By Bill McKibben, The Guardian blog
Many people, of course, can’t do without a day’s pay, or work for bosses who who would fire them if they missed work. So it really matters that those of us with the freedom to rally do so. Since I published the first book for a general audience on climate change 30 years ago this month, I’ve had lots of time to think about the various ways to move people to action.
By Samuel Alexander, The Simplicity Collective
The main argument of this essay is that XR and rebellions like it are almost certainly going to grow in coming months and years as more people around the world become politically frustrated, angry, scared, and directly impacted by inaction in the face of today’s overlapping ecological and humanitarian crises.
By Jeremy Lent, Patterns Of Meaning blog
As civilization faces an existential crisis, our leaders demonstrate their inability to respond. Theory of change shows that now is the time for radically new ideas to transform society before it’s too late.
By Immanuel Wallerstein, IWallerstein.com
I insist – the search for the true and the search for the good is but a single quest. If we are to move forward to a world that is substantively rational, in Max Weber’s usage of this term, we cannot neglect either the intellectual or the political challenge. And we cannot segment them into two hermetically‑sealed containers. We can only struggle uneasily with pushing forward simultaneously to coming closer to each of them.
By Gwendolyn Hallsmith, Great Transition Initiative
Perhaps we need to embrace a different kind of power on all levels to provide a timely, effective transformation. Maybe we need a compendium of strategies and practices on all levels to guide an organic and multifaceted cultural shift.
By Marcus Ford, Resilience.org
We need a form of civilization that co-exists with the nine million other species of life on this planet. We need a form of civilization that is socially just and does not equate human happiness and well-being with the endless consumption of material goods. The modern university, as it is currently configured, stands in the way of creating this form of civilization. Rethinking civilization requires rethinking higher education.
By Imogen Malpus, Uneven Earth
Posing a defiant alternative to the Abe government and corporate sustainability, these protesters point to the only possible path forward: Japan must take responsibility for its historical emissions, and use its enormous wealth to help pull the planet back from the brink.
By Rupert Read, Extinction Rebellion
The stakes of course are very, very high, here, because the climate crisis and the broader ecological emergency of which it is only the most urgent part puts the whole of what we know as civilisation at risk. By ‘this civilisation’ I mean the hegemonic civilisation of globalised industrial growth capitalism— sometimes called ‘Empire’—which today governs the vast majority of human life on Earth.
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
Democratic socialism is, I think, at least potentially compatible with, and perhaps even capable of drawing strength from, the small towns and churches of U.S. society.
By Luke Wreford, Paula Haddock, Open Democracy
We don’t view mindfulness as a panacea that will cure the world’s ills. But socially-engaged mindfulness and mindful social action can contribute to addressing our individual and collective challenges.