Erik Assadourian

To undermine the Endangerment Finding is a breach of government responsibility, one that will not lead to an improved future for even special interests like energy producers and car companies.

And it will be up to Gaians to promote a right relationship with the living Earth, based on respect, deference, and atoning for decades of exploitation—just not as individuals, but as economic, political, and cultural systems, even as the levels of climate denial and climate disruptions crescendo and pull apart the economic, political and social realities we’ve known our entire lives.

I walk through some of the different solutions that can help address the polycrisis and post-polycrisis period and also imagine what an ecocentric civilization of the future could look like, if we actually work toward that.

If humanity is going to survive, and play a healthy role in the Gaian system, all of us will have to learn to accept limits – that certain areas of the world are not for us humans to exploit but belong to Gaia and the untold species that inhabit them.

Ultimately, the question is two-fold: 1) What are we trying to make more resilient? Luxury shopping malls or local hospitals? And 2) How we go about it? Building networks of neighborhood parks that serve a dual role as flood control or giant underground concrete storage tanks that offer no benefits except every 5-50 years when there’s a flood?

Does this plastic orgy simply continue until we’re all reproductively compromised and the problem solves itself? Or is there a solution to the plastic world we’re entombing ourselves in?