Speaker: Dr. Ralph C. Martin
Topic: Oligarchs and Overshoot, Forcing Feast to Famine.
Time:, 16 Apr 2025 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Summary:
Dr Martin reviews the impact of wealthy corporations on agriculture and aspects of overshoot related to agriculture. There isn’t a feast among all people now and he expands on this food stress. He refers to Brian McLaren’s book and how he proposes the possibility of 4 scenarios. The first is “Collapse Avoidance, whereby destabilizing Earth’s support systems leads to transforming our civilization and living within ecological limits”. The second is “Collapse/Rebirth as global civilization declines towards collapse in specific regions, sometimes suddenly and sometimes gradually: Surviving communities will rebuild with a new consciousness”. The third is “Collapse/Survival, indicating the collapse of civilization with a tenuous future for pockets of survivors”. The fourth is “Collapse/Extinction with near or total extinction of humans and other living species.”
Dr. Martin discusses options for responding to this threat. He expects that peasant, and indigenous people may inherit Earth.
Biography:
His 17 years in the Ottawa area helped him appreciate wilderness from the sterns of canoes and hiking trails. After two decades of serving as a professor in Nova Scotia, his love of teaching grew unexpectedly in the 1990s and he appreciates how students teach him in return.
His community experience includes founding the Living Earth Council, which engaged over 50 households in Truro NS to reduce electricity consumption. He participated in setting up the NS Food Policy Council and served with Ontario Soil Network and numerous other organizations.
He founded a federal funding foothold, the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada. Since then, OACC has steered tens of millions to education and research in organic agriculture in Canada. Both organic and non-organic farmers are the better for it and consumers are buying more Canadian organic products.
His appreciation for Indigenous ways of knowing has deepened with Miꞌkmaq teachers in Nova Scotia and Mohawk teachers in Ohsweken, Ontario. The Attawandaron and Mississaugas of the Credit sustained a living in Wellington – Halton Hills, not just for centuries, but for millennia. He expresses his gratitude for the legacies of Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Métis neighbours and recognize how addressing climate change, species loss and pollution requires partnerships with all indigenous people of this land.
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