Culture & Behavior

To plan for emergency, or not? Heinberg and Hopkins debate

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At the Transition Network conference, Richard Heinberg gave an online presentation looking at the concept of Emergency Planning for Communities … For a while now, Richard and I have been discussing the tension between longer term planning for resilience and the more immediate and pressing responses demanded by sudden and rapid change. It is still an ongoing discussion, but … What follows is the series of email exchanges we have had since late last year.

Star Trek and the future of science fiction

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I don’t know what kind of future movies, television and YouTube have, as improving technology runs up against decreasing energy and economy. I don’t expect them to vanish in the next few decades, though, although they might be available to fewer people. Science fiction fills the top-grossing movie lists and whole sections of the bookstore, and probably won’t go away as a genre either. But what would it look like? If it predicts a future of small farms and small towns — like, say, Mayberry – is it science fiction anymore?

How To Boil A Frog (film review)

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A lively film promoting activism via video that is in itself a sophisticated example of the medium. With a personal narrative from author/activist Jon Cooksey, this is a rapid fire account of five problems that are bringing the human race to the brink of disaster due to ecological deterioration of the planet.

 

Book review: Right Relationship Building a Whole Earth Economy

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“Right Relationship” is a book for the worrying-about-collapse weary. It is a book for those of us who realize the world we live in is in great peril and that something fundamental has to change to ensure the human story continues and flourishes. The book arises from a Quaker tradition which has had remarkable successes in the past – the abolition of slavery being only one noteworthy example.