits to us that will follow. None of this active approach rules out managed neglect of particular areas. The key difference in the managed case is that this is a planned decision and not an accident, and it is precise in its location and not general. It is a location-specific, controlled withdrawal of one type of land management in favour of another. The rewilding approach has a determinism to it which tends to ignore the transition as well as the desirability or otherwise of the end state.

Culling herbivores, like deer, is a key part of the management not just of the highlands, but of almost all woods and forests, and where it does not happen the results can be really damaging. Nor would it necessarily live up to our sense of beauty. Indeed, it is integral to rewilding that landscapes we have come to love would gradually disappear. Our woods and forests, which the rewilders would allow to expand rather than deliberately create, have been invaded by both native and alien species. The ‘wild’ of Britain did not have fallow deer, sika deer or muntjacs. It had only red deer and roe deer, themselves food for the top predators.


pages: 298 words: 76,727

The Microbiome Solution by Robynne Chutkan M.D.

clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, David Strachan, discovery of penicillin, epigenetics, Helicobacter pylori, hygiene hypothesis, Mason jar, meta-analysis, microbiome, rewilding, sugar pill

The Hygiene Hypothesis and Our Modern Plagues Chapter 4. Pharmageddon and the Antibiotic Paradox Chapter 5. Dysbiosis—Do You Have It? Chapter 6. Are Our Bacteria Making Us Fat? Chapter 7. Modern Microbial Disruptors part 3 • Rewilding Ourselves Chapter 8. Introducing the Live Dirty, Eat Clean Plan Chapter 9. The Live Dirty, Eat Clean Diet Chapter 10. The Live Dirty Lifestyle Chapter 11. A Rewilding Approach to Illness Chapter 12. Bugs over Drugs: Probiotics and Other Supplements Chapter 13. Everything You Wanted to Know About Stool Transplants but Were Afraid to Ask part 4 • Recipes Chapter 14.

Chapter 10, “The Live Dirty Lifestyle,” gives you practical rewilding advice for everyday life, from simple things like throwing out the hand sanitizer and opening a window, to specific details like which ingredients to avoid in personal care products. You’ll learn how to groom and care for yourself without stripping away the microbial soil that’s the key to cultivating healthy hair and skin, and become familiar with microbiome-friendly recipes for beauty products straight from the garden and kitchen. I’ll share the Live Dirty dos and don’ts that I follow in my own life that can help rewild you, your family, and your home.

Since then, I’ve seen hundreds of patients with stories similar to hers, and I’ve become even more convinced that damage to the microbiome—the trillions of organisms that call our digestive tract home—is at the root of many of our current health problems. Figuring out how to undo that damage and “rewild” ourselves has become a focus of my medical practice and a personal journey in our household. Living a little dirtier and eating a little cleaner is definitely part of the fix. Unwilding Ourselves Our ancestors had a symbiotic relationship with their microbes that evolved over millions of years and served them well.


pages: 375 words: 105,586

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth by Chris Smaje

agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, collaborative consumption, Corn Laws, COVID-19, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, energy transition, European colonialism, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, fake news, financial deregulation, financial independence, Food sovereignty, Ford Model T, future of work, Gail Bradbrook, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, hive mind, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jevons paradox, land reform, mass immigration, megacity, middle-income trap, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, post-industrial society, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, Rutger Bregman, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

This has applied among colonisers as well as the colonised – for example the mountaineers of Appalachia I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, whose public image in the early years of the independent United States quickly sank from that of resourceful pioneers to semi-racialised and degenerate hillbillies.57 I invoke the language of ‘wildness’ here only cautiously because of the contemporary re-wilding movement, which often misses the point that if we’re to successfully re-wild the Earth’s habitats we need to re-wild human cultures as well, including our agricultures. In view of the tight farming situations we face in the present world, self-provisioning through agroforestry is probably about as wild as we can get. The most troubling counterarguments against this case for human re-wilding are, first, that it’s a path of economic insecurity, dearth and potential starvation and, second, that it’s impractical in today’s vastly populated world.

CHAPTER NINE The Fruited Thorn: Agroforestry Futurology nowadays involves a lot of utopian visions of centralised (and often vegan) urban civilisation pursuing high-tech, high-yielding grain-based agriculture that ‘spares’ a lot of land for re-wilding. I’m trying to build a case for something different: a distributed, omnivorous, de-centralised agricultural order in which re-wilding applies not only to other plants and animals but also to some degree to ourselves. We’d share land with wild organisms and keep grain farming to a minimum in favour of labour-intensive vegetable gardens, default livestock and woodland produce.

: the model identifies eight types of farmer, food producer or land user: Home gardeners, engaging in backyard production City farmers or community gardeners, producing food in small urban green spaces Market gardeners producing fruit and vegetables intensively on small, probably peri-urban, plots Smallholders, producing all their own food, along with small surpluses, on small rural holdings Mixed-arable farmers, producing a mixture of animal and staple plant products (with an emphasis on the latter) for commercial sale from larger rural holdings Dairy farmers, producing milk from dairy cows with some beef as a by-product Fisherfolk, producing wild seafood from inshore fisheries Re-wilders and re-provisioners The model doesn’t provide for specialist beef or sheep farming, although that’s an additional margin that could be exploited. Instead I leave room for people who want to turn some of the country’s pastureland over to wilderness (the re-wilders) and for people whose operations service the wider farm economy, for example by producing timber, seeds, hay or bloodstock (the re-provisioners). Here I assume that these two categories produce no directly usable food, though this assumption is over-restrictive.


pages: 505 words: 133,661

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back by Guy Shrubsole

Adam Curtis, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, Beeching cuts, Boris Johnson, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, congestion charging, Crossrail, deindustrialization, digital map, do-ocracy, Downton Abbey, false flag, financial deregulation, fixed income, fulfillment center, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, Global Witness, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Earth, housing crisis, housing justice, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, land tenure, land value tax, linked data, loadsamoney, Londongrad, machine readable, mega-rich, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, openstreetmap, place-making, plutocrats, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, sceptred isle, Stewart Brand, the built environment, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, urban sprawl, web of trust, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

For all its historic role in preserving the Lakes in its degraded ecological state, the National Trust has been quietly shifting towards a greater acceptance of rewilding in recent years. Its rewilding pilot at Ennerdale has seen a boom in populations of marsh fritillary butterflies, Arctic charr and the native juniper trees that gave the valley its name in Viking times. Professor Alasdair Driver, a veteran ecologist and adviser to the charity Rewilding Britain, calls Ennerdale ‘one of England’s best rewilding project areas’. But the Trust is also wary of voicing full-throated support for rewilding following the furore it provoked by trying to reforest parts of Thorneythwaite, a 300-acre Lakeland farm it bought in 2016.

Far better, Monbiot and others argue, to halt the intensive management and overgrazing and let nature take its course. Proponents of ‘rewilding’ point out that landscapes like the Lake District are simply preserving in aspic a degraded environment that’s almost entirely artificial. Not only is this a disaster for nature; it’s also making flooding worse – torrential rainfall simply flashes off denuded hillsides, drowning nearby towns and villages, as happened in the Lakes during the winter of 2015. But reduce sheep numbers, rewilding advocates suggest, and self-willed nature will quickly spring back – bringing with it not only much greater diversity of wildlife, but a far greater resilience to worsening floods and our changing climate.

But reduce sheep numbers, rewilding advocates suggest, and self-willed nature will quickly spring back – bringing with it not only much greater diversity of wildlife, but a far greater resilience to worsening floods and our changing climate. Of course, allowing the Lakes to rewild would change the character of a landscape that many have grown used to and cherish. Plenty of self-proclaimed conservationists want to conserve the Lake District for its aesthetic beauty, farming traditions and cultural landscape, rather than for the species it supports. ‘People ask me why I’m against rewilding,’ contends Rory Stewart, the MP for a large part of the Lakes, ‘and the answer is because of the human in the landscape … these are the hills across which Coleridge walked from Keswick to have dinner with Wordsworth.’


pages: 340 words: 101,675

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction by Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon, air gap, Anthropocene, augmented reality, blockchain, bounce rate, call centre, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cepheid variable, charter city, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deepfake, defense in depth, discrete time, disinformation, disintermediation, driverless car, drone strike, food desert, game design, gamification, gravity well, hive mind, hydroponic farming, impulse control, income inequality, job automation, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, life extension, lifelogging, low earth orbit, machine translation, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Neal Stephenson, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, peak oil, peer-to-peer, phenotype, planned obsolescence, post scarcity, precariat, precautionary principle, prediction markets, rewilding, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, social graph, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, telepresence, transfer pricing, tulip mania, Turing test, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, VTOL, working-age population

Some of this environmental change has been down to factors outside of human control, but much can be laid at our feet. For decades, turning Saï Island’s ecological clock back to its original condition—“rewilding” it—seemed impossible. But in the 2050s, with our powers and resources recovering from The Melt, a question arose in Sudan: now that we finally have the capability to restore and rewild Saï Island, should we do it? Many other places had already been rewilded by then; the Area de Conservación Guanacaste in Costa Rica and a substantial part of the North American Great Plains had been restored to a wilderness state in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

In the latter case, a number of Pleistocene species were controversially introduced by the 500 Project, including the onager, the grey wolf, and the African lion (standing in as the American lion). Environmental sociologist Professor Marcy MacGregor explains the motivation behind the rewilding projects: Take your pick! For some, it was an inherited guilt about ruining the environment. For others, it was sheer curiosity. Of course, some argued that the value or authenticity of rewilding merely lay in the eye of the beholder, but overall there was strong and broad public support for rewilding on the back of the related idea of a half-empty world, and this support was bolstered by a number of wider contemporary social trends. The first of those trends was driven by the plummeting cost of construction drones, powered by vast new solar arrays constructed in northwest Sudan.

Life expectancy in Sudan had reached almost eighty-five years, which meant that people felt they were more likely to benefit from the results of rewilding, especially if you bear in mind that there had already been rapid, destructive climate change over the prior decades. And when people began thinking about their children and grandchildren, then even projects that might take a couple of centuries to come to fruition didn’t seem entirely ridiculous. More than a dozen rewilding projects were started in Sudan in the ’50s and ’60s, including an extension of the Dinder National Park and the reintroduction of Lacaon Pictus (the Painted Hunting Dog) in Mirgissa and Dabenarti Island. One site that was not rewilded, however, was Saï Island.


pages: 651 words: 162,060

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

We would like to see governments, public bodies, businesses, farmers, foresters, fishers and local communities coming together to develop collaborative place-based visions for the ecological restoration of our land and seas, which catalyse the economic restoration of communities. We believe that a new and thriving ecosystem of employment can be built around the healing and rewilding of nature. For example, recent analysis by Rewilding Britain reveals that, across England, rewilding projects have resulted in a 54 per cent increase in full-time-equivalent jobs. Not only has the number of jobs increased, so has their diversity. Rewilding can enrich lives and help us to reconnect with wild nature while providing a sustainable future for local communities. Rewilding enables us to begin to heal some of the great damage we have inflicted on the living world and, with it, the wounds we have inflicted on ourselves.

Lorraine Whitmarsh / Professor of Environmental Psychology, University of Bath; Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations. 5.3 Towards 1.5°C Lifestyles Kate Raworth / Co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab and Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute. 5.4 Overcoming Climate Apathy Per Espen Stoknes / A psychologist, TEDGlobal speaker and Co-director of the Centre for Sustainability at the Norwegian Business School. 5.5 Changing Our Diets Gidon Eshel / Professor of environmental physics at Bard College, New York. 5.6 Remembering the Ocean Ayana Elizabeth Johnson / Marine biologist, co-founder of the policy think tank Urban Ocean Lab, co-editor of All We Can Save, and co-creator of How to Save a Planet. 5.7 Rewilding George Monbiot / Writer, film-maker and environmental activist; author of a weekly column for the Guardian as well as various books and videos. Rebecca Wrigley / Founder and Chief Executive of Rewilding Britain and has worked in conservation and community development for thirty years. 5.8 ‘We now have to do the seemingly impossible’ / Greta Thunberg 5.9 Practical Utopias Margaret Atwood / Booker Prize–winning author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. 5.10 People Power Erica Chenoweth / Political scientist, Professor at Harvard University. 5.11 Changing the Media Narrative George Monbiot / Writer, film-maker and environmental activist; author of a weekly column for the Guardian as well as various books and videos. 5.12 Resisting the New Denialism Michael E.

It is hard to have magnificent experiences in nature, to leave ourselves and our troubles behind, if scarcely any of it is left. But there is a way that we can begin to mend the living planet and our relationship with it. It is a variety of positive environmentalism which offers the hope of recovery, of re-enchantment with a world that often seems crushingly bleak. It is ‘rewilding’: the mass restoration of the planet’s ecosystems. In essence, rewilding means allowing natural processes to resume. It involves, where people agree, reintroducing missing species, removing fences, blocking drainage ditches and controlling especially virulent invasive exotic species, but otherwise, to the greatest extent possible, allowing nature to find its own way.


pages: 197 words: 49,296

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac

3D printing, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, DeepMind, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Extinction Rebellion, F. W. de Klerk, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gail Bradbrook, General Motors Futurama, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioff, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mustafa Suleyman, Nelson Mandela, new economy, ocean acidification, plant based meat, post-truth, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, the scientific method, trade route, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, Yogi Berra

Their impact is so pronounced that urban properties surrounded by trees are worth an average of 20 percent more than those that are not.59 If we are to make the transition to urban living that is needed to provide space for nature to thrive, we need to bring nature into cities and integrate it as never before. * * * — Let nature flourish. The term rewilding has been coined to describe the growing practice of allowing land to return to its natural processes. Rewilding has the potential to radically change the carbon balance of the atmosphere and to preserve the web of life. Multiple large- and small-scale rewilding initiatives are already taking place all over the world. An excellent example is the Knepp Wildland Project in West Sussex, England. In 2001, the project obtained more than 3,500 acres of land that had been farmed intensively since World War II.

.: Berrett-Koehler, 2017. NATURE Baker, Nick. ReWild: The Art of Returning to Nature. London: Aurum, 2017. Brown, Gabe. Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture. London: Chelsea Green, 2018. Eisenstein, Charles. Climate: A New Story. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 2018. Glassley, William E. A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2018. Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. London: Picador, 2015. Monbiot, George. Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life.

There are still slums, but the trees, largely responsible for countering the temperature rise in most places, have made things far more bearable for all. Reimagining and restructuring cities was crucial to solving the climate challenge puzzle. But further steps had to be taken, which meant that global rewilding efforts had to reach well beyond the cities. The forest cover worldwide is now 50 percent, and agriculture has evolved to become more tree-based.3 The result is that many countries are unrecognizable, in a good way. No one seems to miss wide-open plains or monocultures. Now we have shady groves of nut and fruit orchards, timberland interspersed with grazing, parkland areas that spread for miles, new havens for our regenerated population of pollinators.4 Luckily for the 75 percent of the population who live in cities, new electric railways crisscross interior landscapes.


pages: 334 words: 82,041

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, bank run, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, dematerialisation, demographic transition, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, first-past-the-post, full employment, Gini coefficient, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Leo Hollis, market fundamentalism, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, urban sprawl, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, World Values Survey

These features catch the sediment and the tree trunks and rocks which otherwise pile up on urban bridges, and take much of the energy and speed out of the river. Rivers, as I was told by the people who had just rewilded one in the Lake District – greatly reducing the likelihood that it would cause floods downstream – ‘need something to chew on’.19 There are one or two other such projects in the UK: Paterson’s department is funding four rewilding schemes, to which it has allocated a grand total of, er, £1 million.20 Otherwise, the Secretary of State is doing everything he can to prevent these lessons from being applied. Last year he was reported to have told a conference that ‘the purpose of waterways is to get rid of water’.21 In another speech he lambasted the previous government for a ‘blind adherence to Rousseauism’ in refusing to dredge.22 Not only will there be more public dredging, he insists, but there will also be private dredging: landowners can now do it themselves.23 After he announced this policy, the Environment Agency, which is his department’s statutory adviser, warned that dredging could ‘speed up flow and potentially increase the risk of flooding downstream’.24 Elsewhere, his officials have pointed out that, ‘Protecting large areas of agricultural land in the floodplain tends to increase flood risk for downstream communities.’25 The Pitt Review, commissioned by the previous government after the horrible 2007 floods, concluded that, ‘Dredging can make the river banks prone to erosion, and hence stimulate a further build-up of silt, exacerbating rather than improving problems with water capacity.’26 Paterson has been told repeatedly that it makes more sense to pay farmers to store water in their fields, rather than shoving it off their land and into the towns.

