Lifeboat Culture: Planning Future-Proof, ‘Too Small to Fail’ Communities

Building a lifeboat culture is about taking action and preparing communities to be sustainable and functional in the face of a global, national or regional economic and environmental collapse. Unless we rapidly move through the stages of climate grief, from paralysis to...

Andrew Willner

What If We Stay Home? The Planet’s Future Depends on Mass Economic Disobedience

Have you noticed the memes circulating about the end of normal?

Josh Adler

What Would We Do If There Was No One to Blame?

Bill Mckibben, Planet of the Humans, and the power we gain when we stop seeking villains

Tim Hjersted

Review of Planet of the Humans: What They Get Right and the Environmentalists Get Wrong

Planet of the Humans has stirred the resentment of many a climate crusader. Yesterday, the chair of the Sierra Club California Energy and Climate Committee instructed committee members (I am one) not to “watch or promote” Planet of the Humans. Today, climate scientists called...

Paul Fenn

An Opportunity to Reconnect With Our Origins

For generations, a variety of factors have weakened the traditional intergenerational socio-cultural structures of Indigenous people around the world.

Daniel Henryk Rasolt

Changing the Way We Think About Ecocities

The way we understand ecocities needs radical change in order to ensure a sustainable future, akin to our ancestors realising the earth was round.

Dr Dominique Hes

The Art of Exploiting a Pandemic: From Propaganda to Profit

Throughout the U.S., institutions that have no real interest in public health are exploiting the ongoing pandemic to benefit their public image and their bottom line. We must recognize and combat these efforts in order to fight the pandemic, directing resources to where...

Mike Pappas

The Miseducation of the American Boy

Why boys crack up at rape jokes, think having a girlfriend is “gay,” and still can’t cry—and why we need to give them new and better models of masculinity

Peggy Orenstein

The Furor & Failure of "Planet of the Humans" & It's Critics

Where Is a Really Big Picture View of Our Environmental Problems & Possible Solutions?

Sandyssanders

Normal Was Killing Us

The first crisis point of the COVID-19 disaster was figuring out how to respond, after being caught flat-footed, to the immediate health threat. Now that the death curve in many places has begun to flatten and the scope of economic disaster is hitting home, we are approaching...

Cylvia Hayes

Sooner or Later, We Have to Stop Economic Growth — and We’ll Be Better for It

The end of growth will come one day, perhaps very soon, whether we’re ready or not. If we plan for and manage it, we could well wind up with greater well-being.

Richard Heinberg

New Study: Economic Growth Is Incompatible With Biodiversity Conservation

A study involving more than 20 specialists in conservation ecology and ecological economics highlights the contradiction between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. Adopting limits to international trade in resources or reducing and sharing the work, are some of...

Robert Orzanna

Triggered: “Planet of the Humans” & A Call for Emotional Intelligence

For the past few days, I’ve been enveloped in the recently released documentary, Planet of the Humans. After watching the film, I was left with many complex feelings. The overall tone is dark and combative, and the ending that features suffering orangutans was torturous to...

LaUra Schmidt

Could a Green New Deal Save Civilization?

To fully and systematically address the climate/energy crisis, the plan will have to be far broader in scope than what is currently being proposed. And while we need to mobilize society as a whole with a World War II-level of effort, the reality is that there’s never been...

Richard Heinberg

6 Reasons Why Planet of the Humans Is a Disaster of Misinformation

Overview I. Intro II. The problems ——#1. Misrepresenting ——

Ben Wehrman

Corona Crisis Reveals We Need Systemic, Not Just Individual Change

Climate change is not your fault.

Peter Sinclair

Richard Heinberg's Review of Planet of the Humans

A few days ago, Emily Atkin posted a reaction to Michael Moore’s latest film,

Richard Heinberg

Powerdown: Let's Talk About It

This was originally published in 2013. Maybe now, with Covid-19 giving us all a chance to experience it and practice it - we're finally ready to talk about it. - Films For Action

Joanne Poyourow

Movements Must Give Biden No Choice but to Move Left — as They've Done With Centrist Democrats in the Past

Movements forced progressive change under FDR and LBJ, but failed to move Obama. To change this country they must start pressuring Biden now.

Andy Bichlbaum

Seven Building Blocks for a Post-Corona World

With regular life on pause, we have a chance to stop and question the path we are taking at the deepest level.

Jason Angell

The Power of Disposable Time

In a recent article called “Coronavirus Requires a Collective Response” by professor David Harvey, I was struck by the timeliness of his argument. Harvey quoted Karl Marx a bunch but I’m going to simply paraphrase. Marx claimed that any major project to change the world will...

