Setting free our history
In the wake of superstorm Sandy and a presidential election in which both candidates essentially ignored climate change, it’s time that our schools began to play their part in creating climate literate citizens.
Society
Nurturing Innovation — Helping build a resilient Japan
I’m on my way home to Kyoto for a brief visit before returning for a for five final days of work in Fukushima. Deep learning continues for me and for all of us as we discover how to support communities in Tohoku in creating a new future.
Deep thought-Dec 6
•Welcome To The New Normal: Poor, Not Special, But Here And Not There
•Feed the Hunger
•The Cloud: What are we doing to our minds?
Consuming Democracy
For most of a year now, my posts here on The Archdruid Report have focused on the nature, rise, and impending fall of America’s global empire. It’s been a long road and, as usual, it strayed in directions I wasn’t expecting to explore when this sequence of posts began last winter. Still, as I see it, we’ve covered all the core issues except one, and that’s the question of what can and should be done as the American empire totters to its end.
A city lover’s guide to Detroit
I always avoided Detroit. I expected to be depressed by seeing a once-grand place battered by economic disinvestment and all-for-the-auto urban planning. But in visiting the city for the first time, I saw examples of perseverance and creativity that stirred my soul.
Sustainable cities? – Dec 5
•Imagining Cities That Can Save The Planet: Alex Steffen Talks About Carbon Zero •Wean transport off fossil fuels, or grind to a halt •Build inter-city cooperation to stave off resource fights – experts •Sustainable cities will be more resilient in extreme weather
Revenge of the amateur: the future of culture after peak oil
This weekend…I went to see a performance of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito…And I was uncomfortable. It’s not because I was bored with the opera. I was uncomfortable because of peak oil.
Since you have to change anyway, you might as well have fun
That would have been the title of _Making Home_ except it is way, way too wordy, but that’s the gist of my book – that we don’t have a choice but to change our way of life, so we might as well find the best possible way to do it.
Conflict and Change in the Era of Economic Decline: Part 1 – The 21st century landscape of conflict
In this essay, which will appear in five installments, I hope to explore some of the social implications of simplification and decentralization. Will wars and revolutions break out with ever-greater frequency?…Or will local food networks and Occupy groups positively transform society from the ground up?
Want to fight climate change? Start by turning to your neighbors
History is full of cases where the people got active on the big problems of their day by forming affinity groups of 10 to 20 individuals. These groups provide energy, organization, and even psychological support.
Coming down the Dark Mountain
Most campaign groups have a single focus, but Transition has many (87 Ingredients and tools for starters) – food and economics, inner work and group dynamics. Instead of putting energy into confronting the business-as-usual mindset of the industrialised world, it puts it into building social and practical infrastructures for a future when that mindset begins to lose its grip on reality. Backed by a network of similar initiatives in cities and towns in the UK and elsewhere it can provide a secure base from which to proceed.
The unknown unknowns of the monoculture
A patient suffering of lateral neglect won’t "see" one side of the world, won’t draw it, and won’t touch it. When asked why, the patient will answer that it was not important or that there was no reason to consider it; never that he or she couldn’t perceive it. … It’s often been misinterpreted as "stupid people don’t realize that they are stupid". No, it is a much wider effect and it hits intelligent people in particular. It is typical of very intelligent people to be unable to realize their limits.