Classification: LCC HN18.3 .M66 2016 | DDC 301.09/051– dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050747 Typeset in Fournier MT by Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh Printed in the US by Maple Press To Rebecca, Hanna and Martha Contents Introduction Part 1: There Is Such a Thing as Society 1.Falling Apart 2.Deviant and Proud 3.Work-Force 4.Addicted to Comfort 5.Dead Zone 6.Help Addicts, but Lock Up the Casual Users of Cocaine Part 2: Lost Youth 7.Rewild the Child 8.The Child Inside 9.Amputating Life Close to Its Base 10.‘Bug Splats’ 11.Kin Hell 12.The Sacrificial Caste 13.A Modest Proposal for Tackling Youth 14.Pro-Death Part 3: The Wild Life 15.Everything Is Connected 16.Civilisation Is Boring 17.End of an Era 18.The Population Myth 19.The Dawning Part 4: Feeding Frenzy 20.Sheepwrecked 21.Ripping Apart the Fabric of the Nation 22.Drowning in Money 23.Small Is Bountiful Part 5: Energy Vampires 24.Leave It in the Ground 25.Applauding Themselves to Death 26.The Grime behind the Crime 27.Going Critical 28.Power Crazed Part 6: Riches and Ruins 29.The Impossibility of Growth 30.Curb Your Malthusiasm 31.Kleptoremuneration 32.The Self-Attribution Fallacy 33.The Lairds of Learning 34.The Man Who Wants to Northern Rock the Planet 35.The Gift of Death Part 7: Dance with the One Who Brung You 36.How the Billionaires Broke the System 37.Plutocracy’s Boot Boys 38.How Did We Get Into This Mess?

The drugs charity Transform has addressed this question, but only for the UK, where the results are clear-cut: prohibition is the worse option.13 As far as I can discover, no one has attempted a global study. Until that happens, Mr Costa’s opinions on this issue are worth as much as mine or anyone else’s: nothing at all. 30 June 2009 Part 2 Lost Youth 7 Rewild the Child What is the best way to knacker a child’s education? Force him or her to spend too long in the classroom. An overview of research into outdoor education by King’s College London found that children who spend time learning in natural environments ‘perform better in reading, mathematics, science and social studies’.1 Exploring the natural world ‘makes other school subjects rich and relevant and gets apathetic students excited about learning’.


The Wood Age: How One Material Shaped the Whole of Human History by Roland Ennos

British Empire, carbon footprint, circular economy, Easter island, experimental subject, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, place-making, rewilding, three-masted sailing ship, University of East Anglia, wikimedia commons, yellow journalism

By 2030 this could amount to almost 120,000 square miles of regenerating forest. And even greater areas are already being rewilded in North America, the largest being the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, which seeks to rewild a strip almost two thousand miles long and forty miles wide, an area of around half a million square miles. And across the world, Allan Savory, the Zimbabwean ecologist, has estimated that 19 million square miles of degraded grassland could be restored. The new areas of woodland and scrub that spring up in rewilded sites not only promote high levels of biodiversity, hosting wildflowers, insects, and birds, but they also absorb carbon dioxide and help reverse climate change, just as has been happening over the last century on the abandoned farms of New England and New Zealand.

There is a rapid expansion of green woodworking, carpentry, and wood turning that is producing furniture, oak buildings, and all manner of the useful tools and items that would have been familiar to our ancestors. The woodlands are starting to act once again as the foundations of a small-scale circular economy. Meanwhile, the rewilding movement is starting to reclaim large areas of marginal farmland for natural forests and scrub. Trials are showing that this can have huge benefits even in the heavily modified countryside of Britain. On a relatively small scale, discontinuing plowing of heavy clay soils in lowland areas, as at the Knepp Estate in Sussex, England, has allowed the regrowth of scrub and deciduous woodland, while stocking the land with low densities of cattle and pigs is re-creating the wood pasture of medieval times.

our effect on the world’s forests has accelerated rapidly: For more details see Williams (2002). Chapter 15: Mending Our Strained Relationship in all wood products, around 4.5 MJ/lb of dry wood: See Jones (2019). the benefits of urban trees are considerable: See my mini-review on the physical benefits of urban trees in Hirons and Thomas (2018). Meanwhile, the rewilding movement is starting to reclaim: See Tree (2017). References Anthony, D. A. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Aranguren, B., A. Revedin, N. Amico, F. Cavulli, G. Giachi, S.


pages: 417 words: 109,367

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century by Ronald Bailey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climatic Research Unit, commodity super cycle, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic transition, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, double helix, energy security, failed state, financial independence, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Neolithic agricultural revolution, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, phenotype, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, rewilding, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, systematic bias, Tesla Model S, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, women in the workforce, yield curve

Only when the ecologically correct ideologies that blind us are upended can we can see the real nature that is all around us. Baselines are properly transformed into aesthetic choices rather than “scientific” mandates. Consider the ambitious Pleistocene Rewilding proposal in which proxy wild species from Africa might be used to replace those North American species killed off by early peoples. African cheetahs might chase after pronghorns, and elephants graze where mastodons once roamed. A small version of rewilding is the fascinating Oostvaardersplassen experiment in the Netherlands, where researchers are designing an ecosystem that aims to mimic what Northern Europe might have looked like 10,000 years ago.

Trends in Ecology and Evolution, July 2013, 396–401. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534713000335. “In truth, ecologists and conservationists”: Martin Jenkins, “Prospects for Biodiversity,” Science 302.5648 (November 14, 2003): 1175–1177. www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/Thoc/Readings/Jenkins_Science2003.pdf. Pleistocene Rewilding proposal: Josh Donlan et al., “Re-Wilding North America.” Nature, August 18, 2005, 913–914. izt.ciens.ucv.ve/ecologia/Archivos/ECO_POB%202010/ECOPO4_2010/Ehrenfeld%202010.pdf. “Paleolithic landscape at the Oostvaardersplassen”: Sagoff, “What Does Environmental Protection Protect?” Ethics, Policy, & Environment, 16, No. 3, (2013): 239–257.

See El Niño Southern Oscillation Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Erten, Bilge estrogen, synthetic Europe biotech crops viewed by carbon trading in industrialization in meat industry in rewilding EWG. See Energy Watch Group extinction current rates of deforestation and endangerment or history nature restoration and new species and ocean animal predictions protection from recovery rewilding ExxonMobil famine predictions fertility rate and Green Revolution solution to Malthus’s FAO. See Food and Agriculture Organization Farrell, Paul FDA. See Food and Drug Administration female health Ferdinand, Franz Ferris, Timothy fertility rates decline per economists decline per evolutionary biologists developing nations economic freedom and education and food production, famine and globalized trade and income and innovation and life expectancy and mortality rates and rule of law and sperm quality and count decline fertilizers biotech efficiency with climate mitigation and resource depletion by Fettweis, Christopher fisheries floods food aid labeling Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food production.


pages: 422 words: 113,525

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, back-to-the-land, biofilm, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, business process, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dark matter, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, digital divide, Easter island, Elon Musk, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, glass ceiling, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Kibera, land tenure, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, megaproject, microbiome, military-industrial complex, New Urbanism, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, out of africa, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, rewilding, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, We are as Gods, wealth creators, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, William Langewiesche, working-age population, Y2K

Some fifty-seven Indian tribes in nineteen states are members of the Intertribal Bison Cooperative, which helps restore buffalo to tribal lands to promote “cultural enhancement, spiritual revitalization, ecological restoration and economic development.” Montana State University has a Center for Bison Studies. As people move out of the high plains “buffalo commons,” bison are moving back in. • Paul Martin’s rewilding vision joins a similar one that has been promoted since 1991 by Dave Foreman, a founder of Earth First! Foreman’s version of rewilding, inspired by ecologist Michael Soulé, is based on keystone carnivores instead of herbivores. In Rewilding North America (2004), Foreman writes, “Wolves, cougars, lynx, wolverines, grizzly and black bears, jaguars, sea otters, and other top carnivores need to be restored throughout North America in ecologically effective densities.”

In 1999 the originator of the Pleistocene overkill theory, Paul Martin, was inspired by a conversation with Kenya’s David Western to propose bringing the big tuskers back onto the American landscape as an element of “resurrection ecology” for the continent. Martin elaborates on the idea in Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (2005). He was moved by Western’s description of the Amboseli Park elephants, who browse on trees and shrubs and continually swap places with Masai cattle, who graze on grass. Once the grass is grazed down, shrubs and trees take over; this attracts the elephants, who knock down and eat the woody plants, restoring the area to grassland suitable for cattle.

They’re awake! They’re moving. They’re looking over their shoulders. They aren’t loafing in big herds in open river valleys.” And the beaver are back. Conservation biologist Josh Donlan has blended the Martin and Foreman visions, saying it is time to reverse the “Pleistocene overkill” with a “Pleistocene rewilding.” As lead author (with Foreman, Soulé, Paul Martin, and others) of a 2005 paper for the American Naturalist, Donlon proposes to introduce “surrogate” replacements for the lost North American megafauna. African cheetahs, along with some African lions, would replace the long-vanished American cheetah that made our pronghorn antelopes so speedy.


pages: 341 words: 99,495

Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly Starrett, Juliet Starrett

airport security, call centre, COVID-19, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microdosing, Minecraft, phenotype, place-making, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Steve Jobs, TED Talk

There’s little sense in taking a romantic view of our Paleolithic selves—nothing dreamy about the days when you could die from something as simple as an abscessed tooth. Yet we could all use some of what, borrowing a term from conservation biology, we like to call rewilding of the body. Rewilding, in general terms, is defined as “restoring and protecting natural processes.” Like any ecosystem, our bodies have an inherent design for optimal functioning. Everything in this book is geared toward reinstating that natural state of affairs. Rewilding. It’s clear that we need it. As is well documented, we are now a society that drives to the gym, has our groceries delivered, and logs more screen time than even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in their wildest dreams could have imagined.

A related benefit is that it undoes some of the less effective (and sometimes pain-inducing) compensatory positions the body adopts after sitting in a chair (or on a couch or in a car; pick your body-always-at-a-right-angle poison) for hours at a time, day after day. Our bodies are built to sit in ground-based positions, so when you spend some time on your nice parquet floor or plush rug each day, you’re helping to “rewild” your hip joints. Sitting on the floor restores their range of motion, which will not only make it easier to get up and down, but also potentially remedy the musculoskeletal issues associated with so much chair time. Let’s break it down a little further. CHAIR WARNING Kids have no trouble sitting on the ground in all different kinds of positions for hours at a time.

Popular workouts like Peloton and SoulCycle and other activities that put you on a bike or in a boat with a paddle or on a stationary rower for lengthy amounts of time play into what has now become your body’s preferred posture. The great thing about the human body is that it adapts, then it adapts again. You can, in other words, rewild your hip, but it takes a conscious effort. When we look at people in high-level sports environments who are having problems like knee or back pain, one of the things we do is survey the shapes and positions they’re moving in throughout the day—and the shapes and positions they’re not moving in throughout the day.


pages: 138 words: 40,525

This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook by Extinction Rebellion

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, banks create money, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, Colonization of Mars, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, drug harm reduction, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, feminist movement, full employment, Gail Bradbrook, gig economy, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, mass immigration, negative emissions, Peter Thiel, place-making, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, retail therapy, rewilding, Sam Altman, smart grid, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, the scientific method, union organizing, urban sprawl, wealth creators

The problem is power. The problem is inequality. The problem is greed, and corruption, and money, and this tired, broken system. The problem is our complete and utter failure to imagine any meaningful alternative. Perhaps this book will go some way to changing that. We need to rewild the world. That much is obvious. But first we need to rewild the imagination. We must all learn how to dream again, and we have to learn that together. To break down the old ways of thinking and to move beyond our current conception of what is and what is not possible. This book is supposed to be a handbook. A book that you will keep by you, that will help you, inform you, empower you to act.

That will pose huge communications challenges if we want to enable compassionate and collaborative responses from each other as much as possible. Helping people, with psychological support, to let go of some old attachments and aspirations will be important work. Third, we need to explore the restoration of attitudes and approaches to life and organization that our hydrocarbon-fuelled civilization eroded. Examples include rewilding landscapes so they provide more ecological benefits and require less management, changing diets back to match the seasons, rediscovering non-electronically powered forms of play and increasing community-level productivity and support. Fourth, as we contemplate endings, our thoughts turn towards reconciliation: with our mistakes, with death and, some would add, with God.

This leads to us treating nature as something external rather than as a life-support system we depend upon. At the same time, we need to unlock a new ‘human–city–nature’ deal, which is slowly emerging through restorative and regenerative practices in urban nature. A constellation of pioneering innovators and ideas, including rewilding, permaculture, urban agriculture, continuous productive urban landscapes and blue-green infrastructure is driving this. It is underpinned by a broader shift in the relationship between nature and the city away from resource extraction, private profit, linear notions of progress and privatization and towards equality, stewardship, nature-based regeneration and restorative cyclical and interconnected relations.


pages: 380 words: 104,841

The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us by Diane Ackerman

23andMe, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, airport security, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, carbon footprint, clean water, climate change refugee, dark matter, dematerialisation, digital divide, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, Google Earth, Google Glasses, haute cuisine, Higgs boson, hindcast, Internet of things, Lewis Mumford, Loebner Prize, Louis Pasteur, Masdar, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, microbiome, mirror neurons, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, personalized medicine, phenotype, Ray Kurzweil, refrigerator car, rewilding, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, skunkworks, Skype, space junk, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the High Line, theory of mind, urban planning, urban renewal, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

In my experience, I tell her, Americans are deeply concerned about conservation, but we have clashing, fiercely defended opinions about how to do it. Some believe it’s essential to preserve our majestic national parks; some, that the parks are a lost crusade and that safeguarding animals in big preserves just hasn’t worked. Some believe in rewilding’s networks of “cores, corridors, and carnivores” to reconnect and rebalance unstable ecosystems; or Pleistocene rewilding—in North America, unloosing elephants, lions, bison, and cheetahs (the closest living relatives of the ancient native megafauna) to roam the Great Plains. Others argue that all of the above are last-epoch thinking, and, as an increasingly metropolitan species, we should weave more of the wild into the cities where we live.

Including a cloud forest and aerial walkways, the gardens collect rainwater, generate solar electricity, and bathe the air. Opening on June 29, 2012, they drew 70,000 nature-hungry visitors during the first two days. Although these new city oases won’t work for all species, or for all communities, the trend for rewilding our cities is growing. It’s positive, it enlightens, it’s widespread, and it helps. We need to retrofit and reimagine cities as planet-friendly citadels. They’re our hives and reefs. Sea mussels aren’t the only animals living in individual shells that are glued together. A GREEN MAN IN A GREEN SHADE As a child, Patrick Blanc loved going to the doctor’s office.

