Giving Compass' Take:

• David Korten offers his take on why we need to honor, care for, and listen to our planet as coronavirus reveals the hefty price we're paying for climate change.

• Why has it taken this long to understand how much we really need to listen to our planet? What does it mean to tune in to the pleas of the earth? How are you listening to the planet and supporting efforts to conserve it today?

• Listen to a podcast on innovations for how we can listen to our planet in order to save it.

The COVID-19 pandemic, along with climate change, drives home the lesson that we must honor and care for Earth. The increasing frequency of the appearance of deadly viruses reminds us of the consequences of disrupting the natural systems by which life on Earth organizes to create and maintain the conditions essential to both its own existence and ours.

Perhaps we can now recognize and accept the limits of Earth’s regenerative systems and our need to help Earth heal from the damage of our recklessness. The Earth is strong, but also vulnerable. As Earth cares for us, we either care for it or bear the consequences of our recklessness.

COVID-19’s attack also exposes the culpability of the economic system that bears major responsibility for our assault against Earth and each other. We now see with ever greater clarity the disconnect between two economies. One is a financial economy devoted to generating unearned profits for monopolists and speculators. The other is an economy of Earth’s regenerative systems and humans doing work essential to the well-being of people and planet. We can get along just fine without financial speculation, and labor devoted to wasteful or destructive purposes to make money for rich people. We cannot survive without the regenerative systems of a living Earth and the beneficial labor of both human and nonhuman beings.

Let us welcome the growing recognition that returning to business as usual is neither possible nor desirable. We must accept our current mission to birth a new civilization devoted to the well-being of people and Earth: A civilization in which money is just a tool, and nurturance of life is the prime purpose.

Read the full article about how we can listen to our planet by David Korten at YES! Magazine.