Josh Liveright

One World 1 - A Survival Strategy for Humanity

"It’s time to design a global society that fits the biological and material constraints of earth and also fits the psychological, cultural, and developmental needs of diverse peoples worldwide."

Armando Davila

Films For Action's Statement on Planet of the Humans

Why we took it down. Why we ultimately decided to put it back up (including this note). Plus our critiques and thoughts on the film.

Films For Action

The Triumph of Triviality

Clinical psychologist John F. Schumaker asks if modern consumer society is too shallow to deal with the deepening crises facing the planet.

John F. Schumaker

Forget About Planet of the Humans

SHAME on these filmmakers for making a film like this, full of misinformation and disinformation, to intentionally depress audiences, and make them think there are no alternatives.

Neal Livingston

Skepticism Is Healthy, but Planet of the Humans Is Toxic

It can be refreshing to watch a true believer taking a deeper look at their own sacred cows. But in his rush to be open-minded about his long-cherished environmental beliefs, Jeff Gibbs has thrown out the baby with the bathwater. He lumps solar and wind power, which hold...

Timmon Wallis

Bill McKibben's Response to Planet of the Humans Documentary

A Youtube video emerged on Earth Day eve making charges about me and about 350.org — namely that I was a supporter of biomass energy, and that 350 and I were beholden to corporate funding, and have misled our supporters on the costs and trade-offs related to decarbonizing our...

Bill McKibben

Conspiracy Theorists Are Falsely Claiming That the Coronavirus Pandemic Is an Elaborate Hoax

In the midst of a global pandemic, conspiracy theorists have found yet another way to spread dangerous disinformation and misinformation about COVID-19, sowing seeds of doubts about its severity and denying the very existence of the pandemic.

Anatoliy Gruzd and Philip Mai

23 Films to Watch After (Or Instead Of) Planet of the Humans

So you just watched Planet Of The Humans, and your spirits are feeling pretty crushed.

Tim Hjersted

What Happens in November

In the fall of 2009, I interviewed a Holocaust survivor from the Lodz ghetto. As a young girl, she had seen her whole family lined up and executed by a Nazi firing squad in a spray of machine gun fire, alongside hundreds of the people she had grown up with.

Matthew R. Bishop

Why I Stopped Protesting and Started a Garden

“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack...

John Halstead

Mourn and Organize!

We all love Joe Hill, but his famous piece of advice — “Don’t mourn, organize!” — is only half right. Given the state of the world today, with Bernie Sanders out of the presidential race and hundreds of thousands dead from the coronavirus, we ought to be doing both.

Liza Featherstone

Like It or Not, If We Run Third Party, We Will Lose

Socialists say they either want to “realign” the Democratic Party or break with it entirely. But those aren’t political strategies — they are outcomes of political struggle. We need a way to develop working-class politics without condemning ourselves to third-party marginality.

Dustin Guastella

2020 Voters Guide: Use Your Vote to Choose Your Opponent

This guide is for people who know that "year-round activism + voting" is the best strategy for creating the world we want. Voting alone won't do it, but "year-round activism + not voting" needlessly puts us at a tactical disadvantage. Spending 1 day to choose our political...

Tim Hjersted

Biden Vs. Trump: Are We In or Out?

The next few months are decision time for the left.

Whitney Maxey

“It's Time to Engage in as Much Class Struggle as We Can”

The United Electrical workers’ union and the Democratic Socialists of America are teaming up to help nonunion workers organize during the coronavirus crisis. The goal: find workers who are already spoiling for a fight and help them win it.

Meagan Day and Mark Meinster

Coronavirus: the Need for a Progressive Internationalist Response

This pandemic health crisis exposes the injustices of the global economic order. It must be a turning point towards creating the systems, structures and policies that can always protect those who are marginalised and allow everyone to live with dignity.

TNI

The Tyranny of Decorum

David Sirota, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign, argues that a key mistake of the campaign was Sanders’s refusal to more forcefully articulate the contrasts between his record and Joe Biden’s.

David Sirota

Searching for the Anti-Virus | Covid-19 as Quantum Phenomenon

I've struggled to make sense of what is going on. My suspicious mind wandered around restlessly, examining all theories and possible explanations, yet I must admit: I don’t know what is happening. I do know this is a crucial moment of choice for humanity. In this essay, I...

Martin Winiecki

Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting*

You are not crazy, my friends

Julio Vincent Gambuto

Pandemic Response Requires Post-Growth Economic Thinking

Amid a horrific human tragedy of sickness and death, much of it taking place in hospitals staffed by brave but overworked and under-equipped doctors and nurses, we are all learning once again what it feels like when economic growth comes to a shuddering stop and the economy...

