Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kurt Cobb The climate change denialists have pretty much given up on the idea that there is no climate change or that it is good for us. So, they’re down to arguing that it won’t be that bad and we should just adapt.
Most of what’s kept people in today’s industrial world from coming to grips with the shape and scale of our predicament is precisely the inability to imagine a future that’s actually different from the present.
Scrolling through the website of the World Economic Forum – convening this week in Davos, Switzerland – one might confuse the premier platform for global capital with a savvy and hip think tank, or perhaps a philanthropic aid and development charity. The content is carefully curated to sedate and comfort.
As President Obama prepares to deliver his State of the Union address, he must explain why his administration’s policies on clean energy, climate and environmental goals have not lived up to his own standards.
All these questions are questions of agency: to what extent, if any, can humans be purposeful agents of historical change. This question, I will suggest, has up to now been given something like a free pass in much post-carbon discourse, for reasons that I will explain in depth later.
The treatment of animals, and nature in general, is very different between our modern societies and the remaining indigenous one. We moderns have a lot to learn from the indigenous peoples, and science is tending to agree with them.
Seven technological suites that can be sustained on a very limited resource base, produce goods or services of value even under dark age conditions, and could contribute mightily to the process of rebuilding if they get through the next five centuries or so.
‘After Oil: SF Visions Of A Post-Petroleum World’ is a short story collection edited by John Michael Greer.
Only when we accept that we have a rather limited understanding of the world we live in are we able to act in ways that are prudent for ourselves and our communities and respectful of the Earth and of our fellow beings, human and otherwise.
Lost in a make believe world while we destroy the real one.
Last week’s discussion of failed predictions in the peak oil movement inevitably touched on the latest round of claims that the world as we know it is going to come to a full stop sometime very soon.
