Author: Resilience.org

We’re approaching a turning point on the mainstream’s attitudes towards climate change. // On climate, young Republicans now sound like Democrats // Over 170 news outlets vow to cover climate // McKibben in TIME: “Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different”

A coalition of climate science denial groups is gearing up for a European media blitz later this month, in an apparent bid to derail efforts to set an EU-wide “net zero” emissions target, documents obtained by DeSmog show.

The disappearance of land from ruling economic theory may account for why the collapse of smaller heartland communities is greeted with a shrug by writers for the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also helps to explain its absence from the Green New Deal, for all its social-democratic, capitalist-critical leanings.

Presidential candidates should take a pledge: The middle class should not pay one dollar more in new taxes until the super-rich pay their fair share.

As civilization faces an existential crisis, our leaders demonstrate their inability to respond. Theory of change shows that now is the time for radically new ideas to transform society before it’s too late.

Why not genetically engineer honeybees to resist those things which are undermining their health?

In the last three decades since the climate movement has gotten active, the world’s economy has released more greenhouse pollution than in the years previously since the Industrial Revolution. Clearly, whatever progress on public policy that the movement has made with governments and businesses, those governments and businesses have failed to take meaningful action. Why?

For more than two years now, the small community of Whatcom County, in Northwest Washington State in the U.S. has been working with local leaders to take bold action that would restrict growth of dirty fossil fuel projects in their community — all while safeguarding industry workers, the climate, and the economy.

The definition of farmer is: “a person who cultivates land or crops or raises animals (such as livestock or fish).”[1] In use, however, the term isn’t that clear.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro isn’t the only culprit behind the fires currently raging across the Amazon at a rate of a football field per minute. With the high demand for meat, soy, and petroleum in developed countries, we are directly fuelling these fires in the Amazon basin. There is much that we can do to help turn this … Continue reading “Bolivia is on Fire, Too — And You’re Part of the Problem”

The date was Thursday, July 25th – the hottest day ever in Europe, part of a record-setting heat wave. Climate change, in other words. By the time we reached the airport the next morning for the long journey home, all the stories had melted in the heat and merged into just one story, one anguished question: Where … Continue reading “The Only Story”

The age of Enlightenment ushered in progress and left it anchored in our political and economic consciousness. From that moment on, technology has emerged as the key, unique and universal solution to all of our problems. This, coupled with the unprecedented rate of acceleration we are experiencing in today’s world, means that industrial revolutions are … Continue reading “Do We Want to Advance Towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution?”

The current blind faith in technology will not save us. For the planet to stand any chance, the global economy must be redesigned. The problem is more fundamental than capitalism or the emphasis on growth: it is money itself, and how money is related to technology.

The paths to a bio-civilization are multiple – and the pluriverse is already visible in the cosmovisions and radical practices of many groups worldwide. The notion of a pluriverse questions the alleged universality of Euro-Americacentric modernity. As the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, put it so wisely, the pluriverse constitutes “a world where many worlds fit”.

Rosario del Carmen Carrasco, a young campesina, serves as president of the “Xhuba Binii” group. She has cultivated more than 20 hectares of zapalote chico. Rosario inherited her love of the countryside from her father, and although she graduated as an engineer, she has practiced agriculture her whole life.

The very idea of re-imagining society so that people can have good lives as they use less energy has been consumed by visions of the infinite expansion of solar/wind power and the oxymoron, 100% “clean energy”.

On the one hand I believe it is vital to accepts uncertainty, not-knowing, and unpredictability fully to the point of deep humility. On the other hand, I also believe that we need to choose to act from the conviction that we can design for positive emergence in complex systems even if it is not an … Continue reading “A Brief History of Systems Science, Chaos and Complexity”

Vaclav Smil’s latest book explores growth in nature and society. It examines the rules and patterns of growth in four key domains, those of the living world; human energy consumption; human artifacts; and human populations, societies and economies.

The way forward for any climate defense plan—moderate or progressive—will be cluttered with the flotsam of the Trump administration, e.g., rolled back regulations, extant lawsuits, and the loss of the many experienced government professionals needed to implement a pro-environment agenda.

How can we make our neighborhoods more resilient to disasters and other disruptions? What initiatives and communities can we learn from? How can we turn existing community spaces into resilience hubs that can serve the community in an uncertain future?

In the last 4 years, conventional crude production was just 1 mb/d higher than in 2005. This was mainly an increase from Iraq (which was 2.7 mb/d).

Nathanael Siemens wants to bring regenerative and organic cotton to the San Joaquin Valley. He spends his mornings just walking the fields, trying to figure out what to do next, how to overcome the challenges that he faces daily from weed control to irrigation to simply getting a hold of enough seeds.

During the process of writing my book Shut It Down, I have been learning what it means to truly love and accept myself, knowing that I am enough just the way I am. Sometimes this just means knowing what I am feeling, needing, and wanting and being gentle with myself. From all of my learnings, … Continue reading “Shut It Down: Excerpt”

Our civilization will eventually fail – through resource exhaustion, overreach, and hubris. The fact that many people counter that claim with the Panglossian insistence that we’ll think of something, that our technology will enable us to go on isolating ourselves from the laws of nature, is just proof of what I’m saying: a lack of … Continue reading “Outside the Walls”

Technology is getting too complicated and user-hostile. Even the high tech people are complaining. / Why Nothing Works Anymore / 3 ways tech has gone astray / Buy a real Analog Oscilloscope PLEASE!

