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An article by Derek Markham in Treehugger

The Lorax might have spoken for the trees, but it turns out that trees can speak for themselves. At least to other trees, that is. While it’s not news that a variety of communication happens between non-human elements of the natural world, the idea of mycelia (the main body of fungi, as opposed to the more well-known fruiting bodies – mushrooms) acting as a sort of old-school planetary internet is still a fairly recent one, and may serve as a spore of a new breed of forestry, ecology, land management.

TED talk by Suzanne Simard

Paul Stamets famously posited that “mycelia are Earth’s natural Internet,” and a variety of research has borne out that concept, but like many things we can’t see an obvious connection between, most of us tend to ignore the micro in favor of the macro. And when it comes to conservation and natural resources, our systems may be falling prey to the lure of reductionist thinking, with a tree being considered merely a commodity in the forest, which can be replaced simply by planting another tree. In fact, many reforestation efforts are considered successful when a large number of trees are replanted in areas where clearcutting has rendered large tracts of land treeless, even if those replanted trees are essentially turning a once diverse forest into a monocropped ‘farm’ of trees.

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When you cultivate plants, do you cultivate peace?

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A recent talk at TEDSummit 2016 by forest ecologist Suzanne Simard seems to put the lie to the idea that a forest is merely a collection of trees that can be thought of as fully independent entities, standing alone even while surrounded by other trees and vegetation. As Simard, who has put in about three decades of research work into Canada’s forests, puts it, “A forest is much more than what you see.”

“Now, we know we all favor our own children, and I wondered, could Douglas fir recognize its own kin, like mama grizzly and her cub? So we set about an experiment, and we grew mother trees with kin and stranger’s seedlings. And it turns out they do recognize their kin. Mother trees colonize their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. When mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages of wisdom on to the next generation of seedlings. So we’ve used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighboring seedlings, not only carbon but also defense signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those seedlings to future stresses. So trees talk.” – Simard

I’m a bit of a fungi nerd, and with good reason, as fungi are one of the key elements of life on Earth while being one of the least understood, at least in terms of the sheer volume of varieties and how they interact with the rest of the systems on the planet. I’m currently reading Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi, which is an incredible foray into the world of fungi, and was kind of blown away by the fact that of an estimated 15 million species on Earth, some 6 million of them may be fungi, and yet only about 75,000 of them, or 1.5%, have been classified as now. This means that the study of mycology is one of the areas of the life sciences that is still relatively untapped, and because of what we’re now starting to learn about fungal networks and mycelial ‘internets,’ could be a key element in our journey to a more sustainable world.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

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An article by Kate Yoder for Grist

The scrappy plane we’ve all been rooting for just completed the first solar-powered flight around the world, no fossil fuels burned. On Tuesday, Solar Impulse 2 ended its epic 24,500-mile journey and landed back home in Abu Dhabi.

The one-seater plane, sporting 17,000 solar cells on its wings, is as wide as a Boeing 747 but light as a feather — well, as light as a car, anyway. Though the 16-month trip was largely a stunt to promote renewable energy, it’s a milestone for aviation as well.

Bertrand Piccard, one of two Swiss pilots who flew the Solar Impulse, predicted that medium-size electric planes will begin carrying passengers within the next decade. We’re a fan of that possibility — and the EPA might be, too. The agency recently announced plans to begin limiting carbon emissions from airplanes since they pose a threat to public health.

One thing we can say now: Renewable energy is gellin’ — as in Magellan.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

Are we making progress in renewable energy?

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Bruno Maresca in the Huffington Post (translated by CPNN)

Driven by popular acclaim – more than 700,000 cinema viewers in three months against 265,000 for The Titanic Syndrome Nicolas Hulot! – the film “Demain” [i.e. Tomorrow] , by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent, released at the time of COP21, received the trophy for best documentary in the 2016 Caesars.

This unusual success seems to be explained by two factors. First, they feature local initiatives around the world that show that it is possible, at different levels, to engage in the fight against climate change. Second, they show that these initiatives can be done now (food, energy, local economic processes, education and direct democracy) and, as such, they inspire action by showing what is already working. The film succeeds in showing that French society wants to escape from the present atmosphere of doom and gloom.

