The risks of synthetic biology in the information society
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Synthetic biology offers grand new possibilities to "process information, manipulate chemicals, fabricate materials and structures, produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health" according to Wikipedia. But the supposed benefits cannot sensibly be weighed against the catastrophic systemic risks which are inherent in its use.
When it comes to sustainability, we’re a society of distracted drivers
By Richard Heinberg, Common Dreams
Rather than sharing the distractions now capturing the attention of other drivers, we must each retrain ourselves to pay attention to the instrument panel and the road ahead of us. Abandoning old habits and making new ones requires effort. But some habits are so unwise that changing them is a life-or-death affair.
The Two Sub-cultures of FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)
By Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
Lest it seem like I’m putting socialism above libertarianism, and the common good above individual achievement, I also see that as FIers mature into this freedom they find a balance between focus on themselves and service to community.
The Mighty, Mighty AGs: Remember Your Mother on November 6th
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
From Mother Earth's perspective, the most important ballots cast on November 6th could be in the 30 contests for state attorney general (AG). The role played by AGs in the nation's transition to a low-carbon economy is easily ignored in the heat of this year's Congressional elections.
The measure of a man in 120 breaths
By Albert Bates, Medium.com
“It has been a disappointment to me that so many people, including all too many environmentalists, thought the spirit of liberation of the 1960s was and is dispensable.” — Jan Lundberg (1952-2018)
To Leave or Remain: dichotomy or distraction?
By Helena Norberg-Hodge, Local Futures
Leave/Remain was always a false dichotomy. The real choice is between a corporate economic system that systematically destroys livelihoods and undermines the environment and, on the other hand, a form of economic decentralisation that actively encourages both community and ecological renewal. The British people weren’t offered that choice in the referendum. But it’s on offer out there in the real world.
The Response podcast episode 3: The impact of Northern California fires on the undocumented community
By Robert Raymond, Tom Llewellyn, Shareable
We'll investigate how, in the face of ICE raids, labor violations, a housing crisis, and climate-fueled wildfires, the broader community is coming together to stand in solidarity with those who are being forced into the shadows.
10 Stories of Transition in the US: Transition Fidalgo & Friends’ Vision 2030
By Steve McAllister, Transition US
In 2005, a group of Permaculture students from Kinsale Further Education College set a course for how their town of 7,000 people on the west coast of Ireland could transition to a better quality of life while dramatically reducing fossil fuel consumption. ... Their plan was soon adopted by the Town Council of Kinsale, and when it was posted online, it quickly spread around the world as people everywhere embraced it as a groundbreaking tool for cultivating community-level sustainability and resilience.
Peak Oil Review – 15 Oct 2018
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, Peak-Oil.org
Major players in the oil industry are still in disagreement as to where oil prices will go in the near future. A few weeks ago, many financial writers were talking about $100 oil, but the sudden surge of volatility and turmoil in global financial markets has caused many to rethink their forecasts.
Puerto Rico — spirited community response
By Susan Witt, Schumacher Center for a New Economics
A volunteer-built church saved the island of Culebra, Puerto Rico, from being used as target practice in 1971. Later, land trusts have helped residents rebuild after hurricanes.
Jan Lundberg passes away
By Albert Bates, Bart Anderson, Resilence.org
Lifelong friend, mentor, role model and champion of the planet Jan Lundberg passed away at peace during the night in his home and refuge in Greece where he had been laboring to revive sail transport in the Mediterranean Sea. Gate gate paragate parasaṃgate bodhi svaha!
Three Deprivation Narratives
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
I’d like to think that it should be possible for everyone in the world to have safe and comfortable shelter (including access to tolerably warm bathing water) and an adequate diet (I’m not so sure about the color TV)...
Climate catastrophe: The median is NOT the message
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
The latest report from the IPCC is the first to abandon the measured tone of its previous ones and foretell what it considers a climate catastrophe for human civilization unless the world makes an abrupt U-turn and begins dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions almost immediately. And yet, even this forecast is probably too conservative in its pronouncements.
