The Great Unravelling has started and will be part of our story for the rest of our life. It is an ineluctable dismantling of the fabric of life as we know it, leading to rapid and at times violent, changes to human societies. It is the result of humans pushing the boundaries of our planet beyond sustainable levels, leading among others to climate change, but also rapid loss of biodiversity, pressure on freshwater, and more. We are currently going through an acceleration of the Great Unravelling due to the confluence of the environmental crises with other crises. While the 2020-2030 decade will be affected by disasters of unprecedented scale, it will also be the decade of unprecedented societal transformation as a way to adapt to these. In Australia, there has been an enormous wave of community activities that have sprung since the Black Summer bushfire season and Covid-19. The confluence of crises have led to a realisation that we can’t continue living the way we do. Mindfulness, resilience and regeneration are emerging as key ways to navigate the Great Unravelling. There is a thirst for social and environmental connection and as a result an innumerable amount of grassroots community initiatives are springing.
About Dr Jean S. Renouf
Jean is an academic at Southern Cross University, a firefighter and a dad. Prior to this, Jean spent years implementing emergency relief projects in disaster zones and countries at war, including Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, etc. All of this informs his passion for climate change, community regeneration & resilience and non-traditional security, and led him to found Resilient Byron.
Key takeaways
- “How do we, normal people, live safely in the century of climate change?”
- “We will have to let go of what we think is normal, and invent the new normal as it unfolds because we are going to get hit harder and harder by unprecedented events”
- “If we want to transform, where to?”
- “Heat waves kill far more than all other disasters combined”
- “People in developing countries have a better notion of living in community and less of a sense of entitlement of what life should be, and understand that we are social creatures”
- “The unprecedented Australian bushfires in 2019 and 2020 could become normal in 10 years from now”
- “I have no doubt this century there will be some sort of Green fascist taking power at some point in some place. In the name of protecting population against ecological disasters, they will take a number of policies and rules that we would not accept otherwise, but faced with the ecological emergency people will gladly accept”
Show notes
{ SHOW NOTE }
The Great Unravelling has started and will be part of our story for the rest of our life. It is an ineluctable dismantling of the fabric of life as we know it, leading to rapid and at times violent, changes to human societies. It is the result of humans pushing the boundaries of our planet beyond sustainable levels, leading among others to climate change, but also rapid loss of biodiversity, pressure on freshwater, and more. We are currently going through an acceleration of the Great Unravelling due to the confluence of the environmental crises with other crises. While the 2020-2030 decade will be affected by disasters of unprecedented scale, it will also be the decade of unprecedented societal transformation as a way to adapt to these. In Australia, there has been an enormous wave of community activities that have sprung since the Black Summer bushfire season and Covid-19. The confluence of crises have led to a realisation that we can’t continue living the way we do. Mindfulness, resilience and regeneration are emerging as key ways to navigate the Great Unravelling. There is a thirst for social and environmental connection and as a result an innumerable amount of grassroots community initiatives are springing.
About Dr Jean S. Renouf
Jean is an academic at Southern Cross University, a firefighter and a dad. Prior to this, Jean spent years implementing emergency relief projects in disaster zones and countries at war, including Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, etc. All of this informs his passion for climate change, community regeneration & resilience and non-traditional security, and led him to found Resilient Byron.
Key takeaways
- “How do we, normal people, live safely in the century of climate change?”
- “We will have to let go of what we think is normal, and invent the new normal as it unfolds because we are going to get hit harder and harder by unprecedented events”
- “If we want to transform, where to?”
- “Heat waves kill far more than all other disasters combined”
- “People in developing countries have a better notion of living in community and less of a sense of entitlement of what life should be, and understand that we are social creatures”
- “The unprecedented Australian bushfires in 2019 and 2020 could become normal in 10 years from now”
- “I have no doubt this century there will be some sort of Green fascist taking power at some point in some place. In the name of protecting population against ecological disasters, they will take a number of policies and rules that we would not accept otherwise, but faced with the ecological emergency people will gladly accept”
Show notes
{ SHOW NOTE }