Other English bees have become prosperous city-dwellers, unassailed by agricultural pesticides, and there are now more sparrows, starlings, and blackbirds in the town gardens than in the open countryside. A sorry image of the English countryside, silent at dawn and devoid of wings, slinks through my mind. All the more reason I like Ann’s “try everything” mindset. Yes to national parks, to rewilding preserves, to wildlife corridors, to city shades of green, to DNA banking, and to any other strategy we can think of that will allow animals to pursue their dusty, feral ways and nature to stay replete with potent life forms. The office door swings gently open, and Chris Wade pokes his head in to take me on a tour of the lab.


pages: 482 words: 106,041

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

British Empire, carbon-based life, company town, conceptual framework, coronavirus, invention of radio, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, optical character recognition, out of africa, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, the High Line, trade route, uranium enrichment, William Langewiesche

But well before its famous transfiguration from Indian land to colonial real estate, priced to sell at 60 Dutch guilders, the mark of Homo sapiens was already on Manhattan. IN THE MILLENNIAL year 2000, a harbinger of a future that might revive the past appeared in the form of a coyote that managed to reach Central Park. Subsequently, two more made it into town, as well as a wild turkey. The rewilding of New York City may not wait until people leave. That first advance coyote scout arrived via the George Washington Bridge, which Jerry Del Tufo managed for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Later, he took over the bridges that link Staten Island to the mainland and Long Island. A structural engineer in his forties, he considers bridges among the loveliest ideas humans ever conceived, gracefully spanning chasms to bring people together.

Gaia theorist James Lovelock prophesies that unless things change soon, we’d better stash essential human knowledge at the poles in a medium that doesn’t require electricity. Yet Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!, a cadre of environmental guerrillas who had all but given up on humans deserving a place in the ecosystem, now directs The Rewilding Institute, a think tank based on conservation biology and unapologetic hope. That hope both includes, and depends on, the consecration of “mega-linkages”—corridors that would span entire continents, where people would be committed to coexisting with wildlife. In North America alone, he sees a minimum of four: they would span the continent’s dividing spine, the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and the Arctic-boreal.

Hyon Gak Sunim, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama for sharing their varied, thought-provoking contemplations of the Earth after us. Each professes one of the world’s great religions, but what filled my own soul most was their common humanity—a quality also shared by VHEMT’s Les U. Knight, who would bring nature’s human experiment to a close, and the Rewilding Institute’s Dave Foreman, who would keep us, but in cooperation, not conflict, with the rest of our planet’s species. I am particularly beholden to Dr. Wolfgang Lutz of the World Population Program, and his colleague Dr. Sergei Scherbov of the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, for assistance with translating a critical element of that formula into plain numbers—numbers that, quite literally, we could live with.


pages: 486 words: 139,713

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester

agricultural Revolution, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, climate change refugee, colonial rule, Donald Trump, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, Fellow of the Royal Society, Garrett Hardin, glass ceiling, Haight Ashbury, invention of the steam engine, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jones Act, Khyber Pass, land reform, land tenure, land value tax, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, oil shale / tar sands, Ralph Nader, rewilding, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, stakhanovite, Tragedy of the Commons, white flight, white picket fence

The pair would then wait some years, trying to manage their original dairy and beef cattle farm within this newly made wilded continuum, and see if in time Nature could do better at Knepp than Burrell and his family and their predecessors had ever managed to do. Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree at their 3,500-acre estate at Knepp in southern England, which since 2000 has been a centerpiece of the rewilding movement. But unlike the Dutch cold-turkey, take-no-prisoners approach, following the pitiless rules of ecology that distressed so many, some measure of human help was offered to the animals under the Knepp estate’s supervision. Veterinarians visited to monitor the cows’ health. (A herdsman was taken on to search for the cattle who, though more numerous, now had a tendency to hide themselves deep in the new-growth woods and among the thickets and bushes that sprang up on the untended fields.)

The untended streams between these stands were soon stopped up by beaver dams, the resulting ponds thick with monarch butterflies and perching birds, the woods a wealth of eagles’ nests, armies of turkeys, promiscuous legions of black bears, coyotes, foxes, owls, porcupines, deer everywhere, and a rich assembly of returned birdlife that may well have been previously kept away by the din of all the threshing machinery and stone-wall building and loud human activity that once marked out a working farm. What many can see today in rural Massachusetts, where I live on a long-abandoned eighteenth-century property, is often classically rewilded land, rich with lurking animals and strange sounds, casually untended and with biological consequences unintended and unimagined. It is not only American farmers who have themselves become a migratory species—all across Europe there are abandoned farms, some of their former owners either having moved to better lands or, more usually, having decided that the prodigious challenges of agriculture are simply not for them and so having fled to the cities.

Wellington. New Zealand Government. 2015. Mitchell, John Hanson. Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile. Cambridge, MA. Perseus Books. 1984. Mitchell, John Hanson. Trespassing: An Inquiry into the Private Ownership of Land. Reading, MA. Perseus Books.1998. Monbiot, George. Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life. London. University of Chicago Press. 2014. Moss, Graham. Britain’s Wasting Acres: Land Use in a Changing Society. London. The Architectural Press. 1981. Neiwert, David A. Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community. New York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2005.


pages: 369 words: 98,776

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans by Mark Lynas

Airbus A320, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Negawatt, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, special drawing rights, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, We are as Gods

As a result, Africa gives us the best idea of what a pre-human landscape might have looked like, with big animals like elephants browsing the undergrowth and herds of wild horses and cattle stirring up dust clouds across the savannah. Indeed, African ecosystems have been used as a model for proponents of “rewilding” parts of North America; if cheetahs, elephants, and camels can be imported into places like Montana, perhaps they could assume the ecological niches vacated by their extinct relatives, some have suggested.17 This is a romantic but vain hope, not least because the ancient homeland of these large surviving animals is seriously endangered by today’s generations of human beings.

My proposal for how this might work is a straightforward one, based on the fact that the human economy depends completely on the “natural capital” of a healthy biosphere. I suggest each country adds half a percent to Value Added Tax (VAT) with the proceeds raised specifically safeguarded for ecosystem and habitat restoration (“rewilding”) and preservation. This would be fair because a tax on consumption would mean that people pay in proportion to the environmental impact of their lifestyle patterns—with those who consume more bearing more of the cost—and as the economy grows so the yield from the tax would grow too. The amounts raised would be substantial, but barely noticeable to consumers: In the U.K. the rate of VAT has varied between 15 and 20 percent in just a couple of years in response to the changing economic situation while raising little protest.

In Costa Rica, abandoned cattle pasture is nurturing a flourishing young forest that in turn now supports a stable population of jaguars and other threatened fauna.67 A recent scientific paper looking at Latin America lists “similar patterns of ecosystem recovery following rural-urban migration” in Patagonia, northwest Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras, and the montane deserts and Andean tundra ecosystems of Bolivia, Argentina, and Peru.68 Even in rich countries, proposals for “rewilding”—which I strongly support—only stand a chance of success in areas where rural populations have collapsed and formerly subsidized unproductive farms can be shut down to allow them to revert to nature. These observations, and many other studies around the world, suggest that environmentalists need to take land use more seriously.


pages: 327 words: 84,627

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth by Jeremy Rifkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, book value, borderless world, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, decarbonisation, digital rights, do well by doing good, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, failed state, general purpose technology, ghettoisation, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, impact investing, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Joseph Schumpeter, means of production, megacity, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Network effects, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planetary scale, prudent man rule, remunicipalization, renewable energy credits, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, union organizing, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Spirited odes to the Age of Progress and the “perfectibility of Man” are seldom heard, and even then in muted tones. The Age of Resilience is upon us. The Green New Deal infrastructure is designed for this reality. Its components, applications, and operations will enable us to adapt to a once pacified and domesticated nature that is now rewilding—and hopefully to survive the escalating climate events that now envelop the Earth. That’s why a prospective Green Corps, Climate Corps, Infrastructure Corps, and Conservation Corps, made up of millions of young Americans, is more than just a career ladder to new business opportunities and employment.

These proposed agencies, at the federal, state, and local levels, will be among the first responders to climate events and in the disaster relief and recovery missions that will increasingly be a constant reality rather than a rare anomaly. Every community will need to be continually vigilant and engaged in disaster mode if we are to successfully adapt to the rewilding future that is now here. In this new world, national security is more about climate catastrophes than about military threats. Already, the Pentagon and state National Guards are reformulating their core missions and increasingly prioritizing critical operations around deployments to address climate events.

Anyone who tells you that the Green New Deal is going to preserve the way of life we know, sugarcoating the greening of society, is kidding you. Our tomorrows are going to be fraught with escalating climate events that are going to take an immense toll on our communities, our ecosystems, and our common biosphere. We are entering into a frontier of a new kind. Nature is rewilding, and we have to learn how to live with the uncertainty while adapting moment to moment to its surprises. We are going to need to cast aside any notion previously entertained about pacifying nature and molding and shaping it to serve humanity. Now we will need to regroup, gather our collective strength, learn to live by our wits, and find within ourselves the deep resilience that will allow us to survive and carry on into an unknown future that awaits our species and fellow creatures here on this little blue oasis in the universe.


pages: 583 words: 182,990

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, cakes and ale, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cryptocurrency, dark matter, decarbonisation, degrowth, distributed ledger, drone strike, European colonialism, failed state, fiat currency, Food sovereignty, full employment, Gini coefficient, global village, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, High speed trading, high-speed rail, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, Kim Stanley Robinson, land reform, liberation theology, liquidity trap, Mahbub ul Haq, megacity, megastructure, Modern Monetary Theory, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, place-making, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rewilding, RFID, Robert Solow, seigniorage, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, synthetic biology, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, wage slave, Washington Consensus

I am here to proudly speak for Cuba’s Sustainable Agriculture Revolution, on its eighty-fifth birthday. We are from Denmark’s Vitsohus Permakultur. I have been sent to you by Ecuador’s Cloudforest Agroforestry. I from Egypt’s Creating a Forest in the Desert. From England we represent Agroforestry Research Trust, the Eden Project, Knepp Estate Rewilding, Rewilding Britain, and River Restoration. From Eritrea we are Manazares Mango Regeneration, from Ethiopia, Ethiopia Rising, the Miracle of Merere, Regreening Ethiopia’s Highlands, Restoring Ecosystems, and the Watershed Movement. For France we happily represent Pur Projet Agroforestry. From Guatemala we are Reserva de Biosfera Maya and the Asociación de Comunidades Forestales.

The reforestation of that big island had been happening for well over a generation, and such was the fecundity of life that its rugged hillsides already looked densely forested, dark and wild. It had changed during Art’s time aloft, he said, and now the people of Madagascar were joining with Cubans and other island nations to help similar restoration efforts all over the world. Indonesia, Brazil, and west Africa were teammates in this effort. Rewilding, Art called it. They were rewilding down there. That night when Mary joined Art in his understudy, Madagascar was already behind them, but the air still seemed to carry its spicy scent. Art sat looking back at the island, bulking like a sea creature with thick napped fur. He seemed content. They sipped their whiskies for a while, enjoying a companionable silence.

Started as a glaciologist, hates meetings like this. Once said so right in meeting. Lived eight years on glaciers, she said. Wants back there. As for world cryosphere, it’s still melting. Huo Kaming, ecologist, Hong Kong. Biosphere studies, habitat restoration, refugia creation, animal protection, rewilding, biologically based carbon drawdown, watershed governance, groundwater recharge, the commons, the Half Earth campaign. She can do it all. Estevan Escobar. Chilean. Oceans. Prone to despair. Elena Quintero, agriculture. Buenos Aires. She and Estevan joke about Argentina-Chile rivalry. She cheers him up very skillfully.


pages: 252 words: 66,183

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray

Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Black Lives Matter, car-free, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, clean water, confounding variable, COVID-19, desegregation, Donald Shoup, Edward Glaeser, Elisha Otis, game design, garden city movement, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, industrial cluster, Jane Jacobs, job-hopping, land bank, lone genius, mass immigration, McMansion, mortgage tax deduction, Overton Window, parking minimums, restrictive zoning, rewilding, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Silicon Valley, SimCity, starchitect, streetcar suburb, superstar cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, transit-oriented development, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty

United States Census Bureau, “We Are Gathered Here,” March 4, 2015, https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2015/comm/cb15-33_gathered_here.html. 6. Jose M. Rey Benayas, “Rewilding: As Farmland and Villages Are Abandoned, Forests, Wolves, and Bears Are Returning to Europe,” The Conversation, July 2, 2019, https://theconversation.com/rewilding-as-farmland-and-villages-are-abandoned-forests-wolves-and-bears-are-returning-to-europe-119316. In Europe, where the phenomenon is known as “rewilding,” the effects of this development can easily be seen from satellite imagery. 7. US Energy Information Administration, “Use of Energy Explained: Energy in Homes,” June 2021, https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/homes.php. 8.


pages: 201 words: 33,620

Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2020 by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, Easter island, food desert, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), off-the-grid, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, sustainable-tourism, trade route

Of course there’s the famous Iguazú, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but the rest of this rugged and temperate region will lead you well off the beaten path. Newly minted in 2018, Iberá National Park is poised to become one of Argentina’s greatest attractions. It’s an inspiring success story of how restoring wilderness can have a positive impact on adjacent communities. Rewilding is bringing back the native fauna, from the green-winged macaw to pampas deer and jaguars. Also, the country continues to be great value for travellers. Population: 3.7 million Main towns: Puerto Iguazú, Mercedes, Corrientes Language: Spanish Unit of currency: Argentine peso How to get there: From Buenos Aires, flights go to Puerto Iguazú, Corrientes and Resistencia; comfortable overnight buses link Mercedes to the capital.

Think South American safari: this watery expanse is a haven for wildlife. Camp among docile capybaras, ply through lily-choked waters to spy prehistoric-looking caimans and spot herds of rheas and flocks of reintroduced green-tipped macaws. Native jaguars and giant river otters are coming back, thanks to an innovative rewilding program based in the remote island outpost of San Alonso. Take in the region’s gaucho routes with a horseback-riding tour and admire the barefoot cowboys and banner-blue skies. In between excursions, soak up the slow pace of such colonial towns as Concepción and Colonia Pellegrini. While checking out the larger-than-life landscape of Iguazú Falls, explore the steamy subtropical forest of Misiones, stay at a jungle lodge in Puerto Iguazú, and visit the fascinating ruins of early Jesuit missions.


pages: 443 words: 112,800

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World by Jeremy Rifkin

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Albert Einstein, American ideology, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bike sharing, borderless world, carbon footprint, centre right, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate governance, decarbonisation, deep learning, distributed generation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Ford Model T, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, income inequality, industrial cluster, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, job automation, knowledge economy, manufacturing employment, marginal employment, Martin Wolf, Masdar, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open borders, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, purchasing power parity, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tech billionaire, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, Yom Kippur War, Zipcar

Educators realize that creating biosphere consciousness is no easy task, especially since over half of the world’s human population now lives in dense urban or suburban environments that were designed to be isolated and walled-off from nature. Rewilding urban landscapes—bringing nature back into our lives—has become a central theme among urban land planners and architects. We forget that even the most sterile urban environments abound with wildlife—birds, insects, rodents, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, even deer, fox, coyotes, and abundant flora. Instead of fencing wildlife out, or killing them off, urban planners and an increasing number of civic organizations are finding new, creative ways to revitalize urban biospheres by reestablishing ecological niches scattered across metropolitan regions. The debate over rewilding urban and suburban spaces is often contentious.

