By Christopher Ketcham, Local Futures
There is, of course, a caution for our species in Pig #6707. When an organism grows beyond its design, nature will determine it to fail — a fact of life, in the strictest sense. Nowhere in evolutionary theory is hypertrophic growth posited as the key to success. What is key is optimum size, what we’d more accurately call right size.
By Christina Oatfield, Sustainable Economics Law Center (SELC)
By Justine Calma, Grist
By Natasha Geiling, Think Progress
Does climate change pose such an imminent threat to the planet that it’s okay to break the law in order to stop it? Four climate activists currently awaiting trial in Minnesota for shutting off a tar sands pipeline think so — and on Monday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed that they should be allowed to make that argument before a jury when their case goes to trial.
By David Orrell, Open Democracy
The argument between orthodox economists and their critics resembles one that occurred in weather forecasting in the mid-nineteenth century, with the establishment of the UK Meteorology Office in 1854 by Admiral Robert FitzRoy.
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
What the Keeling Curve shows, then, are two separate but connected rifts in Earth’s metabolism. First, an increase in total CO2 that breaks with at least 800,000 years of history. Second, increased CO2 is changing the way that plants absorb and emit CO2, and that in turn is altering a seasonal cycle that has likely been unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
By Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief
Over the past few years, an international team of climate scientists, economists and energy systems modellers have built a range of new “pathways” that examine how global society, demographics and economics might change over the next century. They are collectively known as the “Shared Socioeconomic Pathways” (SSPs).
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt
The Fed is aggressively raising interest rates, although inflation is contained, private debt is already at 150% of GDP, and rising variable rates could push borrowers into insolvency. So what is driving the Fed’s push to “tighten”?
By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog
I was intrigued as to what impact living in a state of ‘Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ might have on the human imagination, on its ability to flourish, and to imagine the future in positive ways. Are we all, to one degree or another, living in a state of ‘Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder’?
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
More on organic farming, trade-offs, energy futures and small-farm definitions in this post. Veritably, it’s your one stop shop for a pick ‘n’ mix of eco-futurism…partly because indeed I have a few addendums to report on recent posts, and partly because despite my flippant recent remarks, I’m a bit too busy on the farm and on other things just now to put together a properly structured post.
By Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org
Environmentalists weren’t able to block the confirmation of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator based on his horrendous record of climate change denial and plundering natural resources. But Pruitt’s growing corruption scandal has given them new hope.
By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
With the era of cheap fossil fuels coming to a close, what's left as low-cost fuel is wood and that had to be the target of the next wave of exploitation. Naively, I was thinking that the rush to wood would have taken the form of desperate people moving to the woods with hand-held axes, but no, in Italy it is coming in a much more destructive way.
By Fernanda Marin, OuiShare
With IMBY we wanted to answer the question of how, starting from design and production methods, we could build a house that could foster social integration and civic engagement in a sustainable model. And this can only be done by empowering the people.
By Katherine Peinhardt, Project for Public Spaces
There’s a difference between simply settling somewhere and finding a home. Refugees are faced with this reality every day — among new neighbors in a new city, building a sense of belonging is no small task. Working to create a place for oneself is a bold act of hope for a new life. So, what can public spaces do to help create a sense of place for refugees?
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
I have been writing a lot lately about the rising number and variety of environmental lawsuits being filed in state and federal courts. The hundreds of active climate-related cases exhibit a wide range of purpose.
By Katie Horvath, Mason Herson-Ford, Aaron Vansintjan, Uneven Earth
We briefly mentioned the problem of hierarchy as the shared root of many systems of oppression in our first column two weeks ago. In this article, we want to expand on the meaning of hierarchy—a system of obedience and command backed by the threat of force—and ground it in history.
By Erik Lindberg, Resilience.org
If we truly want to increase equality, then, it will have to be created at a sustainable level, and thus ones much lower than that enjoyed by the rich, middle-classes, and even workers of advanced industrial nations alike. We may choose to fight inequality by way of strikes, wage increases, and taxation, but that will not return us to a golden age; it will hasten our rendezvous with economics in the age of resource exhaustion and mounting clean-up costs.
UNHCR and Land Life Company
Can we rethink how to shelter the world‘s refugees safely and sustainably? It Will Be Green Against is a short documentary through the eyes of a refugee family living on a Green Refugee Camp in Menawoa Camp Cameroon.
By Sue Reed, Ginny Stibolt, New Society Publishers
individuals at a loss, wondering what, if anything, can be done. Sue Reed and Ginny Stibolt offer a rallying cry in response — instead of wringing our hands, let's roll up our sleeves. Based on decades of experience, this book is packed with simple, practical steps anyone can take to beautify any landscape or garden, while helping protect the planet and the species that call it home.
By Ruby Irene Pratka, Shareable
The Solidarity Research Center based in Los Angeles, California, was established in 2014 by a group of researchers and academics with roots in organized labor. Now they are working on projects across the country, linking the ethos of the labor movement and the dynamics of the cooperative economy to build and promote cooperatives across a wide range of sectors.
By Brian Davey, Feasta
In this article I connect the fall in the growth rate, with its roots in the rising costs of energy extraction and generation, to declining resilience in the economic system. These are in turn related to a more conflict ridden geo-politics.
By Paul Mobbs, Free Range Activisim Website
The 'circular economy' is, in my opinion, a ruse to make affluent consumers feel that they can keep consuming without the need to change their habits. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the central reason for that is the necessity for energy to power economic activity.
By Chuck Collins, Inequality.org
We are living in a time of extreme and extraordinary inequality. There is now a genre of research looking at different dimensions of the income and wealth gap. This body of work chronicles the shapes and facets of inequality and its adverse impact on everything we care about.
By Robert Raymond, Shareable
The Sustainable Economies Law Center is an organization based out of Oakland, California, that puts economic democracy front and center in its mission to support community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment.
By John Thackara, John Thackara blog
In the new economy that’s now emerging, care for life replaces our a preoccupation with money. Value is measured in terms of the health of living systems, and the land, air, and oceans that surround us.