Sustainability can (and must) be beautiful
To fulfill the vision that sets the practice of sustainability in motion—the vision of life coordinating with life in ways that ensure the flourishing of life—ethics and aesthetics must be reintegrated.
beauty
Episode 58 What Could Possibly Go Right?: John de Graaf
John de Graaf is an author, award-winning documentary filmmaker, speaker, and activist “with a mission to help create a happy, healthy and sustainable quality of life for America.” He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
A Conservative for Our Time
I have come to believe that Udall was actually in many ways, a conservative whose creative ideas may help point America’s way forward in a turbulent, polarized, and destructive time. Above all, Udall was devoted to conserving the land and the beauty of the American landscape.
Nature Is Intentionally Beautiful
For the foreseeable future, we will have our hands full getting past the ugliness of cultural disintegration. We’ll need whatever morsels of beauty we can preserve or produce just to keep ourselves sane.
Campaigning for Bread and Roses
The old word “beauty” speaks to our hearts as more academic or bureaucratic terms cannot. I am especially persuaded by the power of the word to cross lines of political polarization. As, I believe, is the concept of Bread and Roses!
Speak the Name of Beauty
It is important to make the connection between beauty and nature obvious and to name beauty as the quality in nature we so desire. If we don’t, we continue allegiance to the very paradigm that has been so destructive of the human-nature relations, the paradigm that erased value from the natural world and made beauty nothing more than a subjective opinion.
A California City That’s Taking Beauty Seriously
Bob Sampayan believes in the transformational power of beauty. Now in his sixties, Sampayan is the mayor of Vallejo, California, a primarily working-class city at the north end of San Francisco Bay.
So What about Beauty?
We can focus on building beautiful places but, as we say here at Strong Towns, financial solvency is a prerequisite to doing good.
Where Do We Find Beauty in a Landscape?
A settled landscape can be beautiful only in so far as it admits room for wild nature.
A Remedy for Nature Deficit Disorder
Our youth have little opportunity to bond with nature. Bombarded with technology that, sadly, discourages outdoor activities, they need encouragement and assistance getting outside.
Political Analysis – Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth
Richard Heinberg discusses the impact energy development on the environment along with ideas for transforming the energy narrative.
Energy Reality: What We’re For
Recognizing that all human economic activity is a subset of nature’seconomy and must not degrade its vitality is the starting point for systemic transformation of the energy system.