Our Commons future is already here Maude Barlow gave this
stirring plenary speech, full of hope even in the face of
ecological disasters, to the Environmental Grantmakers
Association annual retreat in Pacific Grove, California. Barlow,
a former UN Senior Water Advisor, is National Chairperson of the
Council of Canadians and founder of the Blue Planet Project. -
On The Commons editor We all know that the earth and all upon it
face a growing crisis. Global climate change is rapidly
advancing, melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and
increasingly wild storms, and displacing untold millions from
rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban
slums. Almost every human victim lives in the global South, in
communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The
atmosphere has already warmed up almost a full degree in the
last several decades and a new Canadian study reports that we
may be on course to add another 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees
Fahrenheit) by 2100. Half the tropical fore