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Planning For Hard Times: The Community Solution (Audio)
Andi Hazelwood, Global Public Media
Megan Quinn Bachman, Outreach Director for The Community Solution, talks with Andi Hazelwood of Global Public Media about The 4th Annual US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions: Planning For Hard Times on October 26-28, 2007. Speakers include David Korten, Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg, Judy Wicks from the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and many more. Quinn Bachman also discusses the impacts of the DVD, “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.”
(26 September 2007)
Many links at original.
The end is nigh. Be positive
Richard Eckersley, The Age
A FEW years ago, my then teenage son and I were watching world news on television. An item began about the humanitarian tragedy in Darfur, Sudan (which is still with us). “Can we turn this off, Dad?” my son said. I asked why. “It’s depressing,” he said. “I don’t need reminding what a horrible place the world is.”
It is depressing, and it is becoming more depressing as our perceptions of the world and its future are increasingly shaped by images of global or distant threat and disaster: earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, bushfires, disease pandemics, war, terrorist attacks and famine. These hazards are not new, but previous fears were never so sustained and varied, never so powerfully reinforced by the frequency, immediacy and vividness of media images. This effect seems certain to intensify as global warming and other threats begin to impact more deeply on our lives.
Most of the attention on how we tackle these threats has focused on economics and technology. But how we react psychologically will be just as important. This response involves subtle and complex interactions between the world “out there” and the world “in here” — in our minds. These have implications for personal wellbeing as well as social cohesion and action.
Psychological research suggests that adaptability, being able to set goals and progress towards them, having goals that do not conflict, and viewing the world as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful are all associated with wellbeing.
…FUTURISTS have noted the human susceptibility to apocalyptic ideas, especially at times of rapid change, and the need for utopian ideals. Both of these are found in stories. Narrative studies have demonstrated the power of stories to transport ideas across time and space, construct meaning and identity, shape communities, enrich social life, define social issues, even put together shattered lives.
The defining question of our times is this: will we make it? There is a real and increasing possibility that global warming, resource depletion, the growing world population disease pandemics, technological anarchy, and the geopolitical tensions, economic instability and social upheaval they generate, will coalesce to create a nightmare future for humanity this century.
Avoiding this fate will depend critically on the stories we create to make sense of what is happening and to frame our response. A key task is to ensure these stories reflect not the decadence and despair of nihilism or the dogma and rigidity of fundamentalism, but the hope and energy of activism.
Richard Eckersley researches progress and wellbeing. He is a founding director of Australia 21, a non-profit, public-interest research company, and a visiting fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University.
(22 September 2007)
Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben on Blessed Unrest and Deep Economics
Jon Lebkowsky, WorldChanging
Creating sustainable systems means transforming how we think about the world and its different economies — of money, nature, agriculture, and more. Essentially it means rethinking our priorities. But how do we create these new frameworks, and translate them into community action?
These urgent questions are at the centers of two inspiring recent books: “Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming” (Viking, May 2007) by Paul Hawken, and “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future” (Times Books, March 2007) by Bill McKibben. These authors have an obvious synergy, so I asked them to join me, along with Randy Jewart (of Austin Green Art), in a discussion to share with Worldchanging’s readers.
This conversation took place in email over the first half of September, 2007. If you find it compelling, take action: buy both books in case lots, read them together, and organize groups for discussion and action.
(24 September 2007)
Permaculture for the post carbon transition (Audio)
Andi Hazelwood, Global Public Media
Tim Winton of The Permaforest Trust Centre for Sustainability Education in Australia talks to GPM’s Andi Hazelwood about using permaculture to make the post carbon transition. Winton also discusses the free multimedia talks and presentations from the Trust’s accredited permaculture training courses, available online at Global Public Media and at the Permaforest Trust website.
(25 September 2007)
Links to more material at the original article at GPM.
