Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In the context of risk management and in the face of environmental and economic challenges such as climate change, coastal erosion, water insecurity, and the accelerated loss of biodiversity, among others, the concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) has emerged.
After nearly two decades deeply engaged in this field, the organizing model developed by the international Transition Towns Movement is still the most holistic, accessible, and effective social technology I’ve found for cultivating more resilient, equitable, sustainable, and regenerative local communities from the bottom up.
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on his experience with knee surgery and being a “creature in the machine” (the Superorganism).
From 2018 to 2020, the top four seed and agro-chemical firms controlled 60-70% of the global pesticides market, and 50-60% of the $45 billion global seed market. How did this happen?
Knowledge is important, sure, but if we don’t do anything with that knowledge, if we don’t organize for collective action, then all claims that science is a positive agent for change are just empty talk. Science can help us transform society, but only if we dare to transform science itself.
In the interests of both local and global sustainability, we need to redesign the economy by recognising two separate spheres of exchange, representing two different kinds of values.
Systemic risk analysis allows us to fully comprehend the long-tail of all the crises peaking this year. But it also reveals how we can turn these exponential curves around, accelerating just as fast and as far in the opposite direction.
Don’t cower in front of your screen. Get out and join with others in projects to make your town stronger and more socially and environmentally sustainable.
There’s nothing much we can do about this world-as-it-might-be symbolic capacity we have, simultaneously humanity’s blessing or genius and also our curse. Writing, farming and so on were not the cause of our malaise but the result of it.
One major hangup in subscribing to a physics-based universe of material monism is that it appears to remove human agency as typically conceived in our culture. If atoms and their interactions are making everything happen, abiding by rules they (or we) cannot violate, is there any room left for human intervention or free will?
For those of us seeking post-capitalist futures: rather than burning ourselves out Doing — the energy of the capitalist system we are trying to topple — why not try Being, the energy of degrowth?
If Calvo is out at the front, all the same, he’s not there on his own. Colleagues in the field also believe that the ‘machine metaphor’ of body and brain is getting in the way of understanding—even preventing us from seeing what’s in the data we see in front of us.
