More than 40 years ago, I arrived in Chicago in search of an idea. I was a young man looking for purpose, who believed deeply in America, was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, and wanted to be a part of something larger. The America I believed in was one where everyone has opportunity, everyone is seen, everyone belongs—because that was an America that had a place for me, too.
A major new report warns that global wildlife populations have been cut in half in just four decades due to unsustainable human consumption and widespread habitat destruction.
According to the Living Planet Report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), average monitored wildlife populations declined by 50% between 1970 and 2010.
The Living Planet Index, which tracked more than 10,000 populations across roughly 3,000 vertebrate species, paints a sobering picture of humanity’s impact on biodiversity. Freshwater ecosystems were hit hardest, suffering a 75% decline due to pollution, water extraction, and dam construction. Terrestrial and marine populations both fell by around 40%, driven by habitat loss and overexploitation.
The underlying driver is humanity’s expanding ecological footprint. Global consumption already requires the resources of 1.5 Earths to sustain. This burden is highly unequal: the average U.S. resident would need nearly four Earths, while the average UK resident would require 2.5 Earths. Wealthier nations often export their environmental impact through imported goods linked to deforestation and habitat destruction in developing countries.
The report calls for urgent global action, including a shift to sustainable food systems, greater resource equity, and stronger habitat protection to reverse these trends.
[WWF. (2014). Living Planet Report 2014: Species and spaces, people and places. World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland]
This is utterly heartbreaking- what is wrong with developers?
The swifts are seen trying to return to their nests and the nests are no longer there
https://t.co/f3pRJMJM3T
Today, Murray Watt informed the Tasmanian Government that he will gazette a bilateral agreement with Tasmania to allow ongoing logging destruction. This is not what the community wants. Australians want native forests protected. #politas
https://t.co/wVvdU24uWU
It’s a beautiful day today, the sun is shining, birds are singing, the air is cool but not too cold carrying a beautiful crispness that belongs to late autumn & early winter.
The freshness softly arrives & settles. Shoulders relax, breathing deepens with a sense of happiness.
May this space be a quiet companion to the seasons of your life - a place to pause, breathe, and come home to your own body for a few embodied moments.
Late autumn rituals hold and remind us that retreat is preparation, return and replenishment, not absence.
May this season wrap itself
around you in all the right ways.
The cardigans and sweaters pulled out from drawers last month still holding the lanolin warmth of stored wool and the faint memory of last winter are now worn daily.
Movements gently become more deliberate. We gather warmth in small daily human ways. We cradle warm drinks, pull blankets over our laps, tucking ourselves a little deeper under autumn bedding. Lamps and candle light glow against the longer nights, soften the edges of the day.
Trees stand barer each morning, their leaves drifting down to the ground without resistance. The wind carries the delicious scents of damp soil and the first threads of wood smoke rising from fireplaces on cooler nights. Instinctively the soul quietens, shoulders soften.
In late autumn and early winter we seek quieter spaces, nourishing meals, deeper rest, gentler mornings, gold light that stretches low across the afternoon and evenings that feel intentionally stitched together with small rituals that restore.
As the air cools there is something in the body that recognises the turning of the seasons like a remembering that we too are a part of nature and the ancient rhythms of the Earth.
Nature no longer reaches outward toward fullness. Instead it folds inward toward restoration.
It’s very late autumn -very early winter now. The weather has cooled and the Earth has slipped into quieter tones. The light is thinning, the air is carrying a faint scent of darkened damp soil and wood smoke.
Embracing these approaches has brought me immense comfort and clarity, and I hope sharing my poems, my posts here and on Substack (An Embodied Seasonal Meander) and, in time, my blog page, offer others the same sense of grounding and restoration that I’ve found within them.
Recently, I discovered the concepts of somatic, eco somatic, and embodied meditation and poetry. These practices felt like a natural fit for me, instantly resonating with my lived experience and offering a gentle framework for connecting with myself and the environment.