Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Richard Eckersley I have long argued that people’s concerns about modern life and the future have been poorly reflected in politics, and it is this that lies behind the unease and disenchantment in the electorate, not just the conduct of politicians and the merits of specific policies.
What does it mean for a society to have “energy security”? Although there are more than forty different definitions of the concept, they all share the fundamental idea that energy supply should always meet energy demand.
Our globalised world finds itself caught on the horns of a seemingly impossible dilemma – either cease growing, and so collapse the economy on which we all depend, or continue to grow until we overwhelm and destroy the ecosystems on which we all depend.
Our goal presently is to broaden the discourse on energy futures. If we cannot always provide comprehensive answers in the space available, we hope at least to provoke thought about new questions, with the aim of unsettling some assumptions about energy futures presently held with undue confidence.
What could inclusiveness look like in providing sustainable diets to a multicultural population? This question drives my current research, in which I study Syrian migrants in the Netherlands.
This is a book about what it means to be poor. It is a book about what it means to be rural. And it is a book about what it means to be a woman. All three of those things, together, could have meant a very different life for Smarsh.
Cut away the economic niceties and the social cost of carbon is little more than an attempt by a particular hue of economists to put a price on the global scale impacts of climate change from now, throughout this century, and on across centuries to come.
A current book asks Will China Save the Plamet? The author, Barbara Finamore, served as the China representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her story gives first-hand material less for answering this question than for showing how a big country can move from defensive nationalism to global leadership in starting the transition to a green economy.
Fossil fuel interests and their allied governments attend international climate conferences singing of a glorious future of clean growth – but behind the scenes they work to ensure that no binding commitments are made to reduce carbon emissions. According to Donald Gutstein’s new book The Big Stall, the corporate takeover of international climate negotiations goes back nearly 30 years.
The energy turning point is unequivocal. In the years preceding the historic Brexit referendum, and the marked resurgence of nationalist, populist and far-right movements across Europe, the entire continent has faced a quietly brewing energy crisis.
And so we must turn for hope to the many movements of sangharsh (resistance) and nirman (construction) throughout the world. These movements realise that the injustices they are facing, and the choices they must make, are not bound by the divides that ideologues play games with.
Is there something distinctive about an agroecological approach to training and learning? How is learning a part of the struggle for food sovereignty, or other social movements for social justice and sustainability? What examples are there of this in Europe? And how can these projects be supported and developed?
