Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Phil Jensen Thomas Jefferson died 198 years ago on the 4th of July, but we really shouldn’t wait two more years to notice, and take to heart, an important argument in political/economic philosophy that Jefferson made in a letter to James Madison dated 6 September 1789.
In 1989, the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre developed a new model of democratic participation, which has become known internationally as participatory budgeting (PB). Through this process, community members directly decide how to spend a portion of a public budget. In other words, the people who pay taxes (all of us) decide how they get spent.
An Alberta study recently published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters highlights the transport of toxic coal dust downwind over the Rocky Mountains into southern Alberta’s watersheds and communities.
This is the second in the Metastatic Modernity video series of about 17 installments (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous episode afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This episode provides a cosmological perspective on our insignificance.
The six conservative justices on the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) have once again chosen to ignore decades of precedence—this time in the cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. US Department of Commerce.
There’ve been two seismic events in British public life in the last couple of weeks. One was the general election. The other, of course, was the publication anniversary of my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future.
If nothing else, I hope these few indulgent personal reflections on communicative resilience and creative resilience will have encouraged you to find and/or express your own voice in this world-in-crisis, and in whatever way(s) you feel most compelled and/or comfortable to do so.
If we were to demand our fair share, if we were to refuse to give away our lives and bodies and freedom to choose, if we were to abandon this class to a real and true independence with nothing taken from us, then this culture would end. It is that fragile. It is that unreal. It is a sham.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on governments to ban fossil fuel advertising and warned creative agencies to stop working for the industry.
Alternative grains are becoming increasingly crucial in transforming the food system as producers and consumers appreciate the value of biodiverse, organic, and agroecological produce.
On this planet, life is central, as breath by breath we are reminded. So it is with Earth’s climate. Our language, our science, our conversations, our media reports, our poems, our songs, our demands should reflect that.
When the economy is way too big, the stresses and strains are too much for a liberal democracy to handle. That leaves the steady state economy, at an optimal level, as the greatest hope for maintaining the ideals of liberal democracy.
