My vision for the future is to foster the circle of life and death between humans. I think we should connect ourselves more deeply with nature and allow ourselves to go when it is our time, rather than artificially living a prolonged life. My intervention for this week is small minded and more personal compared to other weeks; when you reach the age of majority, you should legally consider what you want to do post death. Whether it be donating your body or choosing alternative burials, death already has a normalized practice around it and so each individual who would like to go against it should decide how.

In the Patriot Act: Why Billionaires won't save us, philanthropy as an act of good will was revealed to actually be a way to cheat the law and avoid paying taxes to maintain such wealth. From this we can conclude that billionaires (not unlike Bruce Wayne) have no reason to make systematic change because those very systems are what made them wealthy. Enforcing strong laws is ineffective if they can be cheated or if there is no long-term impact on their profit. Tax loops such as the DAF or the 501(c) make it possible for billionaires to hoard wealth that should be going back into the economy. This week, I believe that we cannot rely on philanthropy. Even if that was possible, we should not because it means privatizing vital services and changing business models that made the service attractive to the average person. My proposed intervention this week would be to make eliminate the mechanisms that billionaires use to maintain their status as billionaires. For example, a petition to reform the DAF.

Forest fires promote new growth and the main problem we pay attention to is the strength and area of damage of each major fire. We understand the ecological benefits of a forest fire to allow for new growth and clear old dead growth. I believe that forest fires are a symptom and no the toot of the problem. The more we try to address it, the stronger the rebound effect. In my vision for the future, we should avoid using fire suppression techniques, prescribe controlled fires, and treat forest fires as a symptom of climate change rather than an isolated problem. In this regard, the mountain pine beetle’s reach is limited by the temperature threshold. They have migrated north and eastward in Canada due to the warming temperatures that create a more comfortable environment for them. They kill large trees which in turn create dead kindling ready losing moisture to become fuel for forest fires come a hot season. The collateral damage caused by forest fires such as poor air quality, is due to climate change exacerbating the effects of forest fire. The guiding value in this case is to be conscious of the relationship between forest fires and climate change. The ingredients to induce a fire is amplified (higher temperature, less moisture) with increasing effect. My intervention this week would be to reduce the fuel available in areas we are present in to limit the strength of the fire. The fires are qualitatively different because of the available fuel and temperature. I would motivate the tree planting careers, or informed hikers to collect unneeded deadfall. Deadfall should be collected from monocultures or other susceptible areas.

🐷We question how to make the land adapt to produce a higher yield for less, but it is time that we people do the learning and adapting. 🐷 Current agricultural food production is unsustainable in a fiscal and environmental sense. Farmers are being subsidized to be able to keep up with necessity for a high yield. Food production requires agriculture to be stable when it is inherently a complex and unpredictable system. I envision a food secure world with better agricultural practices that do not compromise the integrity of the biological systems in place. My guiding principle in this ideal world is to prioritize sourcing goods locally, normalizing vegan habits, and scaling polycultures based on the original natural environment. My intervention would be a call to action to use knowledge from indigenous leaders and learn how live with the land, rather than forcing it into a completely different type of land.

When considering life necessities, water comes to the front of mind. The volume of water I consume due to the goods and services available to me are tenfold larger than those who are more significantly affected by the water crisis. The easy access and the low cost of water colors it as an infinite source. The cost, the lack of scarcity, local policies, and the infrastructure in place all contribute to this false reality. These factors are also the same conditions that have created the water crisis in less fortunate areas. My vision for the future would be to recycle water. This aligns with my value of sustaining all communities with clean water for the long term, which requires a sense of urgency and political willingness to accomplish. To achieve the vision, my call to action/intervention is to call for policies to implement a water credit system for all producers. This idea comes from a previously lecture where bonds were sold to fishers to limit the consumption of a specific fish. Open to ideas about what a water credit system should also include!

The facets of injustice manifest in the three dimensions; recognition, procedural, and distribution. The most obvious of the three is the distribution of resources away from marginalized communities. The inequity present allows for the brunt of the negative impacts to be felt locally, and ignored on a grander scale. In the media, “Billionaires, Explained”, it was revealed that wealth was not being distributed but rather hoarded. In an ideal world, the structures that allow for this would not exist. For example, the most wealthy people would not be allowed to funnel capital funds into international accounts to avoid paying taxes. In this world, being poor is expensive. You pay for distributional equities with blood and health. Does my ideal, just world require every individual to be just? Fair distribution will not require everyone to be morally magnificent all the time. It will not depend on its citizens being selfless, generous souls. This is because the mechanisms to achieve a successful socialist society will be built into social institutions themselves. Take the idea of a self-governing cooperative - the key productive unit of an environmentally just future. My values would manifest as a cooperative, profit-sharing, egalitarian, commonly governed nature of the unit. It won’t rely in the first place on the goodwill of individuals, just as the current climate is not the fault of any individual. The conclusion I have reached about the different dimensions of injustice, is that there is a lack of connection between the impacted and the malefactor. The hierarchy of communication has diluted the voices of the BIPOC people on the spatial and monetary fringes of society.

🍀Does anyone remember hydroflasks and scrunchies? 🍀 The subculture of young upper middle class girls who had a hydro flask covered in stickers, oversized hoodies, beach fashion and stickers about saving the turtle. They were called VSCO girls and they unironically promoted environmental sustainability better than most movements. Those water bottles are still used today, large hoodies and scrunchies have not gone out of fashion. Although to become a VSCO girl, you needed to have material objects, they were not repeatedly replaced because it went against the core principle of their identity. Their values persisted because they created a major trend that persisted for years, and even if the idea itself is no longer popular, the items bought are still being used. My vision for a positive future includes emulating the same idea behind VSCO girls. VSCO girls promoted sustainability and long term use items that the average person has to invest financially in. This trend intervenes and goes against the current praxis of micro-trends and repeated consumption.