The following is adapted from a post to an email discussion list: Regarding last week's post to this list on ecological economics, I alluded to but didn't go into detail on a fundamental concern about a basic assumption - growth - in the anthropogenic climate change models (source for the quotation below - http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/05/23/oil-limits-and-climate-change/).
According to a report yesterday in Bloomberg Businessweek, former 2012 Republican Presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were very close to forming a “Unity Ticket” back in February of 2012, in an effort to knock Mitt Romney out of nomination contention. After Santorum claimed the Iowa caucus and three other primaries in early February, the talk of forming a...
A leader in the revolutionary left in the US should feel like a fox in a chicken coop. Increasingly large capitalists (Walmart, Enron, Wall-Street) are being exposed as so destructive to our society. The Bush administration created global chaos and suffering. Attacks on democratic rights are expanding. Thoughtful people in all strata of our society realize that there are dangerous trends that...
Our little group of a dozen families was running out of time. After meeting every weekend for three years to plan our hoped-for cohousing community, and after investing much of our savings to acquire a few acres of land, it looked as though our dream would fail. We couldn’t find a bank that would finance a cooperative. It was our local credit union that saved us...
As regular readers of this blog know, I have in previous posts commented on hunter-gatherers' playfulness ; their playful religious practices ; their playful approach toward productive work ; their non-d
Seeing gurneys of babies trundled through the chiaroscuro of old black-and-white footage at the start of Scott Noble’s Human Resources, the gurneys in the tunnels of God only knows what kind of institution, the viewer does well to brace herself for the coming onslaught. The piano accompaniment is not so much music as it is the hammering of wires in the industrial mode, a harbinger...
Crossroads: Labor Pains of a New Worldview is an exciting and surprisingly uplifting new documentary about the role of ideology in finding solutions to the urgent global crises humankind faces in the 21 st century.
This article proposes issuing Hour-denominated currency nationwide, to stimulate creative and ecological economies, make grants to community groups, and make interest-free loans. Twenty years ago I started printing money. Soon after, residents of Ithaca, New York, began exchanging colorful cash featuring children, waterfalls, trollies and bugs. Since then, millions of dollars worth of...
2012 was another big year for break-out films in the social change genre. With most of the bases covered for all of the major problems we're facing, more and more films this year focused on the solutions side of the equation, giving a voice to the uplifting stories of people working to realize their dreams of a thriving, sustainable world. For the films that focused on the...
Beach Cleanup in Petitenget Beach Cleanup in Petitenget For those of you that have been to Bali, you know it's a beautiful island with a dirty little secret. Lots of trash. When I arrived in Bali in Novembe
My ecological journey started in the forests of the Himalaya. My father was a forest conservator, and my mother became a farmer after fleeing the tragic partition of India and Pakistan. It is from the Himalayan forests and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology. The songs and poems our mother composed for us were about trees, forests, and India’s forest...
The End of Polio is within reach. Together, we can make it reality. Our generation stands on the brink of eradicating the second human disease in history. Polio - a disease which has disabled millions and pulled individuals further into poverty - has been reduced by 99% over the past 30 years, and its end is within our reach. Global efforts have delivered incredible progress...
If Mohandas Gandhi were a typical North American activist these days, he would probably be wearing a three-piece suit and working in a plush office with his law degree prominently displayed. He would have little time to lead protests, since every other week would be spent meeting with donors – and those power lunches would hardly go well with fasting. He would be careful to avoid salt...
The global Occupy movement is much more than an economic or political movement. Occupy is a consciousness-expanding phenomenon. The same people who mocked us before Occupy started, and said that there would never be a non-violent civil disobedience movement throughout the US, are now the same people saying that Occupy was a once in a lifetime or generational event. What these people fail to...
Utah State University presented a first-of-its-kind electric bus that is charged through wireless charging technology in a demonstration Nov. 15. Image source: Utah State University
In Brief : There will be at least 100 million more Americans by 2050, and likely 150 million more. Yet the cities that will house them are so spatially and economically unstable that it is impossible to do much beyond superficial sustainability planning. One solution is to anchor and recycle wealth in communities, using locally owned businesses as bulwarks against uncontrolled economic forces...
For those of you who are curious exactly how Richard Register's ideas would work in practice, here's what it could look like if Americans ever decided to retrofit their downtowns for true sustainability. We know how to build the ecocity. It's easy if you want to: up-zone for more density and diversity in the centers and withdraw from sprawl. We are replete with tools. The starting...
