Let’s talk! – 24 Sept 2018
By Bart Anderson, Resilience
Excerpts: A field guide to bad faith arguments / No, I will not debate you / Against civility, or why Habermas recommends a wild public sphere
‘The Creativity Crisis’
By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog
If climate change is anything, it must be the greatest failure of the imagination in the history of the world. Perhaps K’s paper might offer some illumination as to why our response isn’t happening fast enough?
Florence is Not the ‘New Normal’. We’ve Destroyed Normal Forever.
By Joe Romm, Climate Progress
You’ve probably seen the term “new normal” used to describe how human caused climate change has forever changed the kind of weather we can expect.
At Niman Ranch, “We’re Doing Something Special” Raising Pigs Humanely
By Danielle Nierenberg, Food Tank
On “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg,” Paul Willis, founder of Niman Ranch Pork Company, and Elle Gadient, intern at Niman Ranch, talk about their love for humanely treated, free-range pigs and the farmers that raise them.
Did the Club of Rome Ever Disavow “The Limits to Growth”? A Story of Ordinary Disinformation
By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
The Club of Rome is inextricably linked to the legendary report that it commissioned to a group of MIT researchers in 1972, "The Limits to Growth." Today, nearly 50 years later, we still have to come to terms with the vision brought by the report, a vision that contradicts the core of some of humankind's most cherished beliefs.
Peak Oil Review: 24 September 2018
By Tom Whipple, Peak-Oil.org
Oil prices continued to show strength last week but closed in London up by less than a dollar for the week at $78.80. Brent now has closed above $78 a barrel six times since mid-May and has touched $80 a barrel once or twice but failed to close above $80 since mid-2014.
How Radical Municipalism can Go Beyond the Local
By Aaron Vansintjan, Mason Herson-Ford, Uneven Earth
We can build community and force elites to listen to our demands at the same time. Radical municipalism is a project to take direct democratic control over the places where we live.
The problem with models…is getting stuck on just one
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
We humans are constantly modeling the world around us to find patterns that will help us. But sometimes we forget that our models are just that, tentative outlines of how the world seems to work. Getting stuck on just one model with no flexibility is often the result of vested interests pushing that model. We need to be smarter than that to solve the problems we now face as individuals and as a global society.
Bringing it All Together in Just. One. Diagram. Part Three
By Dan Palmer, Making Permaculture Stronger
Now here’s the thing. Adaptation cannot be fabricated or master planned, period. I believe it to be an essential truth that adapted systems can only emerge or be generated iteratively, in an ongoing dance between a system’s form and its context.
The Fracking Industry’s Water Nightmare
By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog
There is no way for the shale industry to deal with the financial issues it faces — including its water crisis — without changing the existing rules.
As Florence’s Flooding Ebbs, Carolina Residents Choose Fight or Flight
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
Hurricane Florence made landfall in the poorest portion of one of the poorest parts in the country: the Carolinas. It was the heaviest rainstorm in East Coast history, and the resulting floodwaters forced tens of thousands from their homes.
Crisis After Crisis: 10 Years After the Crash, There’s No ‘Reforming’ Global Capitalism
By Walden Bello, Foreign Policy In Focus
The way forward, it is increasingly clear, will be largely determined by the outcome of a political struggle between two post-globalization camps: fascists and democratic socialists.
Psychologists Explain our Climate Change Anxiety
By Kyla Mandel, Climate Progress
Understanding climate anxiety, and how to incorporate psychology into our plans for tackling climate change is growing, but only slowly.
Be the Hummingbird. Be the Bear
By Kathleen Dean Moore, Earth Island Journal
Protecting the children is a formidable responsibility. But it is our responsibility, and we bring to the task a formidable set of powers, honed, sharpened, and passed down mother-to-daughter over generations.
National Energy Board Pushed to Correct Errors in Original 2016 Trans Mountain Report
By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee
Now that the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the National Energy Board should correct “serious mistakes” in its original 2016 report, says economist Robyn Allan.
Improving Air Quality with Clover
By Honor May Eldridge, Sustainable Food Trust
Greater action to address the root causes of air pollution from the agricultural sector is needed. To face the growing environmental crisis caused by nitrogen pollution there needs to be a fundamental shift in the way that we produce food.
Ecosocialism’s Greatest Challenge: The Color-Line and the Twenty-First Century Ecoleft
By Ted Franklin, System Change not Climate Change
The Solidarity to Solutions Week of Actions that took place in San Francisco this past week exemplified these gains for the climate movement. They were not “feel good” exercises.
There is an Alternative to Neoliberalism – in Britain and Beyond
By Laurie Macfarlane, openDemocracy
'New Thinking for the British Economy' – a new eBook published today by openDemocracy – brings together leading thinkers to outline the broad pillars of a new post-neoliberal agenda, and the type of policies that are needed to get us there.
Competition, not Consumption, Drives Global Destruction
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
"We have to reduce consumption and resource use", is a statement that is gaining some traction. Considering that all that is consumed has to be produced and vice versa it is a logical claim that we also have to reduce production, but that seems to be a lot more provocative.
When We Look at the Crisis Rationally, the Only Logical Response is to Declare a Climate Emergency
By Paul Gilding, Climate Code Red
People engaged in the climate debate are often bewildered by society’s lack of response. How can we ignore such overwhelming evidence of an existential threat to social and economic stability?
Plastic Pollution: The Age of Unsolvable Problems
By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
Does that mean that the problem of plastic pollution unsolvable? No. It is, actually, a minor problem in comparison to other, much more difficult problems we face.
