Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I want to speak to those who feel…either confounded or bludgeoned and “powerless” facing the intransigence of modern civilization to recognize overshoot and the limits to growth. I speak also to those who have a seemingly contrary reaction: flickers of intrepidness and hope despite recognition of enormous obstacles and dilemmas…
The Break Even Ecological Footprint (BEEF) concept provides a quantitative answer to the question of how long a Western IHE/SCD professional would have to live at a local, developing community Ecological Footprint level in order to offset the CO2 they emitted by air travel to the field.
Filmmaker Peter Byck believes that the issue of preserving the environment is truly non-partisan, that when you strip away all the political rhetoric and carefully-crafted media narratives, we all really want the same thing: clean air, clean water and cheap energy.
I’d like to suggest that from now on, any claim about the future needs to be confronted up front by the two hard questions…
When you think about it, it’s really rather odd that so many people nowadays should be so hostile to the suggestion that history moves in circles.
Fear. It’s that chill that creeps up your spine. That awful, churning hot knot, deep in the pit of your stomach. The tremble that makes your hands feel powerless. The freeze-up, that tempts you to inaction.
The predictable response to any suggestion that the past might have anything useful to say about the future is – it’s different this time…
"If you really grasp the idea that this is not suddenly going to turn around, in six months or a year, you begin to look at your life very differently," says Dr. Kathy McMahon, clinical psychologist and self-named "Peak Shrink."
•Alex Laskey: How behavioral science can lower your energy bill •The Death and Life of Chicago •’The Power of Just Doing Stuff •’Where will all the traffic go?
There’s a mordant irony in the fact that a society as fixated on the future as ours is should have so much trouble thinking clearly about it.
This morning, I turned on the radio to be greeted with the news that 60% of the species in my country are in decline…There was a five-minute discussion about this on the news programme before the agenda moved on to more important topics.
We live in a culture that wants only the upbeat response, the story with the happy ending. We marginalize people who express anger or grief about the impossible predicament we’re in
