Society

Bike Breakthrough: Connecting Neighborhoods with Low-Stress Routes

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For me, a good bike ride is both relaxing and stimulating—a chance to revel in the passing scenery as I feel the wind blow across my face. But I never expected to experience this in New York City.  Navigating Brooklyn and a bit of Manhattan on two wheels for the first time was a sublime surprise. Instead of constantly peering over my shoulder fearful of cars speeding toward me (as I expected), I actually savored the street life all around while pedaling through town.  

Building Tactical Resilience

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According to Michael Berkowitz, “Cities can’t just build resilience out of thin air—they need the right tools to do it.” So-called tactical resilience is the application of the tactical urbanism methodology to projects that do not just make cities better places to live, but that specifically address communities’ resilience challenges.

Inside the Doughnut

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It’s surely preferable to present a sober and systematic unpicking of the mechanics of political power and economic provisioning that can clarify alternative endpoints, than to regale the reader with upbeat stories of how things may just turn out well. At its best, Raworth’s book does some good unpicking. But it still leaves us a long way from home.

After the Hurricane

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In any case, some people here lived without electricity even into this century, and we only got internet at our house in the last few years. If the phones went down or the power went out, I suspect, many older people here would shrug and get on with their business. It’s going to be a healthy attitude in the years to come, as I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this.

Beyond Temptation: Addiction and Basic Income

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One of the persistent criticisms of the Universal Basic Income is that it would either entice people to purchase addictive substances, such as alcohol, or enable existing addictions through the added cash benefit. Dr. Katarzyna Gajewska, an independent scholar researching the UBI, has studied this question in the past. Her unique insights deserve further exploration.

Being Salmon, Being Human: Preface

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We inhabitants of industrial civilization still live inside a human-centered story. The story articulates itself in the ways we speak, what we think, how we listen, what we hear. It expresses itself in the physical forms of our life-worlds, in our legal, political, and economic institutions. It gives structure to the way we conceive of and inhabit both space and time. It shapes our encounters with other-than-human living creatures, as well as with the larger planetary presence. This is the story of the human as a separate self.

There’s Only One Way to Avoid Climate Catastrophe: ‘De-growing’ our Economy

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Here’s the hard bit. It’s just not possible to achieve emissions reductions of 8-10 per cent per year by decarbonising the economy. In fact, there is a strong scientific consensus that emissions reductions of this rate are only feasible if we stop our mad pursuit of economic growth and do something totally unprecedented: begin to scale down our annual production and consumption. This is what ecologists call ‘planned de-growth’.

Monbiot: ‘We Need that New Political Narrative’

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Prompted by the sense that we are living through a moment of transition, George’s latest book, ‘Out Of The Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis’, attempts to sketch a way forward. Most important to this project, he argues, is a political ‘narrative’ that can gain traction as the new ‘common sense’, carrying within it our values and the society that we want live in. But the book is also full of practical proposals, from land value taxes and community land trusts, to democratic reforms and ‘Big Organizing’.

The Community Resilience Reader: Radio Ecoshock interview

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“Resilience” is a key word for a spectrum starting with collapseniks all the way to big city Mayors and regional planners. But what is it? Has anybody thought this through? Enter The Community Resilience Reader from the Post Carbon Institute. It’s billed as “Essential Resources for an Era of Upheaval”. We’ve certainly got the upheaval.

A Field Guide to Thoughtstoppers

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The question is why a species with the tolerably impressive intellectual capacities we’ve got has done such a bad job of applying those capacities in the face of civilization-ending threats. From this perspective, our problem can be phrased very precisely: the vast majority of people in today’s industrial world have never learned how to think.

Smoke from California’s Raging Wildfires Spreads a Public Health Emergency across the Bay

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As you might have heard, those of us who live in the Bay Area are breathing air this week that rivals Beijing’s, thanks to the fires raging across Northern California. West Oakland deals with bad air quality all the time, so I reached out to some folks there seeking perspective.