Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Richard Heinberg Richard Heinberg reviews the growth-versus-degrowth debate, explores the wide range of degrowth objectives and strategies, and lays out why advocating for voluntary degrowth makes sense now, even if nature-imposed contraction will come first.
Environmental journalist/podcaster Rachel Donald interviews Gaya Herrington, an internationally recognized sustainability researcher and economist, about the limits to growth and the role of businesses in making a global transformation to a wellbeing economy.
Peter Victor is one of the world’s foremost post-growth theorists. In this Q&A article, Richard Heinberg gathers insights from Peter about what will be needed to downsize the economy toward a sustainable scale.
This collection provides ideas (in the form of books, journals, podcasts, and other sources), organizations, and even entertaining media that can help you understand the economics of sustainability, the degrowth movement, and the transition away from capitalism and consumerism.
Program Director at Post Carbon Institute, Rob Dietz, hosts a participatory discussion session with Anitra Nelson, degrowth scholar and activist and author of many books about degrowth and the systemic changes needed to make the shift to a post-capitalist, post-consumerist economy.
Environmental journalist Rachel Donald hosts a conversation with Jason Hickel, internationally known degrowth researcher and advocate, and Nia Evans and Cierra Peters of the Boston Ujima Project, which focuses on creating a community-controlled economy.
Gather around the campfire for a ghost story about the most destructive monster in history: civilization. Through the book “Against His-Story, Against Leviathan,” we’ll explore how authoritarianism first took root in the world’s earliest cities—and how those ancient systems still shape modernity.
Political polarization, particularly in the United States, is being inflamed by structural forces, including the dominance of two parties and winner-take-all representation. Lee Drutman, senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America, speaks on reforms like proportional representation and multi-member districts, and why we should view democracy more like a living, evolving ecosystem than a problem to fix.
In the spring of 1992, twenty-four-year-old Christopher McCandless left society behind, hitchhiking 3,000 miles into the Alaskan wilderness. We’ll explore McCandless’s legacy, the conflict between self and society, community and solitude, and the concept of “wilderness.”
Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow and author Richard Heinberg interviews David Stasavage, author of The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today. David summarizes polarization and capacity to deal with crises in democracies and autocracies, discusses the challenge of scale in modern democracies, and shares how past democracies like Athens and the Iroquois Confederacy dealt with polarization.
Bringing up the Earth’s growing human population (and its associated impacts) is not something you typically do in polite circles. If you do introduce the topic of overpopulation, even among staunch environmentalists, you risk being called all sorts of undignified names.
Jennifer McCoy, professor of political science at Georgia State University and nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discusses the influence of “political entrepreneurs” and the implications of a world facing increasing resource constraints, which can exacerbate polarization and conflict within and between nations. Professor McCoy offers examples of nations that overcame pernicious polarization and points to “win-win” strategies for navigating the 21st century’s challenges.
