“A Simple Boy from the Prairie”

By Robert Jensen, Resilience.org

Let’s start with what’s fairly clear: There is no hope that a population of eight billion people with the current level of aggregate consumption today can continue indefinitely.

George Monbiot on the Unholy Trinity of Ideologies Trashing our Planet

By George Monbiot, Brendan Montague, Open Democracy

Monbiot argues that capitalism now is neoliberal capitalism. And, unusually, that capitalism and consumerism are ideologies as much as neoliberalism is. “Part of the insidious power of these ideologies is that they are the water in which we swim - the plastic soup in which we swim. They are everywhere.

Retire Early… To Save the Planet?

By Kara Stiff, Low-Carbon Life

But if we plan to reduce our consumption before it happens to us, if we plan to have more time and human energy to give away rather than sell, the impact is softened. If we direct our focus towards making connections and building resilience, and away from making money and buying things, we will all be better off than we otherwise would have been.

Juxtapositions

By Rob Dietz, Resilience.org

We could all be a little happier, a little healthier, and a little more centered. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to decide between putting on my hockey gear and heading over to Walmart or putting on my hockey gear and playing a game with my daughter and her friends. Tough choice, eh? Happy holidays to you and yours!

Avoiding Excess this Festive Season

By Chris Warburton Brown, Permaculture Association

Christmas puts a big strain on our carbon budgets, our wallets and our stress levels. So why not try a low-carbon, low-budget, low-stress Christmas? It might actually be more fun.

Buy Nothing Ever…er, I Mean Day

By Asher Miller, Resilience.org

This Black Friday we’re inviting everyone to join us and our friends at Adbusters in celebrating “Buy Nothing Day.” We’re not asking you to become a Grinch, or completely abstain from Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever form of gift giving ritual you and yours celebrate. But maybe take a pass on this most egregious day of consumeristic binging.

Money Can’t (and Shouldn’t) Buy Happiness: Producers, Consumers, and the Consumptive Mindset

By Jake Marble, Resilience.org

Copiously, ludicrously, we deface our lands, displace our brother hawks and sister mice, and destroy our links to the ecological communities that fabric our very being. Life is consumption, and, I suppose, consumption is life. But we have strayed so far from whence we came.

Home Revolution

By Dominique Krayenbuhl, Myriapode

In summary, we have on the one hand, scientists insisting that the biosphere is being gravely disrupted by our excesses; on the other hand economists telling us that if growth stops, the economy collapses. So what is the civically minded citizen to make out of this?

A Stronger Dose of Medicine Needed to Cure Affluenza: Review

By Jonathan Rutherford, Resilience.org

In Curing Affluenza Australian economist, Richard Denniss puts forward proposals to tackle “that strange desire we feel to spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t know”. This disease of ‘affluenza,’ he argues, “is economically inefficient… the root cause of environmental destruction and… global inequality”...But in my view his diagnosis, as well as the proposed remedies, are far too mild to adequately deal with our societal ills.

Averting the Apocalypse: Lessons from Costa Rica

By Jason Hickel, Local Futures

A beautiful Central American country known for its lush rainforests and stunning beaches, Costa Rica proves that achieving high levels of human wellbeing has very little to do with GDP and almost everything to do with something very different.

Waste Not, Want Not

By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul

The annual holiday celebrations have arrived and it seems a good time to think about what we are really celebrating.  It seems the historic and religious significance of these holidays have been overshadowed by consumerism.  Thanksgiving and Christmas have become celebrations of consumption filled with opportunities to eat, drink, and make merry with food and gifts. 

The Tyranny of Enlightenment

By Patrick Noble, Feasta

Without further enlightenment, we know that we must stop burning both fossilised biomass and living biomass. Further accumulation of knowledge does not help with the question, what should I do? We know that our fossil fuelled way of life is impossible. We cannot improve, or green it. It must be abandoned.