When a warming climate threatens your dinner plate
By Zenobia Barlow, Resilience
The Center for Ecoliteracy recently released a suite of free digital resources: videos, original animations, interactive pages, photography, and sample activities to help explore the relationships between food and climate change.
We need an ecological civilization before it’s too late
By Jeremy Lent, Patterns of Meaning
In the face of climate breakdown and ecological overshoot, alluring promises of “green growth” are no more than magical thinking. We need to restructure the fundamentals of our global cultural/economic system to cultivate an “ecological civilization.”
Our Opposable Thumb
By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul
Can we use our opposable thumbs, our love of tools, our hyper-ability to communicate, and our unending need to conquer new challenges to reverse climate destabilization? What will it take for you to believe it’s worth trying?
Not Being Heard
By Michelle Galimba, Anima/Soul
The drama that unfolded during the last few weeks over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court took many of us on a journey that no one could have predicted, and that became a drama about something much bigger than the Supreme Court. Bigger than party politics, or even right versus left. It became about being heard.
The Response Podcast Episode 2: How Puerto Ricans are Restoring Power to the People
By Tom Llewellyn, Robert Raymond, Shareable
What you might not have heard is the story of the grassroots response that arose after Maria. In the midst of all the austerity and hurricane-driven chaos, a quiet revolution has been slowly taking place on the island.
Response to the IPCC 1.5°C Special Report
By Kevin Anderson, Manchester Policy Blogs
The IPCC report meticulously lays out how the serious climate impacts of 1.5°C of warming are still far less destructive than those for 2°C. Sadly, the IPCC then fails, again, to address the profound implications of reducing emissions in line with both 1.5 and 2°C. Dress it up however we may wish, climate change is ultimately a rationing issue.
Internationalism and the New Municipalism
By Laura Roth, Bertie Russell, ROAR Magazine
In moving together, municipalist movements are already demonstrating internationalism — in the “old” sense of working together across boundaries. Yet this internationalism provides the crucible for working towards internationalism in a “new” sense...
Peak Oil Review: 8 Oct 2018
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, Peak-Oil.org
The question of whether we will see $100 oil before Christmas continues to dominate analytical comment in the financial press. The Iranian sanctions are the main factor that could drive prices substantially higher in the next year or so; however, there are many other forces at work that could lead to lower oil prices.
Hidden Costs – 8 Oct 2018
By Bart Anderson, Resilience.org
The coming concrete crisis | How plastic bags came to rule our lives | How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity
Could Donald Trump be the last world emperor?
By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
Empires are short-lived structures created and kept together by the availability of mineral resources, fossil fuels in our times. They tend to decline and fall with the decline of the resources that created them, and that's the destiny of the current World Empire: the American one.
#AgTechTakeback – Neither Neoluddism nor Corporate Ag
By Vassilis Gkisakis, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Will hi-tech save agriculture from its otherwise intractable problems? Certainly technological stakeholders want it to appear so, as digitisation increases both in the fields and in the policy documents and future plans for the sector.
Community Choice Aggregations (CCAs)
By Chris Nelder, Energy Transition Show
What are community choice aggregations, or CCAs, and why are they suddenly playing such a huge role in wholesale power markets?
With the World on the Line, Scientists Outline the Paths to Survival
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
This week, scientists and representatives from every country on Earth are gathering in South Korea to put the finishing touches on a report that, if followed, would change the course of history.
Thinking of Suing the Trump Administration on Climate Change?
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
In the past week or two Trumpsters gave climate defenders new reasons to take the Administration to court—of either the legal or public opinion variety.
Light Posting 8th to 22nd October
By Resilience.org Staff, Resilience.org
Due to editorial holiday, there will be light posting from 8th to 22nd October. Regular posting will resume on the 23rd.
How Jackson, MI is Making the Economy Work for the People
By Steve Rushton, Occupy.com
Jackson, Mississippi, will be “the most radical city on the planet," Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the city's mayor, pledged at the People's Summit in Chicago, where he spoke last July after his landslide election win.
