Joel Stronberg

The 2020s Through Partisan Lenses— What Will It Mean for Climate Change?

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2020 is already promising to be a watershed political year for national climate change policy. A failed UN summit in Madrid, new reports updating and confirming climate science studies, student strikes, a continent on fire, and the prominence of climate in the presidential race will all be in evidence throughout the year. The confluence of so many reminders that climate change is both real and already upon us means there will never be a better opportunity to put the nation on a sustainable path forward.

How a Decade of Disillusion Gave Way to People Power

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The nonviolent strategist George Lakey argues that polarisation brings clarity and a volatility that makes positive change more possible. We have the polarisation and the disillusionment, and with perspective about how we got here and when we won, we can claim the possibilities in the decade to come.

The Future of Wheat

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“It’s important that we take care to do things right, not to rush, and to make sure that the power in these new economies is equitable, There is always the danger of re-building the old system and re-commodifying these precious seeds.”

Open Letter to Fridays For Future. It’s Time for Action, but, what Action?

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Dear Fridays For Future activists:

I am writing to you as a member of a research group from a Spanish University that has been working on issues of sustainability, energy and climate change for more than ten years. I am doing this because I think that, as you say, it is time for action in the face of the climatic emergency, but I also think that it is necessary to be very clear about what kind of action is necessary.

Stanford Study Says Renewable Power Eliminates Argument for Using Carbon Capture with Fossil Fuels

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New research from Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson questions the climate and health benefits of carbon capture technology against simply switching to renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Carbon capture technology is premised on two possible approaches to reducing climate pollution: removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere anywhere in the world, an approach generally known as direct air capture, or removing it directly from the emissions source, such as the smoke stack of a fossil fuel power plant.

The Just Transition, Economic Democracy, and the Green New Deal

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Two recent books takeup the challenges of radical social and institutional transformation to make a GND maximally effective. One outlines the requirements for a maximally participatory democracy, but raises questions about its ideological valences; the other outlines a multilayered effort in one US city, leaving us with questions about organizational capacity to pull off the GND. Inasmuch as these works draw mainly on non-US examples, they magnify the challenges that remain here.

Corporations in the Crosshairs: From Reform to Redesign

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Transnational corporations, the engines of global capitalism, have become the target of efforts to create an economic system both socially just and environmentally sustainable. The unprecedented power and impact of these leviathans on society and ecology raises critical questions: What is corporate purpose? To whom should corporations be held accountable? And how, in fact, can that be accomplished?

Why I Spent Christmas on the Moon

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I returned from my time there with some thoughts, some reflections, which I hope will prove useful in the battles that lie ahead, in the ongoing uphill push to wrestle our future back from insane men who feel it is OK to dash headlong into creating the conditions in which we no longer have one. And a future that could be so, so beautiful.

Shifting from Industrial Agriculture to Diversified Agroecological Systems in China

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Ecological agriculture – food production following the ecological principles with reduced or no use of chemicals – is being increasingly adopted by an emerging group of agricultural entrepreneurs. Driven by consumer interest in safe and healthy food, various ecological food initiatives such as organic and “green” food companies, farmers’ cooperatives, community supported agriculture, and ecological farmers’ markets have been taking root in China in the past decade.

Climate Change and the Attention Economy

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The questions posed by the ecological crises – notably the climate emergency – are a series of provocations. These questions drive us back not only to intimate connections between our actions and the fate of the earth and our atmosphere, but to the intimate realm of our attention and capacity to care both individually and collectively.

Reading Aloud

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Despite the fact that I am recommending shorter school days and fewer subjects, I am convinced that reading aloud should be a big part of every class plan.

Reading and writing are a fundamental part of the curriculum, and have been for many centuries, we know that; but we forget how unnatural they are.