Jonathon Keats
Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher and conceptual artist who is collaborating with the Civic Paths working group at the University of Southern California to bring a thought experiment of a futuristic, plant-based democracy to the public and sketch its potential in reality. He is a fellow at the Berggruen Institute and consulting philosopher at Earth Law Center.
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OPINION: Granting rights to nature doesn't have to mean recognizing it as a "person." Perhaps we could look at how humans are already like ecosystems and level the playing field accordingly.
Growing on remote mountaintops, the oldest living bristlecone pines have been tracking time for 5,000 years. Their annual rings have much to tell us about past climate conditions. Could they also calibrate our future actions?
To really understand ecology, we can't just study ecosystems. We need to collaborate with them as intellectual equals.
If you think the economy is confusing, you're not alone. Most life on Earth is confounded by our economic system.
The American Veterinary Medical Association has a plan to control the transmission of diseases such as COVID-19 from animals to humans. To succeed — and to thrive — we need to renegotiate our relationship with all other species.
Is our loss of connection with nature the root cause of our environmental crisis? It's time to start making momentous political decisions in the great outdoors.
Plants and animals don't speak our language. Why should laws that impact their wellbeing be written in English?
To be humane is not enough. We need to recognize the goodness of animals and plants, and to practice their ethical values ourselves.
What if plants and other animals could vote? How would they vote? And how would we vote, knowing that these other species had a say?