Deep thought – Feb 18
Missing: the ‘right’ babies
Hierarchy is the result of dependency
Entropy is the problem, not energy
Culture & Behavior
United States: criticism/self-criticism session
Are Americans hostile to knowledge?
The dumbing of America
The US state of denial
The former United States of America
Saving the world starts at home
New York Times on eco-moms
Sharon Astyk on ‘Pleasures’
Generation Green taking on parents
Going green for 80 cents a day
The lure of the city
The history of the 19th and 20th centuries could fairly be characterized as the history of urbanization. Will the history of the 21st century be more of the same?
Seize the day – Threshold moments and the hope for change
We have only to look at historical events to see that it is perfectly possible, for both good and ill, to radically change circumstances in a host of ways that looked completely impossible not very long before.
The little steps that matter
As we move deeper into the twilight of the petroleum age, grand pronouncements and proposals for massive “solutions” abound. Far more useful, if less noticed, are simple, scalable, low-energy technologies that could make a big difference in the unraveling of industrial society.
Climate mobilization: suddenly a dam breaks
Interview with climate scientist Susanne Moser: “A dam works well and for a long time, until one day it breaks. A social movement builds slowly and quietly, until one day it takes off and major political changes become possible. We’re witnessing the building of such a climate protection movement right now.”
A death in the family
A tragedy, like the dead chickadee in the photo, seems small compared to what is happening in the calamitous world we live in now, but not to me.
Peak oil and The Limits to Growth: two parallel stories
Marion King Hubbert and Jay Wright Forrester, working independently, set the basis for a new science. They were not the first to study the limits of the world’s resources. But they were the first to do that using mathematical models that could be extrapolated into the future.
Dave Cohen’s suburban savanna
There may be an instinctual basis for our love of suburbia, one that may be hard to break through even as the cheap oil which has made suburbia possible disappears.
Deep thought – Feb 10
Alex Steffen: Jim Hansen, Climate Code Red and the atmospheric singularity
Carolyn Baker: Holding vision alongside current reality
Dmitri Orlov: Money as metaphor
The (un?) sustainability of growth
More, more, more – Feb 10
Retail therapy: Does sadness mean spending?
My cortex made me buy it
Slow sex: Moving toward informed pleasure
The perpetual state of desire that we call ‘human nature’
The ecological economy