Device Uses Solar Energy to Convert Carbon Dioxide into Fuel April 17, 2007 By Sherry Seethaler CO2 splitting semiconductor/catalyst device under construction (gallium phosphide wafer with metal contacts) Credit: Aaron Sathrum, UCSD Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated the feasibility of exploiting sunlight to transform a greenhouse gas into a useful product.
A plant-based diet: good for us & for the planet Author | Dr Rosemary Stanton, Nutritionist Most people are aware of the vital roles that vegetables, fruits, wholegrains and nuts can play in a healthy diet. And yet, meat eaters get prickly and many doctors and dietitians tack warnings onto any discussion of vegetarian diets.
What single change stands to give Americans more free time, healthier ecosystems, and more meaningful jobs? We tend to see growth as an unalloyed good, but an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again. Economic growth may be the world’s secular religion, but for most it is a god that is failing—underperforming for most of the world’s people, and...
Daniel Quinn is the author of many works including The Story of B , My Ishmael , and Beyond Civilization . His first book, Ishmael , was published in 1992. Since its release as the winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, it has gone on to great success, and been read by millions. It has inspired new ideas in a diverse spectrum of people ranging from doctors and lawyers to musicians a
If we all treat one another with the best principles of human relationships, it is analogous to complying with Nature's biophysical principles by taking responsibility for our own behavior. In other words, if I want to become acquainted with you, it is incumbent on me to determine how I must treat you in order to allow, even encourage, you to reciprocate in kind. Thus, for me to receive the...
At his official post-election press conference, President Obama told reporters that he's serious about fighting climate change while creating jobs. "We can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader," he said, "I think that's something that the American people would support." We have just the answer...
Former CNN correspondent turned whistleblower, Amber Lyon, analyzes CNN’s response to a series of stories that ran in the Guardian that expose how the network is earning money from oppressive regimes in exchange for creating and airing content that casts a favorable light on the regimes. The stories also revealed CNN International refused to air CNN’s own award-winning documentary...
You have read Valve’s survival manual for new employees . You have read Michael Abrash’s wonderful account of working at Valve. Now read my political economy analysis of Valve’s management model; one in which there are no bosses, no delegation, no commands, no attempt by anyone to tell someone what to do. Can useful lessons be drawn about not only Valve’s...
On Monday, His Holiness the Dalai Lama took to Facebook to tell his four million friends that "religion is no longer adequate." The Tibetan religious leader was quoting from a book he published last year, entitled " Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World ," in which he argues that religion by itself may no longer provide a satisfactory solution to the ills of the world. "Any...
It speaks the language of riffles and babbles, not legal rights and codes, but the Whanganui River, New Zealand’s third largest, has received something no other river in the country – and possibly the world – yet has: a legal voice. In a framework agreement signed last week between the Crown and the Whanganui River iwi (the local Maori people), the river will be...
Editor's Note: Limited Wants, Unlimited Means is a collection of essays that challenges much of our culture's invisible assumptions about tribal societies, which also allows us to see the assumptions we have about our own culture in a new light. This book was an inspiration to the Films For Action project, and it comes highly recommended as a source of inspiration for ideas and perspectives...
Here in the United States, whether we look to the language used amongst ourselves, in the media, or by politicians, we may find that our standard method of communication is based on rhetoric – a style of argument that relies on a set of distinctly isolated viewpoints, with each view-holder applying a range of persuasive techniques in an effort to prevail over a perceived opponent. As...
Over many years as an activist, attorney and artist working on environmental campaigns, Chris Desser began to wonder about the sensual pleasures that will disappear from our lives as more and more species go extinct. That was the genesis of her “Catalog of Extinct Experience”— a multimedia installation at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center planned for the Fall of 2013...
My aim in this essay is to explore the history of the terms sustainable and sustainability , and their various published definitions, and then to offer a set of five axioms (based on a review of the literature) to help clarify the characteristics of a durable society. The essence of the term sustainable is simple enough: “that which can be maintained over time.” By...
"I remember the first time that a grading rubric was attached to a piece of my writing….Suddenly all the joy was taken away. I was writing for a grade -- I was no longer exploring for me. I want to get that back. Will I ever get that back?" -- Claire, a student (in Olson, 2006)
There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism? Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require...
