Terrified by ‘Hothouse Earth’? Don’t Despair — Do Something.
Building a world that works for everyone is exactly what we should refocus our efforts on doing when we read scientific studies that scare the hell out of us.
building resilient societies
How Did We Do That? The Possibility of Rapid Transition
How did we do that? The possibility of Rapid Transition, by Andrew Simms and Peter Newell, STEPS Centre & New Weather Institute, 2017 shows what we can learn about rapid change through examples from history and the present day.
The Transition from Capitalism to Feudalism
Historians have spilled a lot of ink on the question of how capitalism supplanted feudalism, but what will happen in the future if by design, default or disaster our present capitalist society is supplanted by a lower energy alternative with more people devoting themselves to the agrarian arts?
How the World Elites are Going to Betray us: Lessons from Roman History
The more I study the story of the Roman Empire, the more I see the similarities with our world. Of course, history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it is impressive to note how with the start of the collapse of the Western Empire, the Roman elites abandoned the people to build themselves strongholds in safe places.
Two Visitors: Bridging the Divide
Truly, this isn’t much on which to build an optimistic view of the current rural-urban divide. Yet as I mentioned in my piece A Great Divide, the hard work of dialog will be left to us — town and country, middle America and the coasts — to create anew a language of respect and understanding.
Crime of the 21st Century: Perpetrators of Apocalypse, or, The Seven Circles of Hell
You and I are witnessing the twenty-first century’s great crime: a global holocaust whose first victims have already perished. Fossil energy economies are doing this. They transform the world into a deathly, suffocating hothouse sabotaging the climate and atmosphere. That’s what they do.
Global Heatwave is Symptom of Early Stage Cycle of Civilisational Collapse
The extreme weather events of the summer of 2018 are not just symptoms of climate breakdown. They are early stage warnings of a protracted process of civilisational collapse as industrial societies face some of the opening symptoms of having already breached the limits of a safe climate.
An Engineer, an Economist, and an Ecomodernist Walk Into a Bar and Order a Free Lunch . . .
With the political-economic road to an ecological civilization seemingly blocked for now, too many of our allies are following detour signs toward dubious industrial and post-industrial fixes. The mother of invention is the quest for new markets, and, as Thorstein Veblen once quipped, it’s invention that’s the mother of necessity.
State, Capital, and Ecology: A Report to the International Marxist-Humanist Organization
To be sure, ecological calamity will not permit an organized, equitable, and civilized global community. Marxist Humanists and others would like to add, “it doesn’t come from one, either.”
Human Predators, Human Prey – Part 1
Could we use predator-prey relationships among widely divergent species in nature as a metaphor to help in understanding the behavior of people in complex human societies, in which some people gain at the expense of others?
Climate Breakdown: Where is the Left?
For some on the left, environmental justice remains as important to their DNA as any other type of justice: their heart always has been, and still is, firmly in it. But more generally, some things still feel a bit… lacking.
Owning the Future: Strategies for a Democratic Economy
Ownership matters. Who owns and controls the productive wealth of nations and communities is fundamental to how an economic system operates and in whose interests.