Ben Breedlove, an American urban designer, is cautiously optimistic about creating environments where people and wildlife can coexist. Breedlove notes that “The largest unmanaged ecosystem in America is suburbia,” which is a counterintuitive notion that strikes a chord.39 In Europe, metropolitan areas are far advanced of the United States and other parts of the world in re-wilding urban regions and establishing an urban biosphere consciousness. Many European cities have devoted half their space or more to open green areas, forests, and agriculture. They have also made sure to maintain or reclaim creeks, small clumps of forests, and meadows inside or close to the urban cores.

He believes that “the creative potential is not going to be met by sending a handful of people to Mars. It’s going to be fulfilled by the exploration of this planet, by the constant celebration and deepening of knowledge of life around each one of us, on both the scientific and popular levels.”41 Re-wilding urban areas provides students with the opportunity to experience nature up close, rekindle the biophilia connection, understand their relationship to their evolutionary kin, and develop biosphere consciousness. That’s why in our TIR master plans we have reconceptualized metropolitan areas like Rome as urban biospheres.


pages: 345 words: 100,989

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal by Duncan Mavin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, Eyjafjallajökull, financial engineering, fixed income, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Kickstarter, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Masayoshi Son, means of production, Menlo Park, mittelstand, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, Ponzi scheme, private military company, proprietary trading, remote working, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, rolodex, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, supply chain finance, Tim Haywood, Vision Fund, WeWork, work culture

He bought a fleet of private jets, a wardrobe full of expensive, custom-made suits and a glass-fronted beachside property in his native Queensland, Australia. He picked up awards, became a regular guest on business television, and lavished a £2.5 million donation on the University of Manchester, where he had attended business school. Lex even planned to buy as much as 1,000 acres of land around his Cheshire home to ‘re-wild’ – it was the kind of thing, he told his senior staff, that billionaires like him did with their money. While the trappings of wealth were hugely rewarding, Lex was just as desperate for the status he got from hanging around politicians and top bankers. It was exhilarating to zip around the world in your own Gulfstream 650 – an elite plane even among global private aircraft owners.

After Covid-19 hit, and everyone was working from home, Greensill’s senior executives smirked at what they could see in the background on Zoom calls: through the window behind Lex, they watched a team of gardeners, dressed in Greensill farming outfits, working away on the estate. Lex even tried to buy a tract of land in the local area for a ‘rewilding’ project. With the SoftBank money pouring into Lex’s bank account, he made a proposal to the local parish council to buy about 1,000 acres around Saughall. Lex personally met with local councillors and residents to pitch his idea. The minutes of the Saughall and Shotwick Park Parish Council meeting outline the scale of Lex’s plans to erect a ‘two-metre-wide hedge, plant thousands of trees to create forests, orchards and wildflower meadows and introduce some rare breeds of livestock, etc.’

Index Aar Tee Commodities ref1 Abengoa ref1, ref2 Accenture ref1, ref2 Agritrade ref1 Ahearn, John ref1 AIG ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Aigis Banca ref1, ref2 Allesch-Taylor, Stefan ref1, ref2 Allin, Patrick ref1 anti-money-laundering (AML) questions ref1 ANZ ref1 Apollo Global Management ref1, ref2 Apple ref1 Aramco ref1 ArcelorMittal ref1 Archegos ref1 Arthur Andersen ref1 Asda ref1 Atlantic 57 Consultancy ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Auditing Association of German Banks ref1 Augustus Asset Managers ref1 Austin, Jason ref1, ref2 Australia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19 Australian Taxation Office ref1 Aviva ref1 BAE Systems ref1 Baer, Julius ref1, ref2 BaFin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 Bailey, Andrew ref1 Bank of America ref1 Bank of England ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Barclays ref1, ref2 Barnes, Rob ref1, ref2, ref3 Barrell, Neil ref1 Barron’s ref1, ref2, ref3 Bates, Chris ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Battershill, William ref1, ref2 Baylis, Natalie ref1 BBB see British Business Bank BBC News ref1 BBVA ref1 BCLP see Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner BDO ref1, ref2 Becker, Arthur ref1 Berkshire Hathaway ref1 Bethell, Richard, 6th Baron Westbury ref1, ref2 Bingera ref1 Bishop, Julie ref1, ref2 BlackRock ref1, ref2, ref3 Blackstone ref1 Blair, Tony ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Bloomberg ref1, ref2, ref3 Bloomberg News ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Bluestone Resources Inc. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Blunkett, David ref1, ref2 BNP Paribas ref1 Boeing ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 737 Max 8 aircraft ref1 Bond and Credit Company, The (TBCC) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Borbely, Barnabas ref1 Borneo ref1 Breedon, Tim ref1 Breedon report ref1 Brereton, Greg ref1 Brexit referendum ref1 Brierwood, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Brighthouse ref1 British Business Bank (BBB) ref1, ref2, ref3 British Gas ref1 Brown, Eliot ref1 Brown, Gordon ref1, ref2 Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) ref1 BSi Steel ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Buckingham Palace ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Buffett, Warren ref1 Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Bunge ref1 Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee ref1 Cabinet Office ref1, ref2, ref3 Caillaux, Gabe ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Callahan, Mark ref1 Cameron, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ‘Big Society’ policy ref1 and Earnd ref1 Greensill remuneration ref1 and Greensill’s collapse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 hired as Greensill adviser ref1, ref2 lends credibility to Greensill ref1 and Lex ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 and Mohammed Bin Salman ref1 and the pharmacy plan ref1 role at Greensill during the Covid-19 pandemic ref1 and The Bond and Credit Company ref1 Cameron, Samantha ref1 Cameron administration ref1, ref2 Cantor Fitzgerald ref1, ref2, ref3 Carillion ref1, ref2 ‘early payment facility’ ref1 Carlyle Group ref1 Carna ref1 Carnell, Kate ref1, ref2 Carney, Mark ref1 Carrington ref1 Carson Block ref1 Carusillo, Mickey ref1 Casey, Dame Louise ref1 ‘cash-less rolls’ ref1 Catfoss group ref1, ref2, ref3 central banks ref1 Chap (magazine) ref1 Charles, Prince ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Chase Manhattan ref1 CHBG Limited ref1 Chehaoduo ref1, ref2 Chelsea Group ref1 Chelsea Village ref1 Chicago Police Pension Fund ref1 Chilean mining ref1 Chubb ref1 Chuk ref1 CIMIC ref1, ref2 Citibank ref1 Citigroup ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13 City, the ref1 Clarke, Tracy ref1 Clearbrook Capital ref1 Cleland, Robert ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 coal mining ref1, ref2, ref3 Coca-Cola ref1, ref2 CoFace ref1 Comerford, Robert J. ref1, ref2 Commerzbank ref1 Companies House ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Confederation of British Industry (CBI) ref1 Conservative government ref1, ref2 Copenhagen ref1 Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) ref1, ref2 Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) ref1, ref2 corporate espionage ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Coupe, Mike ref1 Covid-19 Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF) ref1, ref2 Covid-19 pandemic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 government loan schemes ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 restrictions ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Crain’s (magazine) ref1 Credit Suisse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 and the Covid-19 pandemic ref1 and Greensill Capital ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33 and Sanjeev Gupta ref1 Crothers, Bill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Crown Representatives programme ref1 Cunliffe, Sir Jon ref1 CWB ref1 de Botton, Alain ref1 de Botton, Gilbert ref1 de la Rue, Tom ref1 Deal Partners ref1, ref2, ref3 Degen, Michel ref1, ref2, ref3 Dell ref1 Deloitte ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Demica ref1 Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ref1, ref2 Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ref1 Department of Health ref1 Department of Health and Social Care ref1 Department of Work and Pensions ref1 Deutsche Bank ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Deutsche Börse ref1 Doordash ref1 Doran, James ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 dotcom boom ref1, ref2 Dow Jones ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 Downes, Brett ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Dragon Technology ref1, ref2, ref3 Eadie, Al ref1 Earnd ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Ecclestone, Bernie ref1 Edelman ref1 1860 Munich ref1 Ellis, Brett Easton, American Psycho ref1 Enterprise Investment Schemes (EISs) ref1 equity warrants ref1 Ernst & Young ref1 see also EY Euler Hermes ref1, ref2 European Banking Association ref1 Ewing, Fergus ref1 EY ref1, ref2 see also Ernst & Young Eyjafjallajökull ref1 factoring ref1, ref2, ref3 see also supply chain finance Fair Financial ref1, ref2, ref3 Fairmac Reality ref1 Fairymead ref1 Fan, Colin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Farrell, Maureen ref1 FCA see Financial Conduct Authority ‘fee ramp agreements’ ref1 Feeney, Chuck ref1 Ferrin, Ronald ref1 Fidelity ref1 5th Finger ref1 Finacity ref1 Financial Accounting Standards Board ref1 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Skilled Persons Reviews ref1, ref2 financial crisis 2008 ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 aftermath ref1, ref2, ref3 and central banks ref1 and fintechs ref1 tougher regulations following ref1, ref2 Financial News (banking publication) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Financial Reporting Council ref1 Financial Times (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Finews (Swiss news site) ref1 ‘fintechs’ ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Fitch ref1 ‘flash title’ ref1 Fleetsolve ref1 Food Revolution Group ref1 Forbes (magazine) ref1 Ford ref1 Ford, Bill ref1 Formula One ref1 ‘Four Eyes Principle’ ref1 FreeUp ref1, ref2 Friedman, Alex ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Galligan, Shane ref1, ref2 GAM Greensill Supply Chain Finance fund (GGSCF) ref1, ref2 Gapper, John ref1 Garrod, Neil ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 GBM Banca ref1 General Atlantic (GA) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20 General Mills ref1, ref2, ref3 Gentleman’s Journal (magazine) ref1 German Deposit Protection Authority ref1 Global Asset Management (GAM) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26 Absolute Return Bond Fund (ARBF) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 regulators ref1 Global Supply Chain Finance Forum ref1 Global Trade Review (trade finance publication) ref1 Goldman Sachs ref1, ref2 Gorman, John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Gottstein, Thomas ref1, ref2 government loans ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ‘GovTech’ firms ref1 Grant Thornton ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Gray, Sue ref1 Green, Philip ref1, ref2 Greenbrier hotel ref1 Greene, Stephen ref1 Greensill, Alexander ‘Lex’ David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 ambition ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ascent ref1 Australian property investments ref1, ref2 Australian tax obligations ref1 awards ref1, ref2, ref3 CBE ref1, ref2, ref3 birth ref1 and Carillion ref1 celebrity status ref1 childhood ref1, ref2 at Citigroup ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 on the Crown Representatives programme ref1 CV ref1 and Daniel Sheard ref1 and David Cameron ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 directorships ref1 double down strategy ref1, ref2 and Downes ref1 dresses the part ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and Duncan Mavin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 eager to own bank ref1, ref2 education ref1 legal studies ref1 MBA at the Alliance Manchester Business School ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and 5th Finger ref1 and Greensill Bank AG (formerly NoFi) ref1 and Greensill Capital ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 acquisitions ref1, ref2 aircraft leasing deals ref1 attempts to raise emergency finance ref1, ref2, ref3 avoids toughest regulators ref1 BaFin probe ref1 Bluestone ref1, ref2 BSi ref1 Covid-19 pandemic ref1, ref2, ref3 Credit Suisse involvements ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 demise ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Dragon Technology ref1 expansion ref1, ref2, ref3 ‘flak’ (PR advisers) ref1 General Atlantic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Global Asset Management ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 harmful effect of SCF on small businesses ref1 insurance ref1, ref2, ref3 malpractice ref1 multi-obligor programmes ref1 National Health Service venture ref1, ref2 new category of loans ref1 payroll finance ref1 perilous state ref1 premier ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 sells company private jets ref1 Softbank dealings ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 start-up ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Tower Trade ref1 Tradeshift Networks ref1, ref2 and Jeremy Heywood ref1 and John Gorman ref1 legal work ref1 marriage ref1 and Masayoshi Son ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 mentors ref1 mission statement, ‘helping out the little guy’ ref1 and Mohammed Bin Salman ref1 at Morgan Stanley ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 remuneration ref1 moves to the UK ref1, ref2 at OzEcom ref1 and politics ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 ‘rewilding’ project ref1 risk-taking ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 and Sanjeev Gupta ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 and Saudi Arabia ref1 sits on Bank of England committee on SCF ref1 skiing ref1 spending ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 takes loan from the Greensill family ref1 and Tim Haywood ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 at TRM ref1, ref2 wealth ref1 billionaire status ref1, ref2 hits the big time ref1, ref2 Greensill, Andrew (Lex’s brother) ref1 Greensill, Judy (Lex’s mother) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Greensill, Lloyd (Lex’s father) ref1, ref2, ref3 Greensill, Peter (Lex’s youngest brother) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Greensill, Roy (Lex’s grandfather) ref1, ref2 Greensill, Victoria (Lex’s wife) ref1, ref2 Greensill Bank AG (formerly NoFi) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and the Atlantic 57 loan ref1, ref2 and the BaFin probe ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and the end ref1, ref2 and General Atlantic ref1 and government loans ref1 and Gupta ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 private aircraft ref1 regulation ref1 and Softbank ref1, ref2 technology ref1 and trade credit insurance ref1, ref2 whistle-blower at ref1 Greensill Capital ref1, ref2 aircraft leasing deals ref1 allegations of corruption at ref1 and the Atlantic 57 loan ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 avoids toughest regulators ref1 and the BaFin probe ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 and Bill Crothers ref1 billion dollar plus valuation ref1 and Bluestone ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 and BSi ref1 business cards ref1, ref2 cash burner ref1 client list ref1 collapse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 corporate events ref1 corporate governance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and the Covid-19 pandemic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and Credit Suisse ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33 Credit Suisse’s investigation into ref1, ref2, ref3 crisis mounts ref1, ref2, ref3 and David Cameron ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and David Solo ref1, ref2, ref3 defaults ref1, ref2 and Dragon Technology ref1 early backers ref1 early struggles ref1, ref2 evergreen loans ref1 ‘everyone wins’ pitches ref1 expansion ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 external public relations ref1, ref2 EY investigation into ref1 fault lines ref1 as ‘fintech’ company ref1, ref2 fraud and misconduct allegations ref1 and General Atlantic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15 and Global Asset Management ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22 gossipy culture ref1 and Greensill Bank ref1 and Griffin Coal ref1 and Gupta/Gupta Family Group ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14 harmful impact on small businesses ref1 headquarters on the Strand ref1 ‘High Risk Franchise Names’ document ref1 hits the big time ref1, ref2 illiquid investments ref1 insolvency ref1, ref2 investment protection ref1 investors abandon ref1, ref2 IPO ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 and John Gorman ref1 and Katerra ref1 and the Lagoon Park SPV ref1 launch ref1, ref2 lavish spending at ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Lex’s claims about ref1 liquidity ref1, ref2 and Lloyds ref1 loan book ref1 losses ref1 and Maurice Thompson ref1 Morgan Stanley employees ref1 and the NHS ref1, ref2, ref3 obligors ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 offices ref1, ref2, ref3 and payroll finance ref1 and Pemex ref1 perilous state ref1 and the pharmacy plan ref1 pre-IPO funding (‘Project Olive’) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 profitability issues ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 ‘reasonably permanent’ funding ref1 reducing the early risks of using ref1 remuneration ref1, ref2, ref3 retrenchment ref1, ref2 risk team ref1, ref2 risky ventures ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 and Roland Hartley-Urquhart ref1 and Saudi Arabia ref1 as ‘shadow bank’ ref1 and SoftBank ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24 SPAC talks ref1 start-up style management ref1, ref2 takes loan from the Greensill Capital family ref1 technology ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and Tim Haywood ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 and Tower Trade ref1, ref2, ref3 and trade credit insurance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 ‘Unicorn’ status ref1 and the US capital markets ref1 whistle-blower allegations emerge ref1 and the Wickham SPV ref1 Greensill Corporation Pty ref1 Greensill Farming Group ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Greensill Trust ref1 Grenda Investments ref1 Griffin Coal ref1, ref2 Gross, Bill ref1 Guazi ref1 Gulf Petrochem (GP Global) ref1 Gupta, Nicola ref1 Gupta, Sanjeev ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17 Australian property ref1 and Bluestone ref1 and the demise of Greensill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and German steel ref1 and Grant Thornton ref1 and Greensill Bank ref1 Gupta Family Group (GFG) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 and Bluestone ref1 and government loans ref1 and Greensill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 and Greensill Bank ref1 Guttridge, Jane ref1, ref2 Guy, Toby ref1 Gymshark ref1 Haas, Lukas ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Hambro, Jay ref1 Hanafin, Dermot ref1 Hanafin, Sean ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Harris, Piers ref1 Harry, Prince ref1 Hart ref1 Hartley-Urquhart, Roland ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Havens, John ref1, ref2 Haywood, Tim ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18 Henkel ref1 Hewlett Packard ref1 Heywood, Jeremy ref1, ref2, ref3 Highways Agency ref1 HM Revenue & Customs ref1 HM Treasury ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Hobday, Neil ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Holmes, Elizabeth ref1 House of Lords ref1 HSBC ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Huawei ref1, ref2, ref3 Hutton Inquiry ref1 IAG see Insurance Australia Group ICBC Standard Bank ref1 Indonesia ref1 Industrial Cadets ref1 Inflexionpoint ref1 ING ref1 Insurance Australia Group (IAG) ref1, ref2, ref3 International Chamber of Commerce ref1 Intrepid Aviation ref1 ‘Iran Notices’ ref1 Iraq, UN weapons inspectors ref1 Isle of Dogs ref1 Jacob, David ref1, ref2, ref3 Jahama Highland Estates ref1 Jain, Anshu ref1 Jakarta ref1 Jardine Matheson ref1 Johnson, Boris ref1 Jones, Karen ref1 J.P.


