Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kurt Cobb Writers have previously imagined the dangers of such a moment, but now the democratization of genetic engineering is at hand. The dangers stem in part from our not understanding that we are mistaking a part for the whole. Humans are not just their genes.
With Donald Trump’s decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday, it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American experience in the Greater Middle East, is that it won’t be pretty.
There is no substitute for potable water—despite what economic theory may wish to assert. To get enough of it in many locales will be increasingly expensive as we turn to ever more exotic means to extract water while both population grows and climate-enhanced droughts diminish replenishment of existing sources.
For those worried about Trump, and about populism, it is not enough to mobilize a politics of protest and resistance; it is also necessary to engage in a politics of persuasion. Such a politics must begin by understanding the discontent that is roiling politics in the US and in democracies around the world.
Few have made a more commendable contribution to saving the planet than George Monbiot. His recent book, Out of the Wreckage, continues the effort and puts forward many important ideas…but I believe there are problems with his diagnosis and his remedy. … the main goal is not a town containing nice things like community orchards, nor indeed one with robust community, but a town we run on principles of frugal, cooperative, needs-focused, local self-sufficiency.
Right now humans are not getting the feedback from their own systems needed to set society on a sustainable course. Could an emerging new form of organization change that and provide the structure for making rapid progress on critical issues such as climate change and resource depletion?
The model of the heroic CEO fearlessly leading a company or nonprofit to success is coming to an end as a new model of organization that coordinates the passions of extended groups and focuses them on solving major societal problems emerges. Management consultant John Hagel explains the advent of the organization based on scalable collaboration and learning.
The global village has many similarities to an actual village or small town. Fellow villagers and small town neighbors are much more likely to know about each other’s personal lives (often including many of the intimate details) than those who live in a large city. As McLuhan wrote in 1962: “unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.”
How easy is it to tell the difference between so-called “fake news” and real news? Could algorithms designed to do that exclude important stories about climate and environment?
The migrant caravan making its way through Mexico is not explicitly related to climate change or resource depletion. Yet, it is a small, but visible precursor of great migrations to come related to both problems if we stay on our current trajectory as a global society.
Dramatic declines in bird populations suggest that we are much further along in the so-called Sixth Great Extinction than we imagined. What does it mean for the human future?
The death of a pedestrian during a test drive of a driverless vehicle calls into question not just the technology—which didn’t seem to detect the pedestrian crossing a busy roadway and therefore didn’t brake or swerve—but also the notion that driving is nothing more than a set of instructions that can be carried out by a machine.