What Public Banks Can Do for Food Systems
By Matt Stannard, Shareable
A public bank is a government-run financial institution that takes banks' power to create value through lending and turns that power into a public utility, lending at low interest to meet public needs.
Why Growth Can’t Be Green
By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog
Ultimately, bringing our civilization back within planetary boundaries is going to require that we liberate ourselves from our dependence on economic growth—starting with rich nations. This might sound scarier than it really is.
Too Angry to Govern?
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Without compromise, the nation will continue to see years of politics at the extreme—periods of doing and undoing much as we see now in Trump’s dedication to erasing Obama’s environmental legacy. I ask you--is this any way to govern the greatest nation on earth?
What Will it Take to Avert Collapse?
By Richard Heinberg, David Fridley, Resilience.org
In our view, at some point scientists and policy makers must begin discussing the one scenario that world leaders seem to want to avoid at all costs, i.e., managed economic contraction. The irony is that this scenario could reliably cut greenhouse gas emissions and is achievable without appeal to magic (CCS or decoupling).
Maria in Puerto Rico: America’s Least Natural Disaster
By Stan Cox, Paul Cox, Green Social Thought
Heroes don’t blame others when calamity strikes; victims don’t manage to find a way out of their vulnerability. Those who suffer unnatural disasters do both, as required, and that is the way the world will heal.
What a Society Designed for Well-Being Looks Like
By Tabita Green, YES! magazine
Instead of focusing only on piecemeal solutions for various forms of social ills, we must consider that the real and lasting solution is a new economy designed for all people, not only for the ruling corporate elite.
From Little Things, Big Things Come
By Mark Winne, Food Tank
But for Tlingit and other Native people who comprise the 4,000 citizens of the Sitka Tribe (2,500 live in Sitka), subsistence foods are also an integral part of their cultural tradition. The land and waters surrounding them are the provenance not only of the Tribe’s sustenance, but also its soul and spirit.
Nuclear Plant Declares Emergency, Second Breach Reported at Coal Ash Site amid Florence’s Rains
By E.A. Crunden, Climate Progress
At least 23 people have died in North and South Carolina so far during the historic storm. Around half a million people in the region are without power, with more damage expected as Florence continues to rage.
The Problem with Storytelling
By Daniel Stanley, STIR to Action
In the case of ‘storytelling’, the central issue is an assumption that what is needed to solve our social problems and change the public’s mind is a ‘method’ – that we have all the materials that we need, and all that’s needed to present alternative ideas is a better way of conveying them.
Luxury Real Estate Boom Adds to Risk of Climate Disruption
By Chuck Collins, Inequality.org
In a report I co-authored, Towering Excess, I examine the perils of Boston’s luxury building boom in terms of its impact on inequality, affordable housing, and the increasing risks of illicit funds and money laundering.
New Technologies Won’t Reduce Scarcity, but Here’s Something That Might
By Vasilis Kostakis, Andreas Roos, P2P Foundation
The intuitive belief that technology can manifest from money alone, anthropologists tell us, is a culturally rooted notion which hides the fact that the scarcity experienced by some is linked to the abundance enjoyed only by a few.
For People Working to Protect Nature, Cities can no Longer be an Afterthought
By Meera Bhat, Ensia
Access to the benefits nature provides — such as clean water, cool air and protection from flooding — should not be a luxury available to those who can afford it. It’s a right that goes to the core of human health and well-being.
Pittsburgh Food Rescue Nonprofit Expands Nationally
By Brian Conway, Shareable
In less than two years, Pittsburgh's 412 Food Rescue has recovered over four million pounds of surplus food, recruited a fleet of over 4,000 volunteer drivers, and pioneered a more efficient and effective way to source and distribute fresh food that would otherwise end up in landfills. Now, the organization is expanding nationally.
The Flood Washes over us
By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul
Can a “never-seen-before ” weather event that happens every few years really be called “never-seen-before”? Does a “1 in a 1,000 year” event that happens twice in two years become a warning of something different happening?
Peak Oil Review 17 Sept 2018
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, ASPO - USA
Oil prices climbed for the first three days last week with Brent climbing above $80 a barrel on Wednesday before falling back to close at $78.09 on Friday.
Why Incumbents Fail – And What That Means for Sustainability
By Paul Gilding, The Cockatoo Chronicles
Can incumbents transform? The question can’t be answered in theory or conceptual potential, but in practice – in the reality of how markets work, and how businesses are run.
Human Predators, Human Prey: Part 3
By Richard Heinberg, Resilence.org
Perhaps seeing the class and power dynamics of society through the lens of “predation” can highlight the machinery of inequality and exploitation, helping us avoid being “preyed upon” and “preying upon” others.
‘The Expanse’ is a story about systemic ruin
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
The science fiction noir thriller, "The Expanse," has a lot to say about systemic risks in society and about what not to do about them.
Seven Ways to Build the Solidarity Economy
By Emily Kawano, Open Democracy
The solidarity economy is a global movement to build a post-capitalist world that puts people and planet front and center, rather than the pursuit of blind growth and profit maximization. It isn’t a blueprint but a framework...
What Barcelona’s Social and Solidarity Economy Means for NYC
By Evie Zavidow, Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City
At the end of June, activists from Mexico, the United States, and Canada gathered at the Fearless Cities Conference—North America’s first ever municipalist summit—to discuss local strategies to build a more just, democratic, and inclusive economy...
Climate Damages and Deception: Panel Reviews California Legal Actions Against Fossil Fuel Industry
By Kaya Axelson, Grist
In San Francisco this week, Fossil Free California hosted a panel discussion on the most recent municipal litigation against the fossil fuel industry.