Radiant Rest by Tracee Stanley

Albert Einstein, centre right, COVID-19, epigenetics, rewilding, source of truth

I live in the Santa Monica Mountains on traditional Tongva land where the “mountains meet the sea,” and I teach annually in Big Sur, traditional Esselen land. These settings provided inspiration for restoring my connection to nature. I realized very quickly that renewing this connection was amplifying my yoga nidra practice and changing my life in unexpected ways. I was rewilding myself and allowing nature to heal me, awaken dormant wisdom, and transform my practice. I no longer had to conjure up an image of a brilliant starlit sky; it was there, real. I could place each of those “tiny, blue, starlike points of light” in my body, in real time. When I went back to practicing in my house, my body remembered, and I returned to a vibration that felt very familiar.

rest Quiet, freedom from toil, refreshing ease, peace of mind or spirit; the result of yoga nidra practice. See this page. restorative yoga A form of yoga that uses props to support the body in relaxed and calming postures held for long periods of time. Although some restorative postures may be used in your yoga nidra nest, restorative yoga is not the same as yoga nidra. See this page. rewilding A holistic approach to living that returns you to your natural state through a connection with nature. See this page. rishis, rishikas The original seers of yoga. See this page. ritual An observance, ceremony, or way of doing something. See this page. sadhana Dedicated practice over time, spiritual discipline.


pages: 312 words: 108,194

Invention: A Life by James Dyson

3D printing, additive manufacturing, augmented reality, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, coronavirus, country house hotel, COVID-19, electricity market, Elon Musk, Etonian, Fellow of the Royal Society, Ford Model T, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Indoor air pollution, James Dyson, James Watt: steam engine, lockdown, microplastics / micro fibres, mittelstand, remote working, rewilding, Saturday Night Live, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, uranium enrichment, warehouse automation, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Sustainable food production and food security are vital to the nation’s health and economy. Britain currently imports 30 percent of its food. This is unnecessary since we can grow almost everything and so reduce the carbon footprint caused by importing food with all this entails in terms of fuel and transport. The same eco warriors who are so keen on the re-wilding of farms think nothing of consuming avocados flown in by air and other imported foods. Within our greenhouses, and with our fertile soil and more than ample rainfall, we can grow the food we need. At the same time there is also a real opportunity for agriculture to drive a revolution in technology and vice versa.

As Britain leaves the European Union, powerful voices object to farm payments, which means that subsidies will decline and big farmers will be hit hard. These subsidies help support proven greening practices for the climate and environment on which most farmers lose money. The same people who object to subsidies also want farmers to be paid to turn their farms over to re-wilding and to be used as leisure spaces for everyone, neglecting to mention that if we did this, we would have to import all our food. Some imagine that big farmers are pocketing farm payments, ignoring the fact that it is hard not to lose money growing food, whether you are a large or small producer.

We can farm with increasing efficiency while the birds thrive. Between them, our tractors and harvesters sow, fertilize, and reap crops with a precision that means there is little waste. We can farm with increasing efficiency while nature thrives. To me, all this is common sense. I am not by any means a hair-shirted conservationist or ardent re-wilder. I don’t plan to release wolves onto our estates. Rather, I aim to be a productive and profitable farmer growing as much good food as possible. But, with the aid of invention, innovation, and technology, I can help to shape farms with my colleagues where human demands are in balance with those of nature.


pages: 561 words: 167,631

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clean tech, double helix, full employment, higher-order functions, hive mind, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Jevons paradox, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kuiper Belt, late capitalism, Late Heavy Bombardment, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Neolithic agricultural revolution, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, pattern recognition, phenotype, post scarcity, precariat, quantum entanglement, retrograde motion, rewilding, Skinner box, stem cell, strong AI, synthetic biology, the built environment, the High Line, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Turing test, Winter of Discontent

So the escorts might get arrested before they were done, but hopefully the habitat corridors would be quickly recognized as values worth the land given over to them. As usual when walking with a group of people, Swan quickly fell behind. There was too much to look at; things were so interesting that she forgot what her task was, even now. The plans and research devoted to the possible rewilding of Earth had been going on for a century, and here she was part of it, and still she stumbled around looking at flowers poking out from rocky soil here and there, velvet pads of astonishing color. Above them stood a tall pale blue sky, with a line of cumulus scudding east. She still saw in her mind animals floating down like seeds in the sun; the sight had cast her into a dream and she had not emerged from it, and so naturally she had to go slow.

During the descent some animals were shot out of the sky like shooting-range skeet. And yet on the whole down they came, landed, survived, endured. For a few weeks or months, therefore, it was all anyone spoke about, and all shouted at the tops of their lungs. And the massive flood of images was ambiguous, to say the least. Some cried invasion, but others cried reunion. Rewilding, assisted migration, the revolt of the beasts; and at some point it was called the reanimation, and that term got capitalized and gradually stuck and spread, superseding all the rest. And in the end it did not matter what name people gave it: the animals were there many accused the terraria of fomenting revolution on Earth.

Have you seen that shirt with all the excuses printed on it?” “They made that shirt by listening to me and writing things down.” “Ha-ha. Which one this time?” “Well, I’ve just spent almost a year on Earth. I’m throwing everything long.” “I bet. What were you doing there?” “Working on animal stuff.” “The invasion, you mean?” “The rewilding.” “Huh. What was that like?” “It was interesting.” She didn’t want to talk about it right now, and she suspected the youth knew that and only wanted to distract her. “Your shot.” “Yes.” The youth’s waist-to-hips ratio was sort of girlish, the shoulder-to-waist-to-ground lengths sort of boyish.


pages: 476 words: 132,042

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 13, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, c2.com, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, charter city, classic study, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, computer vision, cotton gin, Danny Hillis, dematerialisation, demographic transition, digital divide, double entry bookkeeping, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, George Gilder, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, interchangeable parts, invention of air conditioning, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Conway, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, life extension, Louis Daguerre, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, performance metric, personalized medicine, phenotype, Picturephone, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, rewilding, Richard Florida, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, silicon-based life, skeuomorphism, Skype, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, technological determinism, Ted Kaczynski, the built environment, the long tail, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, Vernor Vinge, wealth creators, Whole Earth Catalog, Y2K, yottabyte

Among the green anarchists there’s talk of recovering your soul, of making fire by rubbing sticks together, discussions of whether vegetarianism is a good idea for hunters, but there is no outline of how groups of people go beyond survival mode, or whether they do. We are supposed to aim for “rewilding” but the rewilders are shy about describing what life is like in this rewild state. One prolific green anarchy author whom I spoke to, Derrick Jensen, dismisses the lack of alternatives to civilization and told me simply, “I do not provide alternatives because there is no need. The alternatives already exist, and they have existed—and worked—for thousands and tens of thousands of years.”


The Ages of Globalization by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Admiral Zheng, AlphaGo, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, circular economy, classic study, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, Commentariolus, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, domestication of the camel, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, European colonialism, general purpose technology, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, income per capita, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, mass immigration, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, out of africa, packet switching, Pax Mongolica, precision agriculture, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, rewilding, South China Sea, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, systems thinking, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Turing machine, Turing test, urban planning, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, wikimedia commons, zoonotic diseases

Horses were present in Africa only at the very northern tip of the continent, in the small temperate band north of the Sahara. 4.3 The Distribution of Wild Horses in the Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Source: Pernille Johansen Naundrup and Jens-Christian Svenning, “A Geographic Assessment of the Global Scope for Rewilding with Wild-Living Horses (Equus ferus),” PLoS ONE 10(7): https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132359 Figure 4.3 depicts the remarkable decline in the range of horses between the late Pleistocene (light) and the mid/late Holocene (dark). The main reason is that horses were hunted for meat in the early Holocene and driven to extinction throughout the Americas and in most of Eurasia other than the steppe region.

Scientific American Blog Network. 2015. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/domestic-horses-of-africa/. National Science Board. Science and Engineering Indicators 2018. Alexandria, VA: National Science Foundation, 2018. Naundrup, Pernille Johansen, and Jens-Christian Svenning. “A Geographic Assessment of the Global Scope for Rewilding with Wild-Living Horses (Equus Ferus).” Ed. Marco Festa-Bianchet. PLoS ONE 10, no. 7 (2015): e0132359. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132359. Neubauer, Simon, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz. “The Evolution of Modern Human Brain Shape.” Science Advances 4, no. 1 (2018): eaao5961. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao5961.


Fodor's Essential Belgium by Fodor's Travel Guides

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, bike sharing, blood diamond, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, Easter island, Ford Model T, gentrification, haute cuisine, index card, Kickstarter, low cost airline, New Urbanism, out of africa, QR code, retail therapy, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, starchitect, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, young professional

Boucle Noire (GR412) TRAIL | This 26-km (16-mile) Grand Randonnée walking route traces a path through the old mining villages east of the city. The “Black Loop,” as it’s known, traverses canal towpaths, former railways, and the area’s main slag, or spoil, heaps—the excavated soil and waste from the mines—which have been left to rewild since the last pits closed here in the early 1980s. These, in particular, afford fine views across an area that, while not always pretty, is still dramatic. Maps with directions in English can be picked up at the tourism information office. You can pick up the route at Charleroi Sud station. EGare de Charleroi Sud, Sq. des Martyrs 18, Charleroi AFree.

Both Celts and Romans once founded villages here, but by the 19th and 20th centuries, the area was known for one thing only: its iron and mineral deposits, which gifted the region its nickname, the Redlands (for its red-tinted, iron-rich soils). In 1798 Esch-sur-Alzette it was just a small village; today, it’s Luxembourg’s second-largest city, a metropolitan area home to some 60,000. Its old mining sites were rewilded, creating a string of nature reserves. Old pits became museums, and the plants of the industrial Belval area were converted into a university, music venue, and visitor center. This even won the city the European Capital of Culture title for 2022. For visitors, the city is something of a base. You’ll not spend much time in its center with so many interesting villages and sights on the outskirts.

Joseph’s Church) CHURCH | The largest and oldest church in Esch-sur-Alzette was built in neo-Gothic style by Charles Arendt, a truly prolific state architect who designed and restored many buildings across Luxembourg in the prewar years. Inside you’ll find some impressive murals. ERue d’Église, Esch-sur-Alzette AFree. Ellergron Reserve NATURE PRESERVE | Around 2 km (1 mile) south of the city lies the nature reserve of Ellergron, a former ore extraction zone that has been rewilded. The best way to get there is to walk. Take the lift next to the railway station to the bridge over the tracks and you’ll find yourself in Gaalgebierg park. From there, the reserve is well signed. Once you arrive, a visitor center outlines the surrounding trails. You’ll also find the Musée Mine Cockerill (Cockerill Mining Museum), which is set in the old mine workings that date back to 1887, now mostly inhabited by bats.


pages: 304 words: 90,084

Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change by Dieter Helm

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boris Johnson, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, congestion charging, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demand response, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, electricity market, Extinction Rebellion, fixed income, food miles, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jevons paradox, lockdown, market design, means of production, microplastics / micro fibres, North Sea oil, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price mechanism, quantitative easing, remote working, reshoring, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, systems thinking, Thomas Malthus

There would be few if any crops, and we would live only on those renewable bits of natural capital which are abundant and well in excess of any threshold below which they could not renew themselves. We humans are always changing our world, and there is no prospect that this will end, unless of course there is some cataclysm. There is no wild to rewild back to, no primitive and pristine state of nature to which we can aspire.[1] The point is to make our impacts in such ways as to leave the natural world in at least as good a state as we inherited it. We should tread lightly, but nevertheless still tread. This is not and can never be a zero-pollution world.

., Green and Prosperous Land: A Blueprint for Rescuing the British Countryside. London: HarperCollins, 2019. Back to text 14. Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, ‘Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment: Final Report’, January 2019. Back to text * * * * * * 4 LiVING WITHIN OUR ENVIRONMENTAL MEANS 1. The fashion for ‘rewilding’ confuses the advocacy of a particular management technique in particular circumstances with a back-to-nature romanticism. Back to text 2. Technically, this includes rules in respect to the depletion charges of renewable and non-renewable natural resources. For the classic treatment, see Dasgupta, P.


pages: 614 words: 176,458

Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie

agricultural Revolution, air gap, Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Community Supported Agriculture, deindustrialization, en.wikipedia.org, food miles, Food sovereignty, Garrett Hardin, gentleman farmer, Haber-Bosch Process, household responsibility system, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Just-in-time delivery, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, megacity, military-industrial complex, Northern Rock, Panamax, peak oil, precautionary principle, refrigerator car, rewilding, scientific mainstream, sexual politics, stem cell, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Woodland or Wildland We are left in Table F with about nine million hectares, of which 3.7 million hectares are currently classed as woodland or else ‘other land on agricultural holdings including woodland’, and the rest are rough grazing – including 1.5 million hectares of grouse moor. There are therefore nearly five million hectares of mostly poor quality land spare, for which the most obvious uses are either to ‘rewild’ it, or else to put it over to woodland. In the livestock permaculture scenario I have opted to leave slightly over half of this area for wildlife and to convert the other half to woodland. This gives us about six million hectares of woodland, around a quarter of the entire country. This is still a lower proportion than in France (27 per cent), the EU (40 per cent) or the world (29 per cent).

