Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Do we blindly feed our consumption addiction, indifferent to how—or whether—resources can be replenished? Or do we transition from consumer to replenisher, and become responsible stewards, ensuring that what we take today will sustain life tomorrow?
Here, perhaps is the secret to also countering the far right, not with ameliorative green growthism but with radical, redistributive, anti-commodity leftism – recovering that underground tradition of socialism that starts from a critique of capitalism’s turning everything into a commodity, and instead focusing on what we all need to lead a decent dignified life, within safe limits.
If a theoretical economy relies on the exchange of intended things, a profitable economy relies on the waste produced by the production, distribution and sale of those things.
In tandem with the 80th United Nations General Assembly, we’re asking a vital question: where do we find hope at such a challenging time? And the answer is in our cities.
For degrowth thinkers and activists, this means not only rejecting extractivism in theory but learning from the everyday practices of those who are working on alternatives. But it also means finding hope and direction in the grounded, collective visions blooming across the Sabana de Bogotá.
What is a collapse? Do I believe in collapse? If so, what kind of collapse do I envision and what will come thereafter? Is the current system collapsing?
In this week’s Frankly, in a continuation of his ‘What I Learned This Week’ series, Nate updates viewers on things he learned in the past week, and the implications for our sociocultural trajectory. This edition focuses on recent financial and political headlines – global gold holdings, shifting geopolitical energy deals, and new U.S. Department of Energy reports – and explains their relevance to our biophysical reality and broader geopolitical landscape.
From deregulated economic zones to experiments in private governance, charter city projects aim to reshape how we live. Their rise compounds concerns over sovereignty and the ideological and financial interests driving them.
So if we want real change – and a world where future generations of all life, not just human beings, can live in peace with equal rights and justice for all – we have to tackle corporate rights, powers, structures and impunity.
Maximize profits, exploit nature, hoard money, and, like Buzz Lightyear, grow the economy to infinity and beyond! That’s the modern economic playbook. But for decades, one renegade country has taken a contrarian stance that actually cares about people’s wellbeing and environmental health: the Himalayan nation of Bhutan.
The forest ecosystem has so much to teach us. We envision a new kind of philanthropy that learns from and mirrors its interconnected resilience.
We rejoin Herman Daly in the late 1970s – a tumultuous time for our renegade economist. His so-called “radical” critiques of endless growth – and his insistence that the economy must operate within the Earth’s limits – left him isolated in his field and at odds with colleagues. Yet, from this difficult period emerged a new vision of economics.