Address given at EnvironDesign 3, Baltimore, MD, April 30, 1999. Editor's note: Even though this essay is over 10 years old, it's as relevant today as ever, especially considering the mass shootings that became a tragic outlet for wounded human beings has only increased as the years go on. We need to start solving for causes rather than effects if we ever want to see this end. - Ed...
Stand in solidarity with the people of Syria calling and dying for their freedom and right to choose their leaders. The idea is very simple, but potentially very powerful: Imagine if a million people spoke the words "I Support The Syrian Revolution"? Our aim is to collect as many videos as possible of people from all over the world declaring their support for the Syrian...
SolidarityNYC is a New York City-based group which works to create links between social movements and the "solidarity economy." The latter consists of cooperatives, small businesses, non-profits and other economic activities which "reinforce values of justice, ecological sustainability, cooperation, and democracy." The group aims to promote the solidarity economy as an alternative to the...
Film offers us a powerful tool to shift awareness and inspire action. By hosting community film screenings and sharing them online, they offer a method to break our dependence on the mainstream media and become the media ourselves. We don't need to wait for anyone or anything. Just imagine what could become possible if an entire city had seen just one of the documentaries below. Just imagine...
It’s time we put economics into some sort of physical scientific context that makes sense. Economists have drifted off into a disconnected world where, blinded by massive amounts of money and mystery, they see themselves as a kind of high priesthood calling the shots for practically everything, then saying they were blindsided by the debacle in the real estate world and the up-trading in...
Over fifty years have passed since most African nations gained their independence. Since then, and despite the expenditure of over $1 trillion in aid, poverty has, according to the World Bank, nearly doubled . But, the idea of aid was to reduce poverty and close the gap in living standards, not let it get wider? CIA figures show over 485 million Africans in poverty, to which we can add 46...
A taste of the upcoming feature documentary, Occupy Love. This is a community funded film. We are in the LAST WEEK of our crowd funding campaign at http://www.indiegogo.com/Occupy-Love Please check it out! We can't do it without you... \"Love is the felt experience of connection to another being.
One of the most profound changes that occurs when modern schooling is introduced into traditional societies around the world is a radical shift in the locus of power and control over learning from children, families, and communities to ever more centralized systems of authority. While all cultures are different, in many non-modernized societies children enjoy wide latitude to learn by free...
New laws took effect in Vermont and Virginia [July 11, 2011], giving ethical business a boost. If Vermont's law had been around 11 years ago, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield might not have had to sell their ice cream company. Back then, Unilever made the highest bid for Ben and Jerry's, so the laws of shareholder responsibility forced the hippie founders to sell, even though they wanted to...
As I’ve written about before , America’s election season degrades mainstream political discourse even beyond its usual lowly state. The worst attributes of our political culture — obsession with trivialities, the dominance of horserace “reporting,” and mindless partisan loyalties — become more pronounced than ever. Meanwhile, the actually consequential acts...
2011 will likely be remembered in America as the year that the nation's youth finally started to wake up - all that bubbling knowledge of the world's problems, all the discontent and disillusion with our broken system finally burst into a flurry of creative action. Our understandings of the deep, structural flaws in our economy, politics and culture reached new heights of collective awareness...
One of the most entertaining yet unsurprising aspects of Occupy Wall St has been the response from traditional media. Whether intentionally playing dumb or genuinely clueless, the mainstream media has failed to inform the public and substantially address the key issues. But why did tens of thousands of people risk arrest all over the world to set up encampments and protest the status quo?...
It's been five years since the Films For Action project began in Lawrence, Kansas. It started with one simple idea: we can't depend on the mainstream media to inform us, so let's become the media ourselves by hosting documentaries on issues that the corporate media ignores. Over the years we 've hosted over 30 film screenings, launched a website that has attracted over 380,000...
The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is Russell Means's most famous speech. A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, he was perhaps the most outsized personality in the American Indian Movement...
I personally support the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, especially the spotlight it has cast on the shocking level of inequality in our country. But the movement oddly conveys a very mainstream message that Wall Street can and should be fixed. Just clean up our existing financial institutions – make them more accountable, honest, transparent – and all will be well. Really? I think...
Last night, after one of the most remarkable days of resistance in recent history, some of us within Occupy Oakland took an important next step: we extended the occupation to an unused building near Oscar Grant Plaza. We did this, first off, in order to secure the shelter and space from which to continue organizing during the coming winter months. But we also hoped to use the national...
To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it’s our turn to pass on some advice. Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call “The Arab Spring” has its...