An obvious candidate is fenland, which could well allow a proportion of its fertile arable land to revert to waterland. Drained by Dutch engineers and Scottish prisoners of war in the 17th century for agriculture, much of the land is now kept dry by the use of diesel or electric pumps. A return to fenland is already being carried out by the National Trust at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, where the aim is to rewild 3,700 hectares of farmland and return it to fenland. Currently some of the reclaimed area is being grazed by semi-wild Konik horses, though as far as I know the National Trust is not, like the Dutch wetland managers, retailing pony-burgers. The scheme will sequester carbon in the peaty soils that have been stripped bare by years of arable farming; and it will serve as a ‘green lung’ for residents experiencing spiritual suffocation in the new expanse of suburban sprawl planned for the Cambridge area.

If we choose to use arable land for biogas to help fuel power-hungry cities and develop technologies for turning biomass residues into chemical fertilizers, then our farmed countryside will become a deserted hydroponic factory. The more biomass that is required for energy, the less there will be for livestock, leading to increased pressure for vegan solutions. Under the vegan option, areas of less fertile land could be cordoned off for rewilding, a bargain which would be welcomed by those who, like James Lovelock, Paul Shepard and the GOOFs, believe that the resurgence of Gaia requires the human race to live a crabbed urban existence, expelled from the Garden for our sins. Following this course would signal our further withdrawal from the natural world, and point us further down the road that leads ultimately towards the spooky scenarios advanced by transhumanists.


Paint Your Town Red by Matthew Brown

banking crisis, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, call centre, capitalist realism, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, fear of failure, financial exclusion, G4S, gentrification, gig economy, global supply chain, green new deal, housing crisis, hydroponic farming, lockdown, low interest rates, mittelstand, Murray Bookchin, new economy, Northern Rock, precariat, remote working, rewilding, too big to fail, wage slave, working-age population, zero-sum game

As with Preston, community wealth-building offered North Ayrshire an alternative to failed previous models of inward investment and the problem of “leakage” from the local economy. Cullinane sees the management of land and assets by the local community rather than private developers as further tying into a wider environmental strategy through projects of reforesting and rewilding in parts of the area. The council’s “Anchor Charter”, currently being developed, will set out a range of commitments for anchor institutions that not only covers the five “pillars” identified by CLES but also adds a sixth point on tackling climate change. Although welcoming the Scottish government’s interest in community wealth-building, Cullinane is conscious of the need for it to be accompanied by a commitment to a transformative agenda, to avoid diluting its potential when scaled-up and to get beyond relatively abstract political platitudes on “inclusive growth” or “well-being”.


pages: 414 words: 128,962

The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland by Rory Stewart

agricultural Revolution, British Empire, connected car, Etonian, glass ceiling, Isaac Newton, Khyber Pass, land reform, Neil Armstrong, RAND corporation, rewilding, Silicon Valley

An army of government officials moved in. They drove the cattle and sheep that remained alive from the land. They prohibited peat-digging, the clearing of trees and vegetation, or the planting of crops. Much of the best farmland in the Middleland, which had been farmed for 2,000 years or more, was rewilded – including the Eden valley between Penrith and Carlisle – converted back into swamp, scrub and woodland, as a protected habitat for birds and above all for deer. * My walking companion Julian was a Cumbrian painter. His wife, his mother, his father, his father’s father, his father’s mother and his mother’s mother had all been Cumbrian painters.

Behind me I could see the great forest of aerials which marked the nuclear submarine control centre at Anthorn. 69 The Scottish side of the border looked different to the English side. Here the agricultural improvements had happened much later, the land drains had not been abandoned, and rewetting and rewilding schemes were yet to commence. Oaks loomed above long-eared grain and thoroughbred horses. Between the coast and the fields were dense thickets of briars and nettles, raspberry bushes and hints of more exotic, pink-flowered aliens – all taking advantage of the nitrogen-rich soil. In 1914, this whole patch of mostly Scottish ground, nine miles long and three miles wide, had been fenced in by the Imperial War Office.


pages: 412 words: 121,164

Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World by Anthony Sattin

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anton Chekhov, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, digital nomad, Donald Trump, Extinction Rebellion, fake news, invention of writing, Islamic Golden Age, James Hargreaves, Jessica Bruder, Khartoum Gordon, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nomadland, open borders, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, spinning jenny, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, traveling salesman

With the Uighur khanate on side, the Mongols continued westwards and hoped for similar success from their diplomatic advances towards the Uighurs’ neighbour, the Sultan of Khwarazm. The Great Khan was learning to curb his steppe instinct to return agricultural land to pasture, an early form of rewilding. Those of his advisers who had experience at the Chinese court had helped him see the advantages of allowing settled people to continue in their own way, not least the wealth to be had in trading with them. It was with the intention of establishing this sort of trade link that Genghis exchanged messages with the Shah of Khwarazm, Ala ad-Din Muhammad II.

If religious conviction was not sufficient reason to align oneself with the new masters of the world, the head count of those who died in a few blood-soaked years might have been. That, and the knowledge that some of Central Asia’s richest provinces had been reduced to wasteland, fertile farmland allowed to rewild, some of its strongest cities levelled, some of the glories of Afghanistan gone, along with those of the Persian heartland, including the fabled underground canals. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people were forced to flee ahead of the Mongol wave. ‘O would that my mother had never borne me,’ the Arab chronicler Ibn al-Athir wrote, echoing common sentiment, ‘that I had died before and that I were forgotten.’


pages: 469 words: 142,230

The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World by Oliver Morton

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, Asilomar, Boeing 747, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, Columbian Exchange, decarbonisation, demographic transition, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Haber-Bosch Process, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John von Neumann, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kintsugi, late capitalism, Louis Pasteur, megaproject, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Philip Mirowski, planetary scale, plutocrats, public intellectual, renewable energy transition, rewilding, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, tech billionaire, Ted Nordhaus, Thomas Malthus, Virgin Galactic

But they are not inseparably conjoined, nor indistinguishable; they still have their separations, and there is always room for the unintended. Perhaps the all-encompassing nature that people once yearned for has gone – perhaps it was never really there. The idea that there are things, processes and places which can express nature has survived, as it has through all sorts of cultural shifts. The patchwork ecosystems created by the rewilding projects of a century ago – those that re-introduced once-common species like the wolf and beaver to landscapes from which they had been removed – now seem like places where nature is at work even though they are manifestly contrived. The sense of the natural as a process persists even when some genetic engineering has gone into the contrivance, as in the case of the mammoths now rooting up some Siberian and Canadian forests, thereby doing their bit to raise the planet’s albedo as well as to delight its inhabitants.

forum/geoengineering My own blog is at http://heliophage.wordpress.com Index Abbot, Charles, 49 Ackerman, Thomas, 307–8, 323 adaptation and mitigation: costs, 106; future scenarios, 355–7, 359, 360–1, 362–4, 366, 370; as only solution, 29; reasons for neglect, 146–7; relationship with geoengineering, 158, 159–60, 161–2, 163, 165, 347, 355–7, 359, 362–4; and two-degree limit, 165 AEC see Atomic Energy Commission aerosols: cooling effects, 63, 73, 84–5, 89–99, 275–80; and fossil fuels, 12; future scenarios, 370; and health, 281; and local climate modification, 297; and ozone layer, 93–4; and rainfall, 95–6; from sulphur, 275; warming effects, 73; see also veilmaking afforestation see trees Africa: aerosols over, 297; and colonialism, 178; early humans in, 230; and global warming, 116; Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, 344–5; potential geoengineering effects, 121–2, 371; prehistoric climate, 241–2; see also Sahara Desert; Sahel; South Africa agreements see air pollution: agreements; climate negotiations and agreements; nuclear weapons: treaties and test bans; UNFCCC agriculture and farming: and algal blooms, 196; and asteroid strikes, 329; and carbon dioxide, 236–40; and climate change, 72, 237–8; energy intensity, 193–4; EU subsidies, 208; genetic modification, 289–90; and greenhouse gases, 224–5, 227; increasing crop reflectivity, 289–90; machinery, 184; and nuclear winter, 307; organic, 199–200; origins, 230–1, 234–5; separation of livestock from arable, 205; unintended fertilization, 199–200; see also fertilizers, synthetic; plant growth Agung, Mount, 90, 98 air conditioning, 284 air pollution: in Asia, 280, 297, 365; international agreements, 208, 282–3; and nitrogen, 199; and sulphur, 274–5, 281–3 aircraft: B-52 bombers, 42; F-15, 104; Lockheed U-2, 42–3, 44, 45, 53; and ozone layer, 51–2; supersonic, 358; and veilmaking, 101–6, 352, 368 airships, hybrid, 106 albedo: and averting ice ages, 278; definition, 71–2; future scenarios, 282; and ice, 73, 231; ice–albedo feedback, 223, 276, 278, 342–3; reduced by mammoths, 373; and trees, 130, 260; and volcanic eruptions, 85 algal blooms, 95, 195–6, 253–4, 256 Algeria, 241–2 Alliance of Small Island States, 355 Alps, 371 Alvarez, Luis, 321–2, 327–8 Alvarez, Walter, 321–2, 327–8 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 138 Americas, effect of European ‘discovery’, 227–9 Ames Research Center, 156, 307 ammonia, 176, 199; see also nitrogen Anderson, James, 53, 169 Andes, 371 animals: biodiversity and global warming, 257; cattle, 224; and European ‘discovery’ of Americas, 227–8; extinctions, 25, 321–2, 328; livestock farming, 205; polar bears, 95; rewilding, 373 Antarctica: ice as record of earlier climates, 222, 227, 321; ozone layer over, 53, 93, 110, 111; protecting the icecap, 372; see also Southern Ocean Anthropocene: attitudes to, 219–21, 225–9; definition, 25–6; and greenhouse gases, 222–9; origins of term, 52; start date, 44–5, 225–9 anthropology, 129 Apollo programme, 60, 62, 77, 212–13; Apollo 8, 60, 213 Archer, David, 267 Archimedes, 81 Arctic: climate research projects, 138; future scenarios, 342; ice, 313, 362; methane release, 241; and next ice age, 278; ozone layer over, 110; temperature records, 108; and weather in temperate zones, 316 Argentina, 16 arms-control agreements, 144 Armstrong, Louis, 375 Arrhenius, Svante, 88, 130–1, 243 ‘asteroclique’, 333–4, 335–6 asteroids and comets, 139, 321–2, 327–40, 341 Aswan Dam, 198 Atacama Desert, 180 atmosphere: effects and properties, 38–40, 65–73; etymology, 40; layers, 41; size, 375; see also stratosphere; troposphere; veilmaking Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 45, 316 Aurora Flight Sciences, 101–5 Australia, 271 Bachelard, Gaston, 35 back scattering see scattering Bacon, Francis, 24–5 Bala, Govindasamy, 151, 292 Bali, 90 balloons, 105–6 Barrett, Scott, 106–7 Baruch, Bernard, 185, 188, 314 BASF, 182, 190 BECCS see biomass energy with CCS Bennett, Hugh, 185 Bezos, Jeff, 353 biochar, 264 biodiversity, 257–8 biofuel, 263 biomass, 18, 263; see also renewable energy biomass energy with CCS (BECCS), 262–4, 265 biotechnology, 289 Birks, John, 306–7 Blair, Tony, 144 Blue Origin, 353 Bolivia, 180 Borgstrom, Georg, 228 Borlaug, Norman, 189, 190–1, 192, 197 Bort, Léon Teisserenc de, 39–40 Bosch, Carl, 182, 190, 193 Boserup, Ester, 203 Boulton, Matthew, 226 Box, George, 71 Branson, Richard, 28, 353 Brazil, 16, 294 Brians, Paul, 309–10 Bristol, University of, 261, 289 Britain see UK British Association for the Advancement of Science, 178, 181, 184 Broecker, Wally, 231–2 Bronfman, Edgar, 28 Brown, George, 330 Brown, Harrison, 239–40, 243, 246 Bryson, Reid, 275–6 Budyko, Mikhail, 138, 276, 277 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de, 124 Burke, Edmund, 41 Bush, George W., 159 Byers, Horace, 269 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 332 cabin ecology, 75–8 Caldeira, Ken: background, 150; funds source, 156–7; and Gates, 102, 156–7; and geoengineering, 149–52, 157, 160, 238, 240, 286 Calgary, University of, 28, 101–2 Calgary direct-air conference (2012), 1, 23, 27–9, 249 California: energy prospects of, 20; 1970s drought, 319–20 Callendar, Guy, 243, 267 Caltech, 239–40 Canada, 184 cancer, 58–9 Cancún summit (2010), 165 capitalism, 225–6, 228, 310; see also industrialization carbon: carbon cycle, 216–19; carbon cycle and humankind, 221–9; fixing/reduction, 216–17 carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS), 246–9 carbon dating, 215–16, 226 carbon dioxide: atmospheric concentration, 245; BECCS, 262–4, 265; and carbon cycle, 216; carbon markets, 144; CCS, 246–9; centrality to climate change politics, 141–2, 143–7; and climate change, 65, 72–3; direct-air capture, 22–9, 245–6, 249, 265; early geoengineering schemes, 137–8; early research, 75–6, 88; emissions reduction, 1, 3–4, 8–22, 145, 264–5; historical atmospheric levels, 222–9; increase in emissions statistics, 2; and the oceans, 152–4, 249–59, 265, 362, 363–4, 371; and plant growth, 96, 117, 232–42, 259–61; reduction/removal technologies, 243–67, 369; relationship between emissions reduction/mitigation and veilmaking, 347–52, 355–7, 359, 360–1, 363–4 Carbon Engineering, 28, 101–2 carbonates, 233 Carnegie Institute, 102 Carson, Johnny, 324 Carson, Rachel, 58, 277 Carter, Jimmy, 132 cattle, 224 CCS see carbon capture and sequestration/storage CFCs see chlorofluorocarbons Chapman, Clark, 328 Chapman, Sydney, 48, 50 Charlson, Robert, 282 Charney, Jule, 312 chemical warfare, 340–1 chemtrails and chemtrailers, 102–4, 137, 351 Chernobyl, 15 Chicago, University of, 267 Chile, 180, 189–90 China: afforestation, 260; agriculture, 230; air pollution, 280; carbon dioxide emissions, 21–2, 143; Chinese guano workers in South America, 180; effects of volcanic eruptions, 86; fertilizer industry, 193; future scenarios, 342; industrialization, 229; population issues, 187; potential for cloud-brightening experiments, 296–7; rainmaking schemes, 271; US cold war attempts to minimize influence, 192; and veilmaking models, 121; weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, 354 China Syndrome, 14 chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), 52–3, 72, 93, 109–10, 143–4, 287 Christo, 344–5 CIA, 354 cities: age of, 230; and albedo, 72; cooling, 289; growth, 177; low-lying, 371; and nuclear weapons, 306; and pollution, 128 Clarke, Arthur C., 63, 266 Clementine mission, 334 climate, worldwide interconnectivity, 293–4 climate change: and agriculture, 237–8; cooling effects of sulphates, 84–5, 89–93, 94–5; difficulty of rectifying by switch to renewables and nuclear, 1, 3–4, 8–22; first discovery, 43–4; harm caused by gases other than carbon dioxide, 146; lack of uniformity, 94; politics, 139–47; rate, 68; and reflectivity of Earth’s surface, 71–2; reliability of predictions, 68–71; risks and responsibilities, 1–3, 5–8; tipping points notion, 231–2, 240–1; two-degree limit, 165–6; and volcanoes, 83–99; workings of, 65–80; see also ice ages; ozone layer climate geoengineering: and achieving the two-degree limit, 166; argument from aesthetics, 337–8, 372; attitudes to, 124–5, 154–5, 261–2, 308, 311–12, 344–6; breathing-space approach, 162–3; case for, 22–7, 29–31; challenges of, 81–2; as control system, 170–1; current debate, 152–65; definition, 26; as doomsday device, 342–3; and emissions reduction/mitigation, 347–52, 355–7, 359, 360–1, 363–4; feasibility of secret execution, 354; first scientific proposals, 137–9; future of, 166–72, 335; future scenarios, 347–75; as gradual process, 359–61; historical methods and attitudes, 126–47; as hope for future, 375–8; in-case-of-emergency approach, 160–2; international governance, 256, 357–9, 374; and international relations, 364–8; moral hazard issues, 158–62, 335, 361–4; nuclear risk’s effect on attitudes to, 308, 311–12; and nuclear weapons, 312–18, 319–20, 340; origins, 308; parallels with asteroid impact work, 332–8; reasons currently ignored, 141–7; weaponizing, 341–2; winners and losers, 120–2, 164–5 climate negotiations and agreements, 21, 140–1, 143–4, 355–6, 359; see also UNFCCC climateprediction.net, 120 Climatic Change (journal), 137, 153 Clinton, Bill, 144 clouds: brightening, 273–4, 279–88, 292–8, 323, 360; calculating droplets in, 298–9; as complicating factors in climate change prediction, 72–3; and cooling the Earth, 273–4, 279; dominating view of Earth from space, 63; increased scientific interest, 268–72; lightning generation, 299–300; and ozone layer, 93; and rainmaking, 268–71; seeding, 268–73; and sunsets, 268; veilmaking’s effect, 111 cloudships, 283–5 coal: current usage, 8; future scenarios, 369; and industrialization, 229; sustainability as fuel source, 180–1; twentieth-century abundance, 211, 212; see also fossil fuels Cohen, Leonard, 148 cold war, 192, 326; see also nuclear weapons colonialism, 177–8, 228–9 Columbia University, 27–8, 106–7 Comer, Gary, 27–8 comets see asteroids and comets Commoner, Barry, 47, 276, 277 communism, US fight against, 192 Competitive Enterprise Institute, 232 Conrad, Kevin, 355 consumerism, 23 continental drift, 47–8 Conway, Erik, 365 Copenhagen climate summit (2009), 10–11, 21, 146; accord, 165 coral reefs: creation, 233; and fertilizer run-off, 198; future scenarios, 362, 363–4; and heat, 292; and ocean acidification, 152; protecting, 251, 292, 294–5; and volcanic eruptions, 95 counter-geoengineering, 341–2 Cox, Peter, 240 Crookes, Sir William, 178–84, 194, 201–2, 210 Crutzen, Paul: and the Anthropocene, 52, 153, 219, 220; and effects of nuclear war, 305–7; and geoengineering, 152–6, 280, 286; and nox, 52; ozone layer studies, 152–3, 201 cryosphere, 40–1 Cullather, Nick, 191 Dai, Aiguo, 96 Dawson, Terry, 330 DDT, 47, 58 deforestation see trees deserts, 241–2, 368–9, 371; see also individual deserts by name developing countries: and adaptation, 147; and carbon-dioxide fertilization, 198, 236; and carbon emissions, 5–6, 143, 145; and climate negotiations, 140–1, 143–4; energy use, 9–11; future scenarios, 347–75; and geoengineering, 115–16; population, 10; and synthetic fertilizers, 192, 193 difluoromethane, 341 dinosaurs, 321–2, 328 direct-air capture, 22–9, 245–6, 249, 265 Dolan, David Scott, 132 Dominic (author’s friend), 300 Draper, General William, 188 drones, 368 drought, 95–6, 237, 293, 319–20, 368–9, 371; see also water supply dry ice, 268–9 Dubner, Stephen, 154–5 Dyson, Freeman, 137–8, 259–60 Earth: age, 215–16; appearance from space, 60, 63, 65; end of, 214–15; historical changes in perception of, 57–60; human relationship with, 24–6, 78–80, 219–21; isolation, 62; non-fragility, 61; saving the planet, 61–2; size, 374–5; surface reflection of sunlight see albedo effect; see also Anthropocene earthquakes, 83 earthsystem: definition, 24; human relationship with, 24–6, 78–80, 219–21; workings of, 57–80; see also Anthropocene economic issues: constant progress, 29; effect of synthetic fertilizers, 205 ecosystems: etymology, 74; geoengineering and, 257; workings of, 76–7, 81 Edwards, Paul, 80, 319 Egypt, 198 Ehrlich, Anne, 188–9 Ehrlich, Paul, 188–9, 307–8 Einstein, Albert, 185, 314 Eisenberger, Peter, 28 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 167 Ekholm, Nils, 243–4 El Chichón, 90–1, 92, 98 El Niño events, 70, 91, 140, 294, 362 electricity: and CCS, 246; and fertilizers, 182; generating from renewables, 18; Massachusetts use, 263; twentieth-century usage and technology, 212; see also fossil fuels electron-capture detector, 287 Eliot, T.


