Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Richard Heinberg In a time of such ferment, most socio-political forecasts are foolhardy. However, I’ll venture one: the least likely outcome for America is a return to the liberal, secular, consumerist order that characterized the post-WWII decades.
The urban farm is no longer a cloistered site of food production within the environs of the city, instead, it’s a fundamental part of the urban fabric.
Let me start with something to dispel the confusion about what models are for. When you deal with complex, adaptive systems, models are NOT meant to predict the future.
In an era rocked by environmental, economic, and political upheaval, our communities must be resilient to survive and thrive. But what does resilience mean, exactly?
In the summer of 2016 the global imagination was consumed by monsters…I am talking about Pokémon, Japan’s most successful international brand, which once again stormed onto the cultural stage with the release of its first “augmented reality” (AR) video game for smartphones.
The word “mafia” immediately calls to mind menacing figures engaging in shady business. The Budapest Bike Maffia has something completely different in mind.
Last Thursday Mark Zuckerberg published a long piece called ‘Building a Global Community’. In it he explained that his company could help ‘develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.’ The effect was unnerving.
The fight to tackle climate change has two core branches: mitigation (curbing excessive greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation (addressing the effects of climate change that are already unfolding). But although both areas are needed, the public tends to focus on the former in discussions on climate change.
Abalimi Bezekhaya is an organization focused on using urban agriculture to develop and improve food insecure communities in and around Cape Town, South Africa. Operating for more than 30 years, the organization has helped dozens of communities improve their health and lifestyles.
The philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, which we’ve been discussing for the last two weeks, has a feature that reliably irritates most people when they encounter it for the first time: it doesn’t divide up the world the way people in modern western societies habitually do.
This is a three-part series based on an idea I recently had around the subjects of farming, black swans, and creating a product that can help insure against risk.
With Donald Trump’s election and the rising perils of war, climate upheaval, accelerating inequality, and civil unrest, some of the richest people in the United States are making escape plans.
