Issue 1 has been published: find out about it here! The Ecological Citizen is a new online journal that will strive to address the central issue of our time: how to halt and reverse our current ecocidal course and create an ecological civilization.
Creating a harmonious, respectful and mutually flourishing relationship with the ecosphere is the basis of such a civilization. This involves preserving and restoring biological richness, ecological complexity and evolutionary potential – as well as the beauty, mystery and integrity of Earth. Nothing less will suffice.
We are now looking global environmental collapse in the face, as our actions tear into the natural ecosystems that sustain all life, including our own, and inflict untold suffering on our fellow creatures. Countless wild animals and other life-forms are dying in the first mass extinction to be caused by a single species, while industrial husbandry condemns domestic animals to brutal exploitation. Remaining wild places, even the most remote, are all now under threat. We are behaving as a plague-species on a planetary scale.
Rather than dominating and parasitizing the biosphere, with non-human life harmed and ever-increasingly hemmed in by humans’ industrial development, an ecological civilization would thrive within a preserved and restored expanse of unfragmented wild nature.
Profound changes are called for. Indeed an entirely new historical course is needed. Changes to be explored in depth include the following:
● achieving large-scale protection, restoration and rewilding of air, land and water;
● rejecting the anthropocentric construction of nature as resources;
● designing and implementing steady-state economies;
● reassessing the connections between cultures and bioregions;
● superseding the paradigm of consumerism;
● stabilizing and then lowering our global population;
● increasing the sustainability of urban living;
● rethinking food production.
We will also consider necessary changes in ways of thinking and consciousness. In particular we welcome new natural and cultural narratives and cosmological stories that awaken us to Earth’s sacredness, celebrate its abundant and diverse life, and rekindle humanity as a plain citizen of the ecosphere.
(Conflict of interest disclaimer: I am heavily involved with both The Ecological Citizen and the Ecocentric Alliance.)
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