‘When I discovered this secret, it excited me, as an animist, as I took it as scientific evidence for the intelligence and agency of sphagnum mosses as builders of peat bogs.’

“Forests need to be respected as crucial for the vibrant web of life they nurture. Each tree is an individual life connected to other lives.”

[An introduction to anti-capitalist paganism]

In the Norse myths the great ash, Yggdrasil, is the World Tree. Its image is one of ecological integrity. Ash dieback, a disease of the European ash, has both profound ecological and mythological implications.

The gospel of compost is isn’t a story of the permanent triumph of life over death, but of the eternal interconnectedness of life and death, of joy and defeat, of loss and fulfillment. And ultimately, it is a story of love. Love for the world right here, right now, in all its glorious messiness.

A good part of a geological age has been dug from the depths of the earth. Is it any wonder she speaks to us of the Carboniferous in broken dreams and calls our attention to our existing wetlands?

It's pretty obvious now that Climate Change is just secular paganism.

The point of this essay, apart from pushing for everyone with a yard to degrass and plant useful things, is to demonstrate that I have made a start already in preparation for a projected New World that may come into being when the Pandemic is over.

“The film is asking us to come to terms with some difficult realities which we have yet to face: namely, that sustaining our infinite growth, industrial civilization on renewables is neither desirable nor possible, yet that is exactly what green capitalists are intent on pursuing.”

Sustainability, as we conventionally call it, is not actually sustainable. Sustainability continues to use finite resources as if they were infinite. Sustainability leads to greater harm to all life, not greater friendship with all beings. The products of sustainability—solar panels and biofuels — require Empire.

Certain gardens are not retreats, but attacks—attacks on the kind of world that says it is meaningless to do something so small, so local, so specific.

To be honest, I still get knots in my stomach when I eat wild plants at a dinner, sometimes even when I’ve picked them myself. A little voice in my head still asks me, “are you really sure?”

Where does this anxiety come from exactly?

Human civilization is a fire. It’s been burning since we’ve been human. And the human story is not a straight line, but a circle, a great ring of fire.

Being in the presence of daldinia concentrica can put us back in touch with the mysteries at the heart of the carbon cycle.

“the war on invasive species is a distraction from genuine ecological change, through spending our time and money on ‘carrying on like before’ whilst shooting the messengers of change; invasive species.”

He comes and goes with the rain and observes the different processes of eco-destruction, sometimes finding pieces of our old gods in the mix. What's going on?

As the pressure builds, we know we cannot carry on as we have been doing. We, as a species, will reap what we have sown, in one way or another, for I feel we are too far gone for anything else.

Unlike Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man, we are not gods or supermen or cyborgs. We are human beings. And to be human to be limited. Ironically, it is in our capacity to embrace our finitude, to love it even, that our salvation lies.

Norman Borlaug and William Vogt are, respectively, the Wizard and the Prophet in the title of Charles Mann’s 2018 book, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Mann presents Borlaug and Vogt as archetypes, representatives of two different visions of humankind’s relationship with the natural world: the one viewing nature as a something to be bent to the will of humankind, the other viewing nature as something to which humankind must bend.

Now is the time for us rise up, to take direct action against the injustices we see in this world, all injustices, whether to other people, animals or the environment, however we can.

The shift in perspective, from the March Wind as a mad but familiar ally to alphabetically named storms viewed as entirely dangerous and oppositional, reflects climate change and our changing attitudes toward the weather.