I Want Your Input for Season 3 of How To Citizen
Also: Climate Change, Residential Schools, and more Climate Change!
I finally read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. It’s a nonfiction climate book that organizes the best research and projections about the impact of climate change into a horrific and compelling narrative. Yet there’s somehow hope in it. There’s a lot of information in this book, but what stands out most to me is the social, economic, cultural, and political analysis embedded within. I’ve read lots of climate data and reports, and what I’ve seen less of is how these impacts come together to change our society.
We are in for a hell of a ride, and it’s only just begun. We are past the point of needing to build sympathy for polar bears; we need to start worrying about our own water and food supplies. Also fire. Also pandemics.
The most unjust implication in the book is that the European colonial mindset that triggered our extractive and carbon-unleashing orgy by pillaging the land and its people will create even more climate suffering among those same peoples generations later. It’s like a form of re-colonialism, and I’m just starting to wrap my head around it
This is why the calls for climate justice are so urgent. More on this topic later—but not too much later because we don’t have much time!
A special note to How to Citizen listeners:
Thanks for joining us on our quest to find new ways to citizen through our economy in Season 2. We did it! We fixed the economy (or at least laid out the instruction manual). For Season 3, we are taking on technology and how it affects our ability to citizen.
This time, we want to answer the question: How can we empower ourselves to use technology, instead of it using us?
But first, we want to hear from you!
Please take this very brief survey!
We’d love to know what kind of topics related to technology and citizenship that you’d want to hear about in Season 3.
In the survey, you can leave a direct audio or video message for me, or share a personal story about how tech has impacted you in your role as a citizen for this next season.
Are there experts or new voices you want to recommend? We’re looking for people who are doing things like helping us:
participate better in self-governing by building consensus or making decisions together;
humanize and understand each other;
exercise our voice and agency on public issues or within our communities; or
collaborate for our collective benefit.
Click HERE to answer our brief Season 3 suggestion survey.
We might even put you in an episode! We can’t wait to see what you have to share and thanks for collaborating with us!
And now, the links you’ve been waiting for.
Remote Work Is Destroying the World’s Most Remote Destinations (Business Insider)
Even if every company doesn’t go fully remote, modest growth in remote work in vacation locales is enough to further destabilize delicate ecosystems around the world. Just picture the beautiful cenotes of Tulum polluted with poop much like the remote public lands already polluted by influencers.
Boardroom diversity pays off (Axios)
This is a short, simple read. The less old, white, and male a company’s board is, the better it seems to perform. Inclusion: do it for the money. That’s the sales pitch.
A century of trauma at U.S. boarding schools for Native American children (National Geographic)
I’ve been reading and listening to stories from our Canadian neighbors about the discovery of mass child graves at so-called “residential schools.” First, we stole the land; then we stole the children. I say “we” because what happened in Canada was partially inspired by our own devilry here in the United States.
A Battle Between a Great City and a Great Lake (The New York Times)
I’ll say it again: I’ve just finished reading The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells, so I’m all out of climate patience. This feature about Chicago’s precarious position on Lake Michigan should serve as a reminder that nowhere is truly “safe” from the effects of the climate crisis.
Video time!
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series was an essential story from my childhood, up there with Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series and Orson Scott Card’s Ender series. My fingers and toes are crossed that they get this TV adaptation right!