Hongyi peasant farm growing food with agroecological methods. Jiang Family Village, Pingyi County, Linyi City, Shandong Province, China. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos Agrarian culture The world was a gigantic village for most of recorded history. [1]   Villagers, rural people, peasants, domesticated wild crops, fruits, and vegetables, the food we eat today. They domesticated farm animals like the horse, donkey, mule, buffalo, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, chicken, dogs and cats. In addition, they formed the first political communities, villages and poleis (city-states), that shaped civilization.   Rural Hellas   In ancient Hellas -- Greece -- peasants, persons of the land, not philosophers, discovered democracy. Xenophon, student of Socrates, historian, and general, said farming was a school for training soldiers and patriots for defending the country. He had no doubt that agriculture and rural people formed civilization.   The Greeks thought of the gods as forces in the ...

 A brief presentation on the necessity of reevaluating and supporting the powers of regeneration in the worlds villages, including the role of the US, China in fighting climate chaos:   Evaggelos Vallianatos on Revitalizing the Rural World

  I like to believe that a few powerful persons in the United States, including President Joe Biden, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, will break through their gentle suggestions for reform and start shouting on behalf of saving themselves and America from the climate giant in the room.   We are running out of time   Time is not with us. I see it daily. I see it in the enormous number of cars and trucks in the street adding a ceaseless stream of greenhouse gases reaching the heavens every day; I see it in the airplanes flying in the dark of night; I see it in the spraying of petrochemical poisons over the nation’s food; I see it over the continuing slaughter of billions of animals for meat.    The so-called animal farms, which imprison those doomed animals, are factories of diseases and pandemics as well as major sources for global warming. They emit huge amounts of methane and other greenhouse gases.    ...

 Two drachmas coin of Boeotia depicting the first 4 letters of the name of Epaminondas, early leader of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Courtesy James Romm. The polis   Ancient Greeks were not united into a single country. Their key political formation was the polis, small community with its own laws, silver coins, government, army, farmland and borders. Sparta, Athens, Corinth and Thebes were the main states in mainland Greece.   These poleis (city-states) competed fiercely, so war was a perpetual threat. The Theban hero-god Herakles founded the Olympics to help the Greeks from all over the Greek world know each other better and, perhaps, tame the war spirit.   Fifth century BCE Enlightenment   We usually describe the fifth century BCE as the golden age of Hellas, giving credit to the Greeks for defeating the vast empire of Persia; their invention of democracy in Athen; pioneering natural philosophy, science, medicine, architecture, sculpture, and the masterpiece of...

On July 8, 2021, NASA’s ECOSTRESS instrument, aboard the space station captured ground surface temperature data over California. Areas in red – including Death Valley – had surpassed 86 degrees Fahrenheit by 7 a.m. local time, well above average ground surface temperatures for the area. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech I am discouraged that Joe Biden may not have the knowledge or the courage to ride the climate centaur, or at least, slow down its destructive force.     In the heat of the election, he made sensible climate promises. Yet he must have known he would break his public trust by not keeping those promises. Nevertheless, the danger of climate is not going to be swept under the rug.    Climate chaos changes everything   It’s not like campaigning to raise the minimum wage or to build homes for the homeless or to raise taxes for the superrich. Though important, these concerns cannot turn society upside down.    With climate, the politics of ignoring scie...