Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As the race to build data centers across the United States accelerates, local governments worry that the tech industry mantra of “move fast and break things” puts their communities at risk of being broken, and Americans are responding to this moment with the power of their voices and votes.
Asking if the world grows enough food is the wrong kind of question. It leads to the wrong kind of answer. We don’t need to produce more food. We need to produce more farms: places where communities of living beings can thrive.
This chapter of the Seeds Series explores “relationality” as a foundation for regenerative cultures, drawing on insights from various interviewees to show how empathy, accountability, place-based belonging, and interdependence can help heal the social and ecological fractures of modern life.
While coffee chains across North America generate mountains of disposable cups and lids every day, Italy’s traditional café culture offers a different model. By serving coffee in reusable cups and encouraging customers to stay rather than rush away, Italian bars show that convenience and sustainability do not have to be at odds.
As Trump’s Iran war devours billions, a Connecticut town closes a public school and shuffles vulnerable kids to plug a budget gap. Drawing on Eisenhower’s warning about “guns” stealing from the hungry and cold, this piece discusses how runaway U.S. militarism quietly wrecks local lives and communities.
In Copenhagen, everyday biking isn’t just transport, it’s a multisensory antidote to screen-bound, AI-driven life. Safe, ‘8–80’ cycling infrastructure fosters real-world connection, community, and a deeper human intelligence rooted in place.
Open, transparent debate is essential for the cooperative movement. Yet in many co-ops, criticism stays private, and praise goes public, leaving members in the dark, weakening collective decision-making, and enabling bad ideas and bad actors to proliferate.
Good Food For All!, a European Citizens’ Initiative supported by a coalition of more than 300 civil society organisations across Europe, including ARC2020, is making important strides in amplifying the messages of the food sovereignty and agroecology movements. But the battle for hearts, minds and policies is still far from won.
Nordic countries used an education system rooted in human ecology and civic formation to build high‑trust, more equal democracies. Could similar changes in U.S. schools help confront inequality, polarization and the climate crisis?
Elections and protest movements may shift public attention, but systemic change depends on building resilient economies capable of replacing the structures now driving inequality and social fragmentation. The solidarity economy, an evolving network of post-capitalist worker-driven coalitions, is what we need.
The border between the human and the non-human is far less clear than we once believed. How might this impact the way we relate to the Earth?
Maybe we are just Irish monks in a new dark age emerging, copying texts for a future generation to decipher. Yet involvement in where we live is the tapestry of who we are.
