Bill McKibben supports EarthQuest

Bill McKibben, environmental writer, climate disruption activist, and founderof 350.org, had this to say about EarthQuest: 

“The unraveling of the planet’s fundamental systems is no game–but solving this crisis into which we’ve stumbled is a great adventure, as EarthQuest captures beautifully.  It’s a step into the real world.”

Power, Myth and Ecosystems

Power, Myth and Ecosystems 

The focus of this blog is the intersection of power, myth and ecosystems.  It is an exploration of the “human-nature-transcendent-other human” relationship, and the journey that humans have taken throughout history to uncover and establish identity, meaning and purpose in life as individuals, groups, communities, societies and civilizations to become and be fully human and fully alive.  

The earth and its peoples are undergoing rapid changes, and the ways of thinking, behaving and organizing ourselves that served us well in the past seem to be broken.   Fortunately, because of modern science, we know more about our earth and humans than at any other time in history. Knowledge can be power, but that power is not accessible to all. It is our stories that tell us how to use scientific knowledge for empowerment.  It is our deep myths that tell us how to live well on the earth.   But our stories and myths now fail us.   We are a human people adrift, desperately seeking, desperately grasping, desperately pretending, and desperately hoping.  We see and experience the goodness of life, but the brokenness, mediocrity and emptiness are also ever present.  We need a new story, new myths, and a new empowerment to live in right relationship within each of us, with the cosmic divine, with the earth, and with the all others who depend on the earth for life.  It is now about power, myth and ecosystems.    

– RÉÓB   

EarthQuest Game is ready for play-testing

We finished the latest draft of the EarthQuest game materials last summer / fall, and updated the AEC website to include descriptions of the game.    EarthQuest is a hybrid table-top scenario and simulation game for engaging teams of youth and young adults in game-based learning about climate change, their local environment and civics.  Originally developed in 1999 as an environmental and climate change game for informal clubs of youth and young adults, EarthQuest has been play-tested with young people and revised several times over the past several years.    The game integrates storytelling with group role-playing and electronic multimedia for social learning and collaborative problem-solving.  We are currently beta-testing EarthQuest, and are seeking funding to complete the final development of the game materials, including a mobile device app, and to begin national distribution.  – RÉÓB

Watershed Communities

We have the opportunity to rethink the Humans-Nature-Other Humans relationship, and how we form community.  We can begin by identifying the watershed boundaries, and identifying discrete communities within the watershed, calling them “watershed communities.”  If there is not enough critical mass to do so yet, begin with a virtual network of “early adopters” who can form a community and establish new norms of sustainable living, resilience, environmental justice, local livelihood economies, and cultural expressions.  Using voluntary “Green Neighbor Agreements,” people within the watershed community agree to take on sustainable living habits, and hold one another accountable.   Re-imagining what it means to be human, and rethinking the Humans-Nature-Other Humans relationship leads us to a new concept: “Homo Habitatus;” humans adapting sustainably within their ecosystems, and creating a sense of place and identity through their natural and built habitats.  And so it begins….

– RÉÓB