Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Paris has been on the cutting edge of a worldwide municipal movement dedicated to making cities more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century.
To survive we must return to the fold of Gaia. Returning to the fold means “to begin participating in some group or activity that one left for a period of time.” In other words, we have stopped participating fully in the Gaian community, following Earth’s laws, and have been making up our own rules
I’m a scholar of environmental communication who examines how people become engaged with solving dilemmas such as climate change, and how activism motivates others to take action. A new study I worked on suggests that large rallies, such as this youth-led Climate Strike, could be influencing public opinion.
The climate strikes over the coming weeks will focus a great deal of attention on government and the urgent need for policy action. Rightly so. But it’s also a good time to reflect on the bigger context, as this is not anything like protests of the past. There has in fact, never been a point like this in all of human history.
This will be a transition that could lead to a world that is increasingly more just and less desecrated, but we will be doing hard things that we’ve never done. Surprising allies may appear.
We may or may not see the fruit of our work. But we’re here now, capable of doing our part, and the world and her inhabitants are still full of beauty and wonder, and there’s no time to waste.
Many people, of course, can’t do without a day’s pay, or work for bosses who who would fire them if they missed work. So it really matters that those of us with the freedom to rally do so. Since I published the first book for a general audience on climate change 30 years ago this month, I’ve had lots of time to think about the various ways to move people to action.
At first sight it’s incomprehensible. Why risk everything for a no-deal Brexit? Breaking up their own party, losing their parliamentary majority, dismantling the UK, trashing the economy, triggering shortages of food and medicine: how could any objective, for the Conservative and Unionist party, be worth this? What good does it do them?
In the last three decades since the climate movement has gotten active, the world’s economy has released more greenhouse pollution than in the years previously since the Industrial Revolution.
Clearly, whatever progress on public policy that the movement has made with governments and businesses, those governments and businesses have failed to take meaningful action.
Why?
The date was Thursday, July 25th – the hottest day ever in Europe, part of a record-setting heat wave. Climate change, in other words. By the time we reached the airport the next morning for the long journey home, all the stories had melted in the heat and merged into just one story, one anguished question:
Where indeed, Mr. Gauguin, are we going exactly?
Vaclav Smil’s latest book explores growth in nature and society. It examines the rules and patterns of growth in four key domains, those of the living world; human energy consumption; human artifacts; and human populations, societies and economies.
How can we make our neighborhoods more resilient to disasters and other disruptions? What initiatives and communities can we learn from? How can we turn existing community spaces into resilience hubs that can serve the community in an uncertain future?
In a new book edited with Fernando Vallespín, I explore the links between populist politics and the specific dynamics that emotions trigger in contemporary societies. We investigate the extent to which the global rise of populism and the role of emotions in politics converge on a specific logic – one that goes hand in hand with current forms of communication centered on social media.