In a new book edited with Fernando Vallespín, I explore the links between populist politics and the specific dynamics that emotions trigger in contemporary societies. We investigate the extent to which the global rise of populism and the role of emotions in politics converge on a specific logic – one that goes hand in hand with current forms … Continue reading “The Passions of Populist Politics”

The discourse around commons and commoning helps us see that individuals working together can bring forth more humane, ethical, and ecologically responsible societies. It is plausible to imagine a stable, supportive post-capitalist order. The very act of commoning, as it expands and registers on the larger culture, catalyzes new political and economic possibilities.

A Blue Community is an act of hope. Instead of being against the many threats to water, a Blue Community offers a vision for the future based on the belief that water is a human right and a public trust. It also tackles the growing crisis of plastic pollution by committing a municipality (or university … Continue reading “Fighting Water Privatization with ‘Blue Communities’”

Congress is back from its August recess. It appears the break did nothing to cool tensions—either between Congressional Republicans and Democrats or between Hill Democrats and Trump. If anything, inter-party relations are more acrimonious than before.

Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous.

When the Center for Humans and Nature set out to shape a question on farming, we asked Karen Washington and Leah Penniman if they would be willing to have a conversation about their work.

In the absence of coordinated action on the part of the global community to mitigate ecological instability and recognize the plight of displaced people, there’s a risk of what some have called “climate apartheid.” In this scenario – climate change combined with closed borders and few migration pathways – millions of people would be forced … Continue reading “How Climate Change is Driving Emigration from Central America”

In this aging epoch of ours, is it too late to envision a return to something different? Is there a rite, an investiture in the holy office of simple labor, a smoking censer swinging high and low that would cleanse our mess with a restorative blessing, allowing us to stay, to work on and with … Continue reading “The Vanishing”

The New Yorker and other mainstream voices are spreading the message about the seriousness of climate change, and the possibility of an apocalypse. The Pope too says that the climate is in an emergency and asks the world to abandon fossil fuels.

An unfortunate consequence of our divisive political climate is the portrayal of an immovable chasm between people on opposite sides of issues. While that’s certainly true in some cases, there is middle ground to be worked. Those keen to help move the needle of public opinion and engagement on climate change should look first toward … Continue reading “How to Identify People Open to Evidence about Climate Change”

As the school year beckons, I would like to invite teachers to join me in co-creating an on-line knowledge action network – Transition U – as a space to share our thoughts, materials, best practices, syllabi, and any other resources we have for engaging our students both inside and outside the classroom in learning about … Continue reading “Transition U: An Invitation to Join a Global Knowledge Action Network of Educators”

Tverberg claims that added debt cannot seem to provide oil and other energy sources at cheap enough prices for the economy to flourish.

Solar energy is a commodity that is produced, and that it requires extractive industries and chemical industries and landscapes, end of life management plans. It doesn’t inherently come with sustainability.

Imagine a canteen where chefs cook up diverse dishes from food produced with care for the planet, prepared in a low-energy kitchen that wastes nothing. Now chefs all over the world can get the support and the impetus they need to realise this sustainable food vision with help from a chef-driven resource that aims to … Continue reading “Changing the World one Meal at a Time: How Chefs can Make Eating out more Sustainable”

This reality is reverberating across the globe, far beyond Iceland. Even when no literal funeral is being held, we are, in a sense, witnessing an ongoing funeral for the world we once knew.

With that in mind, this month sees the publication of an amazing array of books on a wide range of environmental issues, covering everything from climate change to burning rainforests to protecting our water.

The devastating impacts of climate change on those already living in poverty are increasingly difficult or impossible to avoid. Given the failure of many states to meet their own obligations, it is crucial that the responsibility of businesses to respect human rights be taken seriously by those advocating for climate action.

The older I get, and I’m now 76, the more I think that the imagination, really, in a possibly never-able-to-be-described way, actually alters the world.

During the 2016 referendum campaign, #Brexiteers pretended that #Brexit was about ‘restoring the full sovereignty of Parliament’, which had allegedly been usurped by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Now, they’re happy to see their unelected PM suspend this same Parliament.

The only way an ecocentric (or any) belief system spreads is from person to person, as all missionaries have understood from the days that Buddha’s disciples walked from India to China or sailed to Sri Lanka or Japan.

When LaDonna Brave Bull Allard speaks these days, it’s a wake-up call to a lost nation. The founder of the first resistance camp at Standing Rock, which was Sacred Stone, she challenges us to step up to the work of transforming our culture of death.

This book is dedicated to overcoming an epidemic of fear with a surge of reality-based hope. As long as we allow ourselves to be imprisoned by our fears, we will never find the solutions we need to help us build a new world. Of course, we have plenty of good reasons to be fearful — … Continue reading “Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons: Excerpt”

In the first episode of our second season, The Response travels to Mexico City and puts the focus on the 2017 Puebla Earthquake — a magnitude 7.1 quake that toppled over forty buildings and killed over 350 people. Specifically, we explore the significance of information flows by telling the story of a very unique initiative that arose … Continue reading “The Response Podcast Episode 4: Fighting Misinformation in the Aftermath of the Mexico City Earthquake”

The rise in the percentage of young Republicans that are concerned about the future of Earth’s climate and its populations is a critical bit of information. It speaks to a better future. It will be interesting to see if the youth on the right and left are any better able to cooperate than the generation … Continue reading “Climate Politics/Capitol Light (25)”

Reimagining how the corporation operates requires us to go beyond the policy tools of a regulatory or redistributive state into rearranging the distribution and nature of property, governance and control rights that shape its behaviour.