Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Creating successful Transition groups is not easy, but one of the beauties of the Transition movement is that people often share what works as much as they share what doesn’t. Insights from the experiences Don shares here, his own and that of the wider movement, will make it so much easier for you to get started.
I’ve had a quick read of Labour’s manifesto, so you don’t have to. It is immeasurably weaker than the Greens’ on climate, nature, etc. It is of course superior to the Conservatives’ actually climate-wrecking promises. But that is an incredibly low bar.
Polycrisis vs metacrisis may seem like a distinction without a difference, but Rowson persuaded me that the different words have a different impact on our sense of agency in the face of crisis. ‘Metacrisis’, he argues, is more likely to give us the scope to act.
Near-term population decline via falling fertility may be the most humane way to gift an intact world to countless lives of the future. Ideally, the 8 billion humans around today live full lives and spare future generations (not just humans) of a dismal fate by dialing things down.
There are over 200 million college students in the world. What are we teaching them and what curriculum will be more appropriate for the world we’re heading into? It is my hope that many professors, post-docs and university affiliates around the world experience this synthesis.
By aligning within and across communities, we will amplify our impact and create an unstoppable force for good. While we transition, our communities will provide insulation from shocks and harms along the way.
In the end, something is making these trends go down beyond the model’s awareness, and that something is more likely to still be with us than to suddenly vanish. Perhaps the youth of the world are reacting in a “mature” fashion to the uncertainties of the future, and the justifiable sense that things are broken.
Capitalism is not broken, the environmental, automobile and social mayhem we experience every day are just what it does. Humans deserve better and humans are capable of better. The Primer is here to help.
In August, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed a decree to protect sacred indigenous sites, but for the Wixárika community, the struggle isn’t over.
In this episode, Nate welcomes back Daniel Schmachtenberger to unpack a new paper, which he co-authored, entitled Development in Progress, an analysis on the history of progress and the consequences of ‘advancement’.
So perhaps the narrative of Transition over these 18 years (yes it really has been that long…!) has moved from being about creating catalysts for local resilience to being Time Travel Agencies, who through the work they do, and how they tell stories about what they’ve already done and the potential futures it makes more credible, more within touching distance.
The recent rapid decline in population growth—even pre-COVID—suggests that a population peak prior to 2050 is not outlandish, provided that current drivers continue to apply. Recent declines in fertility rates, together with a flattening age distribution of young folks, combine to set the stage for population peak and decline.
