Principle 12: Skin-in-the-Game

In this blog, Jem Bendell and Katie Carr explore "deep Adaptation" - the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-induced collapse of our societies

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living wo

From mourning orcas to distressed elephants, biological anthropologist Barbara J. King has witnessed grief and love across the animal kingdom. In this eye-opening talk, she explains the evidence behind her belief that many animals experience complex emotions, and suggests ways all of us can treat them more ethically -- including every time we eat. "Animals don't grieve exactly like we do, but this doesn't mean that their grief isn't real," she says. "It is real, and it's searing, and we can see it if we choose."

From our Gulf of Maine Blue Marble Hub in Portland Maine, we have a Love Story about Nature. In today's world, the dominant worldview is one where humans have control over nature. What if our love for the abundance that nature provides can be translated as legal status as a living being, not a bundle of ecosystem services that we quantify and sell like a commodity? The Latin word anima (source of the word animal) is actually translated as spirit, breath, life.