“We expect extinction to unfold offstage, in the mists of prehistory, not right in front of our faces, on a specific calendar day. And yet here it was: March 19, 2018.”

How are you facing the era of crisis?

Let me ask it better: 

How the hell are you supposed to face the era of crisis?

A story resurfacing in algorithmic eddies I found sobering this beautiful morning: “The last two northern white rhinos on earth”

Extinction. It’s a word we live with too much to feel, I think. But it’s interesting how people reacted to Sudan, this last male white rhino waiting for his end. How they reacted to him when meeting him or just reading of him. It’s clear this stuff DOES get to us;, we DO feel connection – when naturally meeting nature.

And it can be a way in. As personal experiences always are.

Of course, in case you want to sober up from some more personal-feeling grief about the White Rhino, the UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’” is now two years old – so times Sudan by potentially… er,

..one million species.

>checks notes<

A million.

“UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’”

“Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely” says this report, pulling together study data from global govs, NGOs and indigenous groups.

“We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

What are you supposed to do with this world breaking thought? You. What are you supposed to do with this? Me.

With my Battery Tour head on I’d say: What is your own passion telling you?

On the #GGMusicRoadshow we talking about “plugging in your passion, because passion is where change starts.”

It’s the emotional truth of you; the way you really want to first connect with the world around you.

I think it’s the only place to start doing the impossible seeming.

 

Plugging in passion.

This morning made five swims in my local stretch of sea in fewer days. It was like a lake; glassy, calm, etherial. Lastnight a shoal of minnows flashed around me in the shallows. A few UK summer days and climate and Covid alike seem way off. But.

I bumped into a gym buddy on the prom lastnight, in the beautiful evening young people’s paradise of #Southbourne beach on a hot evening. We’re both missing our regular circuits class after 18months away from normal sports centre life. He introduced me to his wife I’d never met.

Sam and John’s daughter is passionate about environmental stuff. Even works for a start-up energy co of some kind. Sam said: “I don’t know anything of course. You don’t think about this stuff normally, do you?”

“You don’t” I agreed.

Then she said: “This will sound silly… but I love cosmetics. Have a real interest in how they are made and what ingredients we’re putting onto ourselves, and in to ourselves with nutrition. Have you heard of #thebodyburden?”

And then she spoke so passionately we all just listened.

Ethical cosmetics, as sustainably packaged and sold as possible, all linked to a rethinking culture about beauty and health and its place in nature.

But she didn’t know anything.

Don’t you believe you can’t do anything. Your life belongs to this world and its dying or blooming.

Have rhinos ended up in cosmetics? Was the last male White Rhino on Earth a dinosaur joining history, or are we about to be, you might ask.

Does this question make you feel passionate?

Where there is passion, there is energy. Where there is energy there is change.

“One million is not just a number — it contains countless living creatures: individual frogs, bats, turtles, tigers, bees, eels, puffins, owls. Each one as real as you or me, each with its own life story and family ties and collection of habits.”

“Together, these animals make up a vast, incredible archive: a collection of evolutionary stories so rich and complex that our highly evolved brains can hardly begin to hold them.”

Cannot recommend this article by @shamblanderson enough.

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