Better Work Together: Reflections from a Nascent Movement
There is a movement on the rise that it is leveraging the power of community, networks, and participation to work on systemic challenges.
Act: Inspiration
Bologna, the City with a ‘Civic Imagination Office’
In Bologna, a new approach to engagement and civic action is emerging, rooted in the imagination. One driver for this shift is the realisation we are living in what Michele calls “a distrust era”, where people don’t trust public administrations, NGOs, or private businesses.
Welcome to Crazy Town
Once you’ve started feeling the heaviness of humanity’s collision course with the climate and other life-support systems of our planet, how do you handle it?
Designing Climate Solutions – a Big-Picture View that Doesn’t Skimp on Details
Let us pause for a moment of thanks to the policy wonks, who work within the limitations of whatever is currently politically permissible and take important steps forward in their branches of bureaucracy. Let us also give thanks to those who cannot work within those limitations, and who are determined to transform what is and is not politically permissible.
Local Communities Taking on Big Oil
These communities—South Deering, Pilsen, and Little Village—all keep fighting back. The support of groups like the Sierra Club and Pilsen Alliance, standing in solidarity with them, makes them even stronger. As Cheryl Johnson said to me, it is important to “follow what you believe is wrong to try and make it right.” And that’s just what these communities are doing.
Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat
I’m with you when you say that climate change is the most important issue facing humankind. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s the most important one ever. But, when I hear folks say—and I have heard it—that the environmental movement is the first in history to stare down an existential threat, I have to get off the train.
Food from the Radical Center: Excerpt
While the subject of this story is what we may call biocultural, eco-culinary, or reciprocal restoration, it is quite often enabled through a social process that has been called either community-based restoration, collaborative conservation, or cooperative collaboration.
The Worst Reason to Oppose the Green New Deal
I would even venture that climate change is becoming one of the topics most talked about—or like religion and politics not to be talked about—around dinner tables. I credit the rising tide of youth activism for this rather sudden reversal of fortune.
When the Water Runs Out
We must hold ourselves accountable for our actions before it is too late to prevent catastrophic collapse. When the water runs out we have no one to blame but ourselves.
After Mass Mobilizations, what Direction for the Belgian Climate Movement?
We already have many climate protests now in Belgium. What we especially need now are some good debates and analyses about what direction the climate movement in Belgium (and other countries) should take.
Real Billions and Real Trillions
In terms of money and the flow of capital through complex securities, millisecond computer trades, and financial institutions that are Too Big To Fail, trillions means mind-numbing. In terms of microbes and life in the soil, trillions means teeming.
Rethink Activism in the Face of Catastrophic Biological Collapse
Here are a few stories about adaptation, to give a feel for actions that flow out of this type of hope — a hope that includes a hard-won acceptance of the very real possibility of impending collapse.
