Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The output of COP26 needs to be, as BreakThrough put it, “a ‘big minus’ in emissions, not ‘net zero’ emissions”. But it also needs to communicate acceptance an honest and a truthfulness, that the climate and ecological emergency goes far far deeper than just electric cars and heat pumps, it demands a fundamental reimagining of everything.
The documents of victimisation and exploitation are also the documents of agency and resistance – even if, of course, so much has been lost to history.
As it was in the beginning… farmers need protection from those who have taken privileges, not protection by the military might of those privileged marauders. The least we could do is get the story straight.
The mess out there is because of a mess in here. Inner and outer talk to each other.
That’s the truth of things.
Let’s get to work.
I’ll also point out that while one set of choices is promoted, reinforced, and made as convenient as possible, the other set is shamed, challenged, or made as dangerous as possible.
The temperature of our planet is rising, and I’m not talking about global warming. I’m talking about the rising social anger temperature and its potential to create a social, civil, and economic collapse.
Thomas Huxley said that “it is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions.” It is a sentence that describes the cycle of ideas, — call them memes — which tend to have a life-cycle similar to that of living creatures. They are born, grow, and disappear.
Kim Stanley Robinson is widely recognized as one of the foremost living writers of science fiction. From his perspective, he answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
Rather than believe in the fake embrace of predatory capitalism, where vast crimes are supposed to benefit humanity, we should believe in each other and ourselves, our capacity to work for each other, and ultimately win against this predation.
Yes. Cultures are what people do. The future is created by present actions – for better and for worse. Targets, achievements, status… can change nothing.
If human ingenuity were a story, one of its main motifs would be transportation. Creatures of land by birth, we have transcended our limitations, reaching across air and water, beyond our own biosphere.
The third set of What Could Possibly Go Right? kicks off with host Vicki Robin reflecting on past episodes, sharing her motivation for creating this series, and revealing what she hopes to find as we embark on a new set of interviews.