pages: 201 words: 64,545

Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", air freight, business process, clean water, Donald Trump, Doomsday Book, Mahatma Gandhi, precautionary principle, pushing on a string, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rewilding, Rubik’s Cube, urban sprawl, work culture

He stands out as a mountain himself—a mountain of integrity, responsibility, courage, and vision. No matter what you do, you will find essential guidance and inspiration in Let My People Go Surfing. I probably wouldn’t be here without Yvon’s support over the years; his book now gives me more strength to carry on.” —Dave Foreman, The Rewilding Institute “At last Yvon Chouinard has taken time to write his story, some of us in the progressive business world have waited decades. This is a wonderful, wonderful book. Two hundred-odd pages of truth-telling, consciousness-raising and ballsy bravery. Every wannabe entrepreneur, every school teaching a course on ‘business’ and every MBA program should buy this book.


Spite: The Upside of Your Dark Side by Simon McCarthy-Jones

affirmative action, Atul Gawande, Bernie Sanders, Brexit referendum, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark triade / dark tetrad, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, Extinction Rebellion, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, loss aversion, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, New Journalism, Nick Bostrom, p-value, profit maximization, rent-seeking, rewilding, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), shareholder value, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, WikiLeaks

Sitkin, Miller, and See, “The Stretch Goal Paradox.” 52. Sitkin, Miller, and See, “The Stretch Goal Paradox.” 53. D. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Penguin, 2012). 54. Sitkin, Miller, and See, “The Stretch Goal Paradox.” 55. Manning, Lindenmayer, and Fischer, “Stretch Goals and Backcasting.” See also “Rewilding the Scottish Highlands,” Trees for Life, updated 2020, https://treesforlife.org.uk/. 56. R. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013 [1932]). For a stirring modern invocation of Niebuhr, see C. Hedges, Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt (New York: Nation Books, 2015). 57.


pages: 306 words: 78,893

After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won't Go Away by Doug Henwood

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, book value, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California energy crisis, capital controls, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital divide, electricity market, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, feminist movement, fulfillment center, full employment, gender pay gap, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, government statistician, greed is good, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Internet Archive, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Mary Meeker, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, Naomi Klein, new economy, occupational segregation, PalmPilot, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rewilding, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, statistical model, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, tech worker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, union organizing, War on Poverty, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Tompkins fiinded the Wildlands Project, guided by Dave Foreman, which aims to depopulate huge swaths of North America and return them to wilderness—so that "grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to grizzlies in Alaska," with "pre-Columbian populations of plants and animals." Unexplored is the need, said to be recognized privately by Project members, to reduce the human population by two-thirds for this "rewilding" to work. The FDE also funds the scary Negative Population Growth and Carrying Capacity Network, which has no compunctions about promoting the agenda of reducing the human population. Tompkins' stated principles didn't stop the FDE's 1995 portfoho from holding stocks or bonds of Allstate, which insures cars; Citicorp, and three foreign banks, which fund the globalization the conference bemoaned; Fannie Mae, which greases suburbanization; Grupo Televisa, the Mexican TV network, a nice irony given their locaHst rhetoric and program director Jerry Mander's hatred of TV; HCA-Hospital Corp, of America; Telefonos de Mexico, which Wall Street viewed as a way of playing the expected NAFTA "boom"; and Wal-Mart, enemy of small-town shopkeepers everyw^here.


pages: 280 words: 74,559

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani

"Peter Beck" AND "Rocket Lab", Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, capital controls, capitalist realism, cashless society, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, computer vision, CRISPR, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, dematerialisation, DIY culture, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Future Shock, G4S, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Gregor Mendel, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kuiper Belt, land reform, Leo Hollis, liberal capitalism, low earth orbit, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, market fundamentalism, means of production, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, off grid, pattern recognition, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, post scarcity, post-work, price mechanism, price stability, private spaceflight, Productivity paradox, profit motive, race to the bottom, rewilding, RFID, rising living standards, Robert Solow, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sensor fusion, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Slavoj Žižek, SoftBank, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the built environment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transatlantic slave trade, Travis Kalanick, universal basic income, V2 rocket, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, working-age population

Besides the huge savings in labour, time, energy, land and water, synthetic biology will underpin a historic relocation of food production. Synthetic meat, which needs no sunlight, would appear to be a perfect candidate for vertical, urban farming, while the obvious savings with land come to fundamentally alter our relationship with nature. This could have a number of benefits including the re-wilding of vast wildernesses lost to deforestation and the Industrial Revolution – certainly of major use as carbon sinks in trying to mitigate climate change. Meanwhile, the end of global food distribution, at least in its present form, would avert colossal amounts of waste. At present the average ingredient in an American meal travels 1,550 miles before consumption, while 70 per cent of a food’s final retail price comes from transportation, storage and handling.


pages: 271 words: 79,367

The Switch: How Solar, Storage and New Tech Means Cheap Power for All by Chris Goodall

3D printing, additive manufacturing, carbon tax, clean tech, decarbonisation, demand response, Easter island, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy transition, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, gigafactory, Haber-Bosch Process, hydrogen economy, Internet of things, Ken Thompson, low interest rates, M-Pesa, Negawatt, off grid, Peter Thiel, rewilding, Russell Ohl, smart meter, standardized shipping container, Tim Cook: Apple, wikimedia commons

Pasture is often an extremely unproductive form of agriculture in terms of the food value gained from each hectare of land. The uplands of Wales, for example, sustain relatively small numbers of sheep across large tracts of land on which little else grows other than a thin grass. Without those sheep, as environmental writer George Monbiot has made us aware in his influential work on rewilding, woodlands would generally quietly return and prosper. Would a sustained programme of reforestation provide the UK with enough stored energy in trees to help overcome seasonal shortages of power? The numbers aren’t very encouraging. A hectare that fed a couple of sheep would grow at least two tonnes of wood a year once woodland was re-established.


pages: 256 words: 73,068

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, digital rights, discovery of DNA, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, flying shuttle, friendly AI, gender pay gap, global village, Grace Hopper, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, housing crisis, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microdosing, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, off grid, OpenAI, operation paperclip, packet switching, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, Plato's cave, public intellectual, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, spinning jenny, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, TikTok, trade route, Turing test, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

Safe until you have to come out. Safe until you go crazy and kill everyone else in the bunker, leaving the dog till last. * * * Or you could try Seasteading. Seasteading is about claiming the sea as a new city. The website looks calm, environmental, and egalitarian – families living in peace, and helping to rewild the ocean. In fact, seasteading is a way of establishing communities not subject to land taxes or land laws. For its supporters, it’s a clever twist on what humans have always done – struck out on our own, for reasons of exploration, or personal beliefs. It’s like a Noah’s Ark version of the Amish, or, before them, the Founding Fathers themselves, twinning pioneer spirit with deeply held conviction.


pages: 267 words: 82,580

The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett

3D printing, 4chan, bitcoin, blockchain, brain emulation, carbon footprint, Cody Wilson, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, degrowth, deindustrialization, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, eternal september, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Free Software Foundation, global village, Google Chrome, Great Leap Forward, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, invention of writing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Lewis Mumford, life extension, litecoin, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mondo 2000, moral hazard, moral panic, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, pre–internet, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Skype, slashdot, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, The Coming Technological Singularity, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

A growing number of writers have pointed to possible long-term detrimental health effects of online stimulation, such as technostress, data asphyxiation, information fatigue syndrome, cognitive overload and time famine. The only answer, he says, is to leave technology behind and return to a non-civilised way of life through large-scale deindus-trialisation and what he calls ‘rewilding’. If sci-fi writers like William Gibson inspire the transhumanists, the anarcho-primitivists prefer the writings of Henry David Thoreau: back to nature. I ask Zerzan how far back he’s willing to go in pursuit of a natural state of existence. Should we also rid ourselves of dialysis machines? Sewage plants?


Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen by James Suzman

access to a mobile phone, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, clean water, discovery of the americas, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, full employment, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, means of production, Occupy movement, open borders, out of africa, post-work, quantitative easing, rewilding, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, trickle-down economics, unemployed young men, We are the 99%

The conceptual separation farming communities made between the natural/wild and the human/cultural worlds was so widespread that for a long period social anthropologists believed it was a human universal. But the conceptual separation of the human and natural worlds was rarely absolute. All farmers understood that land left untended and uncared-for would inevitably be rewilded. They also realized that some wild lands and some wild animals were more resistant to domestication than others. In the Fertile Crescent, where many plant and animal species were appropriate for domestication, the division between nature and culture became deeply embedded over time. But in the tropics of Africa, South America, and eastern Asia, only a handful of local plants and even fewer animals were domesticable.


pages: 295 words: 87,204

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

Without it, an area equivalent to the size of two South Americas would have had to be put under the plough.15 In recent decades this has led to ‘peak farmland’ and, for the first time in history, we have allowed pastures to grow again.16 If urbanization and agricultural productivity continue to increase – with the help of genetically modified crops, for example – we have a historic chance for rewilding, where wildlife recovers lost land with flora and fauna in diverse combinations. The economists Jonas Grafström and Christian Sandström have compiled an impressive set of statistics for Sweden showing that in almost all environmental areas there has been striking improvements since 1990. Despite the fact that the population has increased by 1.6 million and the economy has almost doubled, emissions and resource use have decreased.


pages: 306 words: 94,204

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter

back-to-the-land, crack epidemic, David Attenborough, dumpster diving, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, haute cuisine, hobby farmer, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Mason jar, McMansion, New Urbanism, Port of Oakland, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rewilding, Silicon Valley, urban decay, urban renewal, Whole Earth Catalog

A stand of corn rustled in the corner. My presence, my influence, was evident all around me. Thoreau, my fellow squat farmer, eventually ceded his bean field to the woodchucks. I would soon have to cede my garden to an urban farmer’s most dreaded pest, the real estate developer. From my window I would be able to watch the rewilding before the destruction. The tomatoes would turn red, burst open, ooze down their seeds in a slurry. The carrots would swell and split, send out a flower stalk, become fibrous. Armies of slugs and snails would slide across the wooden beds, tuck into the soil, and reproduce deliriously. The corn, neglected and unharvested, would crumple into the earth.