This willingness to explore initiatives that invent alternatives to the global system of production and consumerism is in the air. It is the subject of the journalist Eric Dupin in his innovative book, “The pioneers: a voyage in France” (La Découverte, 2014). His book explores the diversity and richness of initiatives and people who “explore, in a pragmatic way, other lifestyles, such as new ways of working.” It includes those who invest in shared housing, organic farming or alternative schools, those who share a great desire to escape , with varying degrees of radicalism, from the globalization of production and consumption.

At the end of his account, Eric Dupin is ultimately pessimistic. He stresses that the diversity of initiatives does not by itself produce a coherent movement that can converge to a coordinated action and thereby produce change. Is it not the case that his “pioneers”, like those of “Demain”, privilege above all a ‘culture of exemplary individuals”? “Each person doing something at his level” seems to be their credo, which is far from the search for a collective change, which would mean developing political institutions. For this reason, the pioneers – and they are many – do not seem themselves to be a social movement.

“Demain”, meanwhile, wants to convince us that we can change the world by spreading many examples of experiences, both small and large. But can they escape from pessimism? Can their experiences outweigh the destructive and reactionary forces of the world economic and political system? Two impressive sequences illustrate the problem, one at the beginning and one at the end of the film: the apocalyptic vision of the city of Detroit, abandoned since the collapse of the auto industry, and the financial crisis in Iceland, which got to the point that the civil society overthrew the country’s political class. After viewing the film by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent and reading the book of Eric Dupin, we are confronted by the question: can we arrive at a new future by change from below, by the proliferation of individual initiatives? And finally, how should we explain the great attraction of “Demain”?

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(Click here for a version of this article in French)

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

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On the release of his book, the journal Libération called Eric Dupin a “pilgrim of utopia”.

On the websirte of Mediapart, Jean-Louis Legalery notes that after seeing the film “Demain”, viewers gave it a standing ovation, reminding him of the reaction to the film Z by Costa Gavras in 1979. The films that aroused spectators in the 1970s were eminently political; they called for collective mobilization to radically transform institutions. With hindsight, one can say they were driven by a high load of utopia (utopia that crashed against hard reality, as in the situation of Greece today).

Question: What are the consequences of the state subsidies paid to large farms?

Perhaps what works in “Demain” is this utopian vision that gives everyone the impression he can take part in something that is already going on. Instead of staying each in his virtuous corner, inscribed in the register of eco-gestures, one is invited to engage in something new, something that breaks with the dominant system, such as “urban farms” or “local currencies” and other initiatives shown in “Demain.” If these inventions are sufficiently taken up around the world, they could subvert the global economic system.

However, we are not seeing such a significant change in scenery. Farms with over 1,000 cows are now appearing in France, as in Denmark and Poland. And even if many people are changing their practices by sharing, recycling, carpooling, etc., it is difficult to disentangle this from a change in lifestyle necessitated by the stress of the economic crisis. A widespread changeover seems still far away. In the variety of examples shown in “Demain”, Africa and Asia are not very present.

But the real challenge of the transformation of production and consumption is in Asia, which, in 2030, will contain over 66% of the global middle class (against 28% in 2009, according to the OECD ). This emerging middle class, in strong numerical growth, is adopting the consumption patterns of the Western middle class, industrial power, private cars, expansion of suburban areas for access to the house, mass tourism, etc. Like a huge pendulum, the Western middle classes, being squeezed out by rising unemployment and inequality, adhere increasingly to the “small is beautiful” approach to local agriculture, solidarity businesses, alternative transport, renewable energy, etc.

What is unquestionably positive in “Demain” is that the Western middle classes want to reclaim the management of their daily lives, in their own life space, through collective initiatives of goodwill and kindness. They are engaged in a movement of self-awareness of their real interests, their need to live and consume differently.

This “self-consciousness” is what the middle classes had lost at the turn of the 1980s. When social struggles were diluted by access to welfare and mass consumption the middle class was reduced to being just a cog in the functioning of the global economy.

So let us dream, like many of its fans, that “Demain” is the flight of the swallow that heralds a new phase in the history of the middle class. Given the collective optimism that this film has inspired, it is possible to dream . . .