By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
There remains a hope that once we get past the economic and social effects of the pandemic, all of us will be able to return to something resembling normal life before the pandemic—even if it is a "new normal" marked by heightened vigilance and protection against infectious disease ... But the date for this recovery to a new normal seems to keep getting postponed.
By Hal B. Klein, Health & Environmental Funders Network
By David Holmgren, Holmgren Design
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
The first debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden will occur on the 29th of September. In advance of the encounter, 70 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates asking it to publicly call on the moderators to include climate in the topics that will be addressed during the debates
By Sara Küpfer, Journal by getAbstract
Rob Dietz: Steady-state economics is a sustainable alternative to mainstream or neoclassical economics, which assumes perpetual growth of production and consumption. Such an economy keeps material and energy use within ecological limits, and the unsustainable (and unrealistic) goal of continuously increasing income and consumption is replaced by the goal of improving quality of life for all. In short, the focus is enough rather than more.
By Rina Chandran, World Economic Forum
A city near Beijing is being designed with rooftop farms, 3-D printing facilities and ample space to work from home - to protect residents against future pandemics. Vicente Guallart, whose Barcelona-based firm of architects won a contest to design the community, said: "We cannot continue designing cities and buildings as if nothing had happened."
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, The Energy Bulletin
Futures posted their first back-to-back weekly loss since April’s rout with the end of the summer driving season and concern about OPEC’s production compliance weighing on prices.
By Sirio López Velasco, Aporrea.org
The Plurinational State, which prior to the coup in Bolivia had begun to be erected (with the defects inevitable in any pioneering trial), is a mirror in which our countries must look at themselves... The Abya Yala [the Americas] is then to be lived as a Great Homeland, open to supportive and ecological cooperation with all the peoples of the world.
By John Kaufmann, Resilience.org
We are in the midst of an unmitigated natural disaster here in Oregon and on the West Coast. I struggle to find the words to express what’s happening and the toll it’s taking – on our natural treasures, on homes and businesses, and on our collective psyches.
By Oscar Perry Abello, Shareable
With the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering many food businesses temporarily or permanently, FoodLab Detroit has refocused on supporting surviving businesses that want to break the cycles of racist, exploitative, profit-first practices — such as tipping — that have long been taken for granted.
By Roger Blanchard, Resilience.org
To the extent that oil demand goes down in the future, it will go down because people can’t afford oil distillates at the price producers need to produce the corresponding oil.
By Fiacha Heneghan, Aeon
What should be the message from the climate scientist, the environmental activist, the conscientious politician, the ardent planner – those daunted but committed to pulling out all the stops? It is the single most important issue facing the community of climate-concerned Earthlings.
By Marianne Landzettel, Sustainable Food Trust
To a plant, its genetic base is like a huge toolbox that helps it adapt to changes in weather and climate, and fight diseases and pests. Plants grown from open pollinated seeds have this genetic toolbox.
By Julie Dermansky, DeSmog Blog
Almost a week after Hurricane Laura struck Louisiana's coast, which is studded with oil and gas industry pipes, tanks, wells, and rigs, I photographed from the sky oil sheen along at least 20 miles of marsh and bayous that absorbed the full strength of the storm.
By Steve Keen, The Conversation
Nordhaus (and about 20 like-minded economists) used two main methods to derive sanguine estimates of the economic consequences of climate change: the “enumerative method” and the “statistical method”. But my research shows neither stand up to scrutiny.
By Andrew Willner, The Center for Post Carbon Logistics
Wellbeing Farm will explore an array of innovative heritage and leading-edge technologies by which individuals, communities, and the Hudson Valley Bioregion can thrive in decades ahead – designing and realizing pragmatic, environmentally and economically sound tools for peacefully, equitably, and intelligently transitioning away from fossil fuels.
By Miguel Pinheiro, Resilience.org
The awareness of life is based on language, a huge puzzle of meanings that are entangled, and that form a lens through which we perceive the past, the present, the future and the invisible. Here, at the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, along the Xingu River and its main tributary, the Iriri, traces of a missing population are found.
By Isabella Tree, New York Review Books
Foreword by Eric Schlosser For years Charlie Burrell and his wife, Isabella Tree,…
By Nigel Palmer
Revitalize your garden—and go beyond compost—by making your own biologically diverse inoculants and mineral-rich amendments using leaf mold, weeds, eggshells, bones, and other materials available for little or no cost!
By Charlotte Timson, Traidcraft Exchange
We tend to ignore the racist history of trade when looking at trade issues. It’s complicated, uncomfortable and more convenient to gloss over it. The truth is the racism that underpinned colonialism and slavery continues within our global supply chains today.
By Vanessa Warheit, Laura Neish, Common Dreams
As the smoke continues to blanket our state, we call on insurers and other institutional investors to be a powerful force for good, and to end the madness of continued extraction. Our ability to thrive on this, our only planet, demands it of them.
By Helena Norberg-Hodge, Local Futures
Just as Indigenous wisdom is rooted in a myriad of complex and reciprocal interactions with the community, the land and water, the animals and plants, localizing makes visible the threads of interdependence that hold the living world together.
By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul
The dream of seeing your children attain a better life than you is a human dream of every parent. Equality and justice for all cannot exist when too few have too much, and the majority have too little.
By Rikard Warlenius, Uneven Earth
Unequal exchange—basically the notion that more labour is exchanged for less labour through international trade—was discussed by the political economists David Ricardo and Karl Marx in the 19th century.
By Karl Widerquist, Open Democracy
Universal Basic Income (UBI) – a policy that would provide a regular, cash income to every citizen without means test or work requirement – is surprisingly inexpensive.
