I'm afraid our time is up

A break from our regular programming — because, apparently, he’s gots jokes

He’s Gots Jokes. (Or Does He?)

First, welcome — especially to new subscribers and followers, many of whom found us through our friend

Rachel Donald

at

Planet: Critical

where we did a podcast. We’re glad you’re here!

Thank you for taking an interest in our work at Bank of Nature, which is a program of the US nonprofit Cape Code Center for Sustainability. If you’re here, you already know that we’re working to substantiate a “safer alternative” — a path distinct from the neoliberal status quo, toward a future that is already made sustainable. Obviously, that’s a big idea. It asks readers to engage with unfamiliar concepts that, at first, might seem arms-length from the goal of climate security.

Which brings me to this cartoon — an homage to The New Yorker, if the style feels familiar and an experiment in trying to tell the story differently.

One of the contradictions (or ironies, failures, tensions) I keep returning to in the epic, baffling tale of how we run a global society is this: Why does wisdom — our accumulated smarts as a species — have so little sway over the systems designed to ensure our survival? We know what we know, yet we do what we do.

It’s not irrational. There’s an internal logic at play — an uneasy relationship between the survival systems we formalized and the wisdom we have gathered. They are not friends. But this moment in history suggests that a reconciliation is long overdue.

This cartoon is a small nod to that tension. If it makes you think — or laugh or share it with your networks — that’s a win. More content to come as it gestates.