pages: 302 words: 92,206

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

3D printing, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, charter city, circular economy, clean water, colonial exploitation, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, European colonialism, failed state, gentrification, global pandemic, Global Witness, green new deal, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, housing crisis, ice-free Arctic, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, job automation, joint-stock company, Kim Stanley Robinson, labour mobility, load shedding, lockdown, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, megacity, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, old age dependency ratio, open borders, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, place-making, planetary scale, plyscraper, polynesian navigation, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, women in the workforce, working-age population, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Wherever our food is produced, we will need to use far more precise nutrient and drip-irrigation systems to avoid polluting ecosystems, and also to reduce food loss and waste. This means using cover crops, mulches and intercropping, which recycle nutrients so that chemical assistance can be used sparingly and appropriately when needed. It means rehabilitating exhausted farmland and enabling unsuitable land to rewild. China helped improve its farmlands through a vast programme of integrated soil-system management that ran from 2005 to 2015, involving some 20 million farmers across 40 million hectares of land. The result was an average increase in crop yields of more than 10 per cent, while nitrogen fertilizer use dropped by 16 per cent, culminating in an economic saving of $12.2 billion


pages: 405 words: 103,723

The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism by Ruth Kinna

Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, British Empire, complexity theory, creative destruction, critical race theory, David Graeber, deep learning, degrowth, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, friendly fire, ghettoisation, Herbert Marcuse, intentional community, John Gilmore, Kickstarter, late capitalism, means of production, meritocracy, moral panic, Murray Bookchin, New Journalism, Occupy movement, post scarcity, public intellectual, rewilding, Steven Pinker, Ted Kaczynski, union organizing, wage slave

To prevent governments making judgements for individuals, Goodman called on them to mug up on ‘physical science, physical and mental hygiene, sociology and political economy, to analyze problems of urbanism, transportation, pollution, degenerative disease, mental disease, pesticides, indiscriminate use of antibiotics and other powerful drugs, and so forth’.86 For Zerzan, this is a faulty approach. Education cannot come from within hierarchical symbolic systems. It comes, instead, through re-wilding: reconnecting to undomesticated, genuinely ecological and gentler systems of knowing.87 Skill-sharing and the cultures of anarchy While knowledge-transfer and practice-based learning often shade into one another, the philosophies that underpin these two types of skill-sharing point to distinctive cultures of anarchy.


pages: 349 words: 99,230

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice by Jamie K. McCallum

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, carbon tax, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, occupational segregation, post-work, QR code, race to the bottom, remote working, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, side hustle, single-payer health, social distancing, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, The Great Resignation, the strength of weak ties, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

A herd of buffalo occupied the empty streets of New Delhi, India. Dolphins found their way into the notoriously brackish Venetian canals. Even the noxious skies over Wuhan and elsewhere across China turned storybook blue as the lockdowns shuttered the industries that emit infamous levels of air pollution. But what seemed at the time like a peaceful rewilding of an empty earth was really just a momentary calm before the storm. If the epidemiology of the pandemic was to some extent predictable, the political economy of it was not. It was the worst GDP crash since the thirties, and a cascading series of worsts for unemployment claims. Never before had there been such a collective effort to shut down major parts of global economic infrastructure.


pages: 289 words: 95,046

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

While every effort to cut emissions needed to be made, humanity, in Read and Bendell’s view, needed to prepare for, and adapt to, the inevitable changes in the climate that were already baked into a heating atmosphere. Deep Adaptation recommended transformative social changes such as moving large populations away from coastlines, “rewilding” urban landscapes, and shifting to local, community-based farming. The title was based on a controversial 2018 paper by Bendell that argued that accelerating global warming had made civilizational collapse a fast-coming certainty. Bendell gave humanity a decade. (He later backed away from claiming collapse was a literal certainty and conceded it was his strong opinion.)


pages: 424 words: 108,768

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, bioinformatics, clean water, Columbian Exchange, decarbonisation, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, Eratosthenes, financial innovation, Google Earth, Khyber Pass, Malacca Straits, megacity, meta-analysis, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Pax Mongolica, peak oil, phenotype, rewilding, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, spice trade, Suez crisis 1956, supervolcano, trade route, transatlantic slave trade

‘Most of the extant mtDNA boundaries in South and Southwest Asia were likely shaped during the initial settlement of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans’, BMC Genetics 5: 26. Millward, J. A. (2013). The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press. Mokyr, J. (1992). The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, Oxford University Press. Monbiot, G. (2014). Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life, Penguin. Moorjani, P., C. E. G. Amorim, P. F. Arndt and M. Przeworski (2016). ‘Variation in the molecular clock of primates’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(38): 10607–12. Morris, I. (2011). Why the West Rules–for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal about the Future, Profile Books.


The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey From Shetland to the Channel by David Gange

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, British Empire, garden city movement, global village, rewilding, Scientific racism, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, work culture

Simm has written hundreds of closely observed otter poems, and in many, floods are the creature’s medium. Water sweeps land when, in acts of drainage and deforestation, ‘a balance of centuries to the balance-sheet yields’.8 When otters twist and tumble through redrowned vales a historic ordering of water, earth and animal is reprised in a beautiful unplanned catastrophe of rewilding. As poets make otters into ribbons of water, so they make Skye a figment of fog, a realm subject not to divine or human law but to ‘amorphous rules of light’.9 When Richard Hugo, poet of the Pacific Northwest, came to live on Skye he wrote that the shifting mists alter the colour of the island a hundred times a day and ‘never stop changing the distance to the pier from your front door’.


pages: 385 words: 121,550

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles by Fintan O'Toole

airport security, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, deindustrialization, deliberate practice, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Downton Abbey, Etonian, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, full employment, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, l'esprit de l'escalier, labour mobility, late capitalism, open borders, rewilding, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, technoutopianism, zero-sum game

Just a decade ago, Henry Hemming produced a long book, In Search of the English Eccentric, warning that ‘the English eccentric was about to become an endangered species’. If only. For not only is the English eccentric not an endangered species, he is flourishing right at the top of the food chain. Brexit can be thought of as an experiment in political re-wilding: instead of bringing back wolves or bears or lynx, it has reintroduced the English eccentric to the ecosystem of power. When we outsiders see Johnson stuck on a zip wire with a Union Jack in each hand or Rees-Mogg bringing his nanny along to canvass voters on his behalf, we are initially indulgent: how delightfully, comically, English.


Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer

back-to-the-land, clean water, commoditize, double helix, food desert, invisible hand, music of the spheres, oil shale / tar sands, p-value, Pepto Bismol, Potemkin village, rewilding, scientific worldview, the built environment, the scientific method

But it can be too easy to shift the burden of responsibility to the coal company or the land developers. What about me, the one who buys what they sell, who is complicit in the dishonorable harvest? I live in the country, where I grow a big garden, get eggs from my neighbor’s farm, buy apples from the next valley over, pick berries and greens from my few rewilding acres. A lot of what I own is secondhand, or third. The desk that I’m writing on was once a fine dining table that someone set out on the curb. But while I heat with wood, compost and recycle, and do myriad other responsible things, if I did an honest inventory of my household, most of it would probably not make the grade of the Honorable Harvest.


pages: 505 words: 147,916

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made by Gaia Vince

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, bank run, biodiversity loss, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, climate change refugee, congestion charging, crowdsourcing, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, driverless car, energy security, failed state, Google Earth, Haber-Bosch Process, hive mind, hobby farmer, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ITER tokamak, Kickstarter, Late Heavy Bombardment, load shedding, M-Pesa, Mars Rover, Masdar, megacity, megaproject, microdosing, mobile money, Neil Armstrong, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Peter Thiel, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, supervolcano, sustainable-tourism, synthetic biology

Yellowstone’s ecology is being transformed by the Anthropocene’s climate change, for example – more than half of the conifers have been damaged by pine beetles, which thrive over warmer winters. Nevertheless, the dream of the pristine persists as a conservation goal. In Montana, former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Gerrity is attempting to expand the rewilding concept across some 3.5 million contiguous acres of native prairie, with a goal of restoring the wildlife abundance the landscape once contained. He wants to introduce 25,000 ‘genetically pure’ bison, multiple packs of wolves, as well as elk and bighorn sheep, and has already bought up much of the land for his dream park.


pages: 565 words: 151,129

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin

3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, benefit corporation, big-box store, bike sharing, bioinformatics, bitcoin, business logic, business process, Chris Urmson, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commons-based peer production, Community Supported Agriculture, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, crowdsourcing, demographic transition, distributed generation, DIY culture, driverless car, Eben Moglen, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Free Software Foundation, Garrett Hardin, general purpose technology, global supply chain, global village, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, industrial robot, informal economy, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Elkington, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, low interest rates, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, mirror neurons, natural language processing, new economy, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, phenotype, planetary scale, price discrimination, profit motive, QR code, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, RFID, Richard Stallman, risk/return, Robert Solow, Rochdale Principles, Ronald Coase, scientific management, search inside the book, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, social web, software as a service, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Homes and workplaces will no longer be separated by lengthy commutes. It is even conceivable that today’s overcrowded road systems will be less traveled and that the expense of building new roads will diminish as workers become owners and consumers become producers. Smaller urban centers of 150,000 to 250,000 people, surrounded by a rewilding of green space, might slowly replace dense urban cores and suburban sprawl in a more distributed and collaborative economic era. Democratizing the Replicator The new 3D printing revolution is an example of “extreme productivity.” It is not fully here yet, but as it kicks in, it will eventually and inevitably reduce marginal costs to near zero, eliminate profit, and make property exchange in markets unnecessary for many (though not all) products.


Lonely Planet Scotland's Highlands & Islands by Lonely Planet

carbon footprint, country house hotel, demand response, land reform, North Ronaldsay sheep, rewilding

A two-mile blue trail winds through the forest, while a 4.5-mile black track will test expert bikers with a stiff climb and an adrenalin-surging rock-slab descent. Alladale Wilderness Reserve LODGE€€€ (%01863-755338; www.alladale.com; Ardgay; self-catering per week from £1200, r with full board Oct-May £213-340; pW#) In deep wilderness near Croick, this lodge is part of a notable rewilding project. The main lodge (which includes meals) is, in summer, for entire hire only (it sleeps 12 to 14). Individual rooms are available in low season. Smaller buildings – a farmhouse and cottages – accommodate up to four on a self-catering basis. The scope for outdoor activity here is superb. Crannag BISTRO€€ (%01863-766111; www.crannag.com; Bonar Bridge; mains £12-19; h6-8.30pm Tue-Sat; v) This likeable Highland bistro in Bonar Bridge is our favourite eating establishment in the area.


pages: 1,327 words: 360,897

Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism by Peter Marshall

agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, anti-globalists, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, David Graeber, different worldview, do-ocracy, feminist movement, garden city movement, gentleman farmer, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, hive mind, Howard Zinn, intentional community, invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, open borders, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, plutocrats, post scarcity, profit motive, public intellectual, radical decentralization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rewilding, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, the market place, union organizing, wage slave, washing machines reduced drudgery

Some live in small communities coexisting with other beings without dominating them. Some develop the art of doing nothing yet leave nothing undone. Some try to simplify their lives while they continue to live in the cities, resisting the authoritarian and alienating elements of modern culture and the destruction of the wider environment. Others go in for ‘Rewilding’, attempting to reclaim our ‘lost knowledge of living with the earth’.44 What unites green anarchists is the belief that the present form of industrial civilization, spreading across the world with global capital and political imperialism, will lead to a social and ecological catastrophe unless there is a major shift in values and a new relationship with the Earth.

., p. 80 41 See my Around Africa: From the Pillars of Hercules to the Strait of Gibraltar (London and New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 127–31 42 See my Europe’s Lost Civilization: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Megaliths (Headline, 2004), pp. 8–10, 285–90 43 See www.primitivism.com 44 ‘Rewilding’, Back to Basics, vol. 3, www.greenanarchy.org 45 See Graham Purchase, ‘Social Ecology, Anarchism and Trades Unionism’, Deep Ecology and Anarchism (Freedom Press, 1993) 46 Gary Snyder, ‘Buddhist Anarchism’, Journal for the Protection of All Beings (San Francisco: City Lights, 1961) 47 Agorn!


pages: 903 words: 235,753

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin H. Bratton

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

We must save the nonhumans from being merely humans, so that they could show us a different way for us to be both human and not. Another project might steal from the surfacing of posthuman actors through the medium of the universal User, that these simple utilitarianisms cannot hold and that the psychological-utilitarian User is thereby recast in a far less reductive and less familiar light. In its place we imagine a re-wilded landscape of inhumanist intentions, mapped by multipolar points of control, composing a more polysynchronic and less chauvinistic system of systems. It is probably prudent to acknowledge the first conclusion and design on behalf of that second project. In doing so, we should pay special attention to the risks incurred by legacy User positions, including the tendency to individuate the subjective outcomes of interactions with The Stack's apparatuses and envelopes.


Lonely Planet Scotland by Lonely Planet

always be closing, biodiversity loss, British Empire, carbon footprint, clean water, country house hotel, demand response, Donald Trump, European colonialism, Ford Model T, gentrification, James Watt: steam engine, land reform, North Ronaldsay sheep, North Sea oil, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, retail therapy, rewilding, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban sprawl

A two-mile blue trail winds through the forest, while a 4.5-mile black track will test expert bikers with a stiff climb and an adrenalin-surging rock-slab descent. Alladale Wilderness ReserveLODGE£££ (%01863-755338; www.alladale.com; Ardgay; self-catering per week from £1200, r with full board Oct-May £213-340; pW#) In deep wilderness near Croick, this lodge is part of a notable rewilding project. The main lodge (which includes meals) is, in summer, for entire hire only (it sleeps 12 to 14). Individual rooms are available in low season. Smaller buildings – a farmhouse and cottages – accommodate up to four on a self-catering basis. The scope for outdoor activity here is superb. CrannagBISTRO££ (%01863-766111; www.crannag.com; Bonar Bridge; mains £12-19; h6-8.30pm Tue-Sat; v) This likeable Highland bistro in Bonar Bridge is our favourite eating establishment in the area.


Lonely Planet Scotland by Lonely Planet

always be closing, biodiversity loss, British Empire, carbon footprint, clean water, country house hotel, demand response, Donald Trump, European colonialism, Ford Model T, gentrification, James Watt: steam engine, land reform, Neil Armstrong, North Ronaldsay sheep, North Sea oil, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, retail therapy, rewilding, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, tontine, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban sprawl

You can still see the evocative messages scratched by refugee crofters from Glencalvie on the eastern windows of Croick Church. Alladale Wilderness ReserveLODGE£££ (%07770-419671; www.alladale.com; Ardgay; self-catering per week from £950; pW#) In deep wilderness near Croick, this lodge is part of a notable rewilding project. The main lodge (which includes meals) is for entire hire only, so you’d want a large group (it sleeps 12 to 14). Smaller buildings – a farmhouse and a cottage – accommodate up to four on a self-catering basis. See the website for details. The scope for outdoor activity here is superb. Lairg & Around Lairg is an attractive village, although the tranquillity can be rudely interrupted by the sound of military jets roaring overhead (the valley is frequently used by the RAF for low-flying exercises).


Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn McCarthy, Kevin Raub

California gold rush, call centre, carbon footprint, centre right, Colonization of Mars, company town, East Village, Easter island, gentrification, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, land reform, low cost airline, mass immigration, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, place-making, QR code, rewilding, satellite internet, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, white picket fence

With holdings in Chile and Argentina, the couple has conserved over two million acres of land, which is more than any individual in history. While this power couple started in the trenches of retail (she as CEO of Patagonia, he as founder of Northface and Esprit), they have turned their industry toward rewilding key ecosystems. It started in 1991 with Parque Pumalín, a Rhode Island–sized conservation project cobbled together from small Patagonian farms abutting ancient forest. In 2004, Kris Tompkins became a player, purchasing a run-down estancia (grazing ranch) near Cochrane through nonprofit Conservación Patagonica.