Richard Heinberg

How Iceland Is Already Using Its Wellbeing Framework in Tackling the Covid-19 Crisis

This week a friend and colleague sent this written dialogue to me:

Dr. Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir

When Climate Met COVID: 7 Reasons We Should Tackle These Challenges Together

We face not one but three simultaneous inter-connected crises: the COVID-19 Emergency, the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency, and the Crisis of Capitalism. We urgently need connected constructive responses.

Guy Dauncey

Share This With Your Governor: 12 Ideas for How States Can Respond to the Covid-19 Crisis

Everyone knows that the three, multi-trillion-dollar stimulus bills passed by Congress fall way short. For most local businesses—the lifeblood of our economy—these bills offer too little relief, too late. I’m hopeful though that the states (and maybe, in some places...

Michael Shuman

Thich Nhat Hanh on Finding Peace

The Power of Peace Humankind has become a very dangerous species. We need people who can sit still and be able to smile, who can walk peacefully. We need people like that in order to save us. Recently I was sitting with a group of children, and a boy named Tim was...

Thich Nhat Hanh

Solidarity Amid Pandemic! All Cultures of Resistance Films Now Free for Viewing From Your Home

Dear friends, as coronavirus continues to spread across the globe and whole countries go into lockdown, we need solidarity and creative resistance now more than ever. At Cultures of Resistance Films, we’re joining an effort started by film festivals to make art free and...

Iara Lee

Bernie's Decision: Retreat Should Not Be Confused With Surrender

In these important battles we wage, we will often lose—but we must not give up.

Norman Solomon

A 10-Point Emergency Program to Tackle the Coronavirus Epidemic in the U.S.

We propose ten immediate measures to tackle the health emergency, address the immediate needs of working-class families, and provide, in the face of an inevitable economic fallout, basic income security and living conditions to the vast majority of the population.

Left Voice

Mexico Is Showing the World How to Defeat Neoliberalism

While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press...

Ellen Brown

A Healthy Way to Embrace Big Emotions: Take It to the Trees

One of the most important things you can do to live a meaningful and rewarding life filled with vitality is to reclaim your emotions. When you reclaim your emotions you rescue yourself from the numb and deadening state of “fine” and from the dependence on alcohol, drugs...

Eric Bowers

The Problem Is the Solution: How Permaculture-Designed Household Isolation Can Lead to Retrosuburbia

As the COVID-19 pandemic first exploded across our globalised world, I found myself unsure of priorities in this time of pivotal change, even though I had been tracking information about Wuhan since January. Not because I didn’t know that a global pandemic of this scale was...

David Holmgren

The Four Foundations of True Liberty

Democracy is fragile. If just one foundation is missing, the ropes of democracy can stretch, weaken, and break.

UBI.Earth

'The Impossible Has Already Happened': What Coronavirus Can Teach Us About Hope

In the midst of fear and isolation, we are learning that profound, positive change is possible.

Rebecca Solnit

Youth Leadership Gave Biden a "Cheat Sheet" for Winning the Support of Young Progressives

Not all of them. But enough to potentially beat Trump.

Films For Action

A World With a $24 Minimum Wage

If worker pay had kept pace with productivity gains since 1968, a full-time minimum wage worker would be earning $48,000 a year today.

Dean Baker

Coronavirus Coverage on Films For Action

We wanted to put all our Coronavirus coverage in one place, as a resource to share with friends and loved ones. The quality of our response is only as strong as the quality of our knowledge. [ffa-repeater][horizontal]...

Films For Action

Unemployment Is Designed to Fail

State Unemployment agencies have been charged with the grave task of salvaging an economy on the brink of collapse, theoretically through the emergency distribution of living wages and stipends.

Matthew R. Bishop

As Coronavirus Opens the Door to Big Changes, the Left's Most Attractive Vision Faces Pushback

For many Americans, it’s time for a system change along the lines of the Nordic model. This has the political establishment deeply worried.

George Lakey

The Centrist Delusion: 'Middle Ground' Politics Aren't Moderate, They're Dangerous

In a world of competing narratives serving competing interests, there’s always a temptation to gravitate to the political centre ground, the would-be midpoint between two apparent extremes, with its aura of moderation, reasonableness and realism. After all, isn’t the truth...

Raoul Martinez

Coronavirus and Climate Activism: Five Common Lessons

The pandemic is a testing ground for how to address the climate crisis, and vice-versa.

Nadia Colburn

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