Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
“Designing Regenerative Cultures” by Daniel Wahl is an essential guidebook for our time that everyone should read, young and old. Through this book we come to realise deeply that there is a way out of the madness of our current societal systems in which so many people and non-human species have become trapped.
North Carolina has committed to upholding the landmark Paris climate agreement by slashing greenhouse gas emissions, a move that comes a little over a month after Hurricane Florence devastated the state.
I hope you’ll stick with me as we explore the campaigns that have inspired hundreds of thousands of people around the globe to believe that, in the words of Arundhati Roy, “another world is not only possible, she is on her way.”
We need to exercise our remarkable gift of reading with a thorough workout each day. Otherwise, we get the politicians that we have today, left or right.
Driven by zero-sum thinking, the rigid, inflexible, ideological thinking and obsessive need of our collective human ego to be absolutely and imperatively “right”, is rapidly driving our Nation and our American democracy toward collapse.
I reject the fetishization of GDP as an objective in the existing economy, so it would make little sense for me to focus on GDP as the objective of a degrowth economy. Wanting to cut GDP is as senseless as wanting to grow it.
Many people think hunger is about too many people and too little food, but that is not the case. At Oxfam, we know that hunger is about power. Its roots lie in inequalities in access to resources and opportunities.
Quite suddenly, in the wake of the recent IPCC report, it’s become commonplace to talk about a global climate emergency. Al Gore told PBS on 12 October: “We have a global emergency. You use a phrase like that and some people immediately say, ‘okay calm down, it can’t be that bad.’ But it it is.”
So what really interests me is whether we may be entering another ‘Machiavellian moment’ when smallholder republicanism may, at least in some places, arise as a response to new times and challenges.
Our society needs a real conversation about the meaning and nature of economic growth. In a time of populist politics and rising regional discontent, it is more important than ever to examine new models and approaches of sustainable, equitable and just development.
A moratorium could take the form of a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. The threat of nuclear catastrophe provides a precedent for how, quickly, to stop a bad situation getting worse.
What’s coming? Possibilities I hope for, probabilities to dread. Possible: A renewed stirring of love for the Earth. Respect for and reciprocity with all beings.