Radical Realism for Climate Justice. A Civil Society Response to the Challenge of Limiting Global Warming to 1.5°C
By Lili Fuhr, P2P Foundation
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial is feasible, and it is our best hope of achieving environmental and social justice, of containing the impacts of a global crisis that was born out of historical injustice and highly unequal responsibility.
How to Communicate the Climate Emergency
By Staff, Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, Climate Code Red
In their hearts, most people value the same things: good relationships with friends and family, providing for and supporting their families, and making a positive social contribution. The “health, wellbeing and livelihood” frame presents climate change in ways that connect to core values and issues familiar to people and decision makers.
Entrepreneurs of Hate
By Ian Hughes, Open Democracy
Is it possible to transform politics around values such as empathy, solidarity and love? Many progressive commentators think so, and have laid out different plans to put these ideas into practice. But empathy and love seem in short supply in the actuality of politics today, crowded out by hate and intolerance.
America and Russia: Stirrings in the Borderlands
By John Michael Greer, Ecosophia
To my mind, one of the main sources of collective stupidity in modern American society is our pervasive bad habit of short-term thinking. It’s embarrassingly rare for anyone in American public life to stop and say aloud, “Hold it. What’s going to happen if we keep on doing this for more than a few more years?”
The Front Burner of Food Policy
By Wayne Roberts, Resilience.org
A good stint at home cooking should be a prerequisite for anyone who’s a city food policy practitioner. Home cooking deserves to be on the front burner of good food policy.
How Mainstream Economics has Led to Clueless Governments
By Stephen Williams, Independent Australia
Governments of all stripes base their policies on mainstream economics. Powerful challenges to the mainstream, especially from ecological economics and modern monetary theory, explain why we are in a hole and can’t seem to get out.
Don’t Frack so Close to Me: Colorado Voters will Weigh in on Drilling Distances from Homes and Schools
By Tara O'Connor, Stephanie Malin, The Conversation
Coloradans will vote on a ballot initiative in November that requires new oil and gas projects to be set back at least 2,500 feet from occupied buildings. If approved, the measure – known as both Initiative 97 and Proposition 112 – would mark a major change from their state’s current limits: 500 feet from homes and 1,000 feet from schools.
The Trump Administration Knows the Planet is Going to Boil. It Doesn’t Care
By Bill McKibben, The Guardian blog
The World Bank predicts we may see 140 million climate migrants before long, and given the chaos that even a million people fleeing the (partially drought-fueled) crisis in Syria created, we better come to grips.
The Response Podcast Episode 1: Radical Approaches to Disaster Relief in New York
By Tom Llewellyn, Robert Raymond, Shareable
In our new podcast series, The Response, we aim to share a perspective that isn't extensively covered in the mainstream media. Specifically, we ask the question: how do communities come together in the aftermath of disasters — often in the face of inadequate official response — to take care of each other?
‘Til Sustainability Do You Part: Arranging a Marriage Between Degrowth and the Circular Economy
By Erik Assadourian, John Mulrow, Resilience.org
But advocates of the circular economy rarely grapple with a central truth: the circular economy depends on a significant and sustained period of economic degrowth. Instead they tend to focus on innovations that deliver efficiencies and unlock new economic opportunities.
What if? — Scaling-Out Regenerative Development Glocally
By Daniel Christian Wahl, Medium
So what if the money was suddenly available to engage everyone who is holding pieces in the complex puzzle of redesigning and transforming the human impact on Earth in a concerted effort to enable this shift...
Bologna Again Takes Center Stage Resisting Fascism
By Steve Rushton, Occupy
Normalizing fascism is a global crisis. But through active municipalism, Coalizione Civica (Civic Coalition) is challenging Italy's far-right lurch.
The Dream of Food without Dirt
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
Silicon Valley meets Hollywood. That is the best description of how we will get food in the future if we would believe the impressive number of food tech start-ups which will produce food without soil or animals. But few of them deliver on their exaggerated promises.