Media & Communications

How to turn the power of the Wall Street protests into real reforms

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As the Wall Street protests have spread from New York City to the rest of the country, some media pundits have criticized the protesters for being unfocused — as if there were only one thing wrong with the financial sector of the U.S. economy. The protests have provided a welcome response to Wall Street’s massive takeover of governance, and continued opposition to the status quo could produce opportunities to enact real reforms.

#Occupy – BACKGROUND – Oct 23

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– The Economist: Leaderless, consensus-based participatory democracy and its discontents
– Intellectual Roots of Wall St. Protest Lie in Academe
– Athenian Democracy
– A brief history of consensus decision-making (Quakers and pirates)
– Naomi Wolf:The First Amendment and the Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt in a Free Society

Economic Solutions Worth Spreading

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Radical change is happening. Our goal is to guide that change in a direction that brings shared prosperity and justice for this and future generations. We must shift from an economy based on wasteful use of fossil fuels to one based on the careful stewardship of renewable energy. We must shift from an economy based on depleting our inherited trust fund of natural resources and healthy ecosystems to one based on rebuilding them.

What do you do? Writing on the edge

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We don’t talk much about what we do for a living in Transition. So today I was going to write about the “real world” work some of my fellow Transitioners are engaged in, about being a cook, or market gardener or librarian. Then I thought: why am I not writing about myself trying to make a sustainable livelihood from writing?

Course Review (or why Daniel Yergin needs to do his homework)

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Recently I’ve been getting emails from folks who had previously read an article or two on Peak Oil and found the evidence convincing—but who have more recently encountered a piece or two by Daniel Yergin (or another writer following the same train of thought). Their new line of reasoning goes like this:…Just as “fracking” shale gas has been a “game changer” for the natural gas industry, new technologies for accessing tar sands, oil shale, and shale oil…will change the oil game…Now, every element of that argument has already been dealt with at length in the Energy Realist literature. But occasionally a review of previous course material is called for. So here we go…

ODAC Newsletter – Oct 21

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As temperatures dropped in Britain this week, the political heat over rising energy bills intensified. Prime Minister David Cameron hauled in the utility bosses and demanded action. Cameron claimed “everything that can be done will be done to help people bring their energy bills down…

What Occupy Wall Street can learn from the Singing Revolution

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Drawing strength from the rage of the masses is not a formula for longevity, especially in a consumer culture, where rage shifts seasonally…Just ask the veterans of the great uprisings of 1968. We still wonder, what became of our revolution? Rather than being adopted by everyone, it unified the opposition, and while it made some milestones, especially in the popular culture, it missed its political mark by a wide mile.

Can Earth survive another billion people? An interview with Robert Walker

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Happy Birthday humans! At the end of October 2011, the 7th billion person will be born on Earth. With over a billion humans already going to bed hungry every night, this may not be a blessed event.

Just twelve years after we hit the 6 billion mark in 1999, it’s going to a be a lot harder to look after the new arrivals. The extra billion people will find an unstable climate, declining energy and resources, and a host of other challenges.

How to frame yourself: a framing memo for Occupy Wall Street

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It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands.

Why is it easier to imagine the end of the world, than to imagine the end of capitalism?

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It has been clear for several years that the money created during the banking boom was produced from thin air and could never be repaid, yet those amongst the elite who nominally hold this value are refusing to relinquish it now that their bubble has burst.