By Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance
Fossil fuel interests and their allied governments attend international climate conferences singing of a glorious future of clean growth – but behind the scenes they work to ensure that no binding commitments are made to reduce carbon emissions. According to Donald Gutstein’s new book The Big Stall, the corporate takeover of international climate negotiations goes back nearly 30 years.
By Kevin Anderson, Kevin Anderson blog
By Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative
By Samuel Alexander, Joshua Floyd, Resilience.org
Our goal presently is to broaden the discourse on energy futures. If we cannot always provide comprehensive answers in the space available, we hope at least to provoke thought about new questions, with the aim of unsettling some assumptions about energy futures presently held with undue confidence.
What could inclusiveness look like in providing sustainable diets to a multicultural population? This question drives my current research, in which I study Syrian migrants in the Netherlands.
By Craig K. Comstock, Resilience.org
A current book asks Will China Save the Plamet? The author, Barbara Finamore, served as the China representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her story gives first-hand material less for answering this question than for showing how a big country can move from defensive nationalism to global leadership in starting the transition to a green economy.
By Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence
The energy turning point is unequivocal. In the years preceding the historic Brexit referendum, and the marked resurgence of nationalist, populist and far-right movements across Europe, the entire continent has faced a quietly brewing energy crisis.
By Ashish Kothari, The Hindu
And so we must turn for hope to the many movements of sangharsh (resistance) and nirman (construction) throughout the world. These movements realise that the injustices they are facing, and the choices they must make, are not bound by the divides that ideologues play games with.
By Colin Anderson, Agroecology Now!
Is there something distinctive about an agroecological approach to training and learning? How is learning a part of the struggle for food sovereignty, or other social movements for social justice and sustainability? What examples are there of this in Europe? And how can these projects be supported and developed?
By Joe Brewer, Medium.com
The world’s first bioregional-scale regenerative hubs were launched in July of this year. A gathering of experts from more than 20 organizations gathered at the eco-tourism retreat center of Rancho Margot in the high mountain rainforests of northern Costa Rica.
By Alan Wartes, Think Radio
Regina is council-woman of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. She and host Alan Wartes spoke about her work with the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition fighting for the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah — and why it means so much for her tribe and for her personally.
By David Spratt, Climate Code Red
Just as four big oil and gas producers block the UN climate policymaking conference in Katowice, Poland from welcoming a report on the science of the 1.5 degree Celsius (°C) target which it had commissioned three years earlier in Paris, new evidence has emerged of the striking contradiction between word and deed at COP24.
By Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Macska Moksha Press
But wasn’t life before farming miserable? Notoriously “nasty, brutish and short?” Weren’t hunters and gatherers always on the edge of starvation, constantly focused on survival, and never able to enjoy free time? According to experts who study history: No.
By Daniel Christian Wahl, Medium.com
This is an online course on living well within our means. The pun here is intentional. For, what we are exploring in this course is not just ways of reducing our consumption to levels that enable natural systems to self-regenerate, but that we do so in ways that permit a high quality of life — that we live within our means and that we live well.
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, Peak-Oil.org
Oil prices surged briefly on Friday after the announcement of a 1.2 million b/d OPEC+ production cut; however, by the close NY futures were up only $1.61 to close at $52.61, and London was up about the same to close at $61.67.
By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog
I recently put out a call looking for places, events or venues that are creating wifi-free spaces, places where people can intentionally get away from smartphones and the distraction they bring into our lives, some time to cultivate the attention.
By Lawrence Messerman, Resilience.org
Without emotional resilience, people will not survive. Not only do we need to ‘think through’ this process of breakdown, we need to feel our way through it. In fact, our proclivity for thinking first and perhaps allowing a bit of emotional expression later on is a pattern that has helped get us into this dire predicament.
By Kai Kuhnhenn, Heinrich Boell Stiftung
Climate change mitigation scenarios are important instruments for developing pathways towards a climate-friendly world. They form the basis for political and social negotiations regarding the climate protection measures to be adopted.
By Matthieu Auzanneau, Chelsea Green
The story of oil is one of hubris, fortune, betrayal, and destruction. It is the story of a resource that has been undeniably central to the creation of our modern culture, and ever-present during the darkest exploits of empire the world over.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Uber is being hailed as a revolutionary tech company that is modernizing city transport. In fact, the failure of Uber to generate profits shows that it is not a tech company at all and that, notwithstanding our worship of all that is tech, some problems are not amenable to a technofix.
By Socrates Schouten, WAAG
Firstly, the city’s digital plans begin with instating a Digital City Agenda, setting out Amsterdam’s vision on cyber security, data sovereignty, digital participation and digital services, complex topics that cannot be solved overnight.
By Caroline Whyte, Feasta
An obvious solution to this quandary is to replace electronic private-bank-issued money with something else. Despite a long historical connection between money and private debt, private-debt-free money is eminently possible.
By Jason Hickel, Center for Economic and Policy Research
People realize that our growth-addicted economy is driving us into disaster, and they are eager for an alternative. Whatever political movement can speak truthfully to that deep-felt concern and offer real hope — not just green-growth fantasies — will be able to command incredible popular support.
By Rok Kranjc, Labgov
In the following I outline three critical areas that in my opinion can further the UBI debate, guided by the overarching question of what might an open ended, ecologically sound and socially just welfare system and pathway towards it look like.
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
The market economy exhibits most of the traits of the much hyped – and feared – singularity, where an artificial intelligence takes over the show and humans are enslaved.
