Environment

“I wonder about the trees,” Robert Frost wrote. Monumental in size, alive but inert, they inhabit a different temporality than ours. Some species’ life spans can be measured in human generations. We wake to find that a tree’s leaves have turned, or register, come spring, its sturdier trunk. But such changes are always perceived after the fact. We’ll never see them unfold, with our own eyes, in human time.

Are we now entering the Anthropocene, an age shaped primarily by people?  

Some geologists say we are already living in the Anthropocene age: the age of man. For example, almost 90% of the world’s plant activity, by some estimates, is to be found in ecosystems where humans play a significant role, thereby putting further strains on the planet's resilience.

“This is happiness,” Willa Cather’s fictional narrator gasps as he sinks into his grandmother’s garden, “to be dissolved into something complete and great.” A generation later, in a real-life counterpart, Virginia Woolf arrived at the greatest epiphany of her life  - and to this day perhaps the finest definition of what it takes to be an artist - while contemplating the completeness and greatness abloom in the garden.

Halcyon curates the most significant environment-related content from carefully selected sources. Please contact us if you'd like our help with environment-related challenges.

Karl-Erik Sveiby on aboriginal cultures:

• Treading Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World's Oldest People
• The First Leadership? The non-hierarchical model of the Australian Aborigines
• Aboriginal Principles for Sustainability
• Keep All Alive!. An Aboriginal model for Sustainability
• Nhunggabarra Knowledge Painting and story.