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With XR Disrupting London’s Streets

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And what I say to those who choose to criticise XR is please by all means criticise us, and come up swiftly and proactively with something better we can do to meet the challenges of imminent climate catastrophe and ecological disaster. I would be the first to be behind you. But if you cannot then I would think very carefully about what you are going to say to the present generation, Greta’s generation, today’s children and grandchildren when they ask, ‘What did you do when we had our last chance to avoid catastrophe?’  Think very hard about that question.

In its Insatiable Pursuit of Power, Silicon Valley is Fuelling the Climate Crisis

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Human beings are at their worst when they are consumers, locked into the miserable pursuit of satisfaction through the isolation of individual consumption – particularly when that shopping and consuming is done online (and when, as with Instagram, we learn to turn ourselves into commodities). T

Where to Draw a Line on Climate Denial— More Questions than Answers

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The one thing I am sure of, however, is that there’s too much hedging going on both in politics and the private market. We’ll never prevail in keeping below the temperature thresholds scientists are warning of by hedging climate defense investments with continuing investments in fossil fuels.

Enough is Plenty

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In the past, we did not need to make a big deal of enough; it was built into our lives in many ways. Our language recognised it in phrases like ‘enough is as good as a feast’, and ‘waste not, want not’. But in modern life the sense of enough is badly underdeveloped; in affluent societies we have largely forgotten the wisdom captured in the old sayings.

The Stories We Need: Pan-African Social Ecology

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Kadalie’s book is one more testament that a collective awakening is taking place to jettison the state and redefine global history from the bottom up.

For all this, direct democracy by itself can hardly promise social and ecological restoration. Democracy is not a matter of implementing formulaic procedures and structures; it is a matter of fostering bonds of mutual support and the sharing of communal power.

A ‘Council for the Future’ Could Break Australia’s Climate Paralysis

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Like most people, I hoped climate policy would improve, but years of infighting and adversarial politics have resulted in a dearth of climate action, where cooperation might well have yielded positive results.

One solution to this frustrating deadlock is to place the responsibility for climate policy at arm’s length from political actors. We need a Council for the Future, tasked with the long-term thinking that eludes so many of our elected representatives.

Harvard and TIAA’s Farmland Grab in Brazil Goes Up in Smoke

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It may come as a shock to Harvard students, faculty, and alumni, as well as the millions of educators and others in the United States whose pensions are managed by TIAA, to learn that these two institutions are deeply and directly invested in this destructive expansion of agribusiness. Over the past twelve years, TIAA and Harvard University have collectively spent over $1 billion on Brazilian farmland, making them two of the largest owners of farmland in the Cerrado.

Mind the Climate Literacy Gap

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Climate literacy, which should by now be universal, lags out of all proportion to the crisis — and yet it promises large returns for a relatively small investment. If every student was climate literate, we could begin to effect change on a large scale. If every person was truly climate literate, imagine the change we could make.

Ordinary Life has Vanished in Fire-Ravaged California

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California is the fifth-largest economy in the world and likes to shout about its genius at innovation, but it is a victim of its lack of energy innovation. It’s a climate disaster zone, with the new reality of hotter, dryer conditions made far worse by the outdated power grid and corrupt private corporation in charge of distributing gas and electricity.

Federal Fuel Efficiency Standards: Another Unnecessary Conflict in the Age of Trump

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President Trump divides just about everything political he or his administration touches. The latest industry Trump has caused to turn against itself is automaking.

Since Day 1 of the Trump presidency, the auto industry has been hoping to re-negotiate the deal it struck with the Obama administration on auto and light truck fuel efficiency standards (CAFE) for the period 2021 through 2025.

Platforms for a Green New Deal

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The Case for the Green New Deal  (by Ann Pettifor), and A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos) each clock in at a little under 200 pages, and both books are written in accessible prose for a general audience.

Surprisingly, there is remarkably little overlap in coverage and it’s well worth reading both volumes.