The irony of the catastrophic crises of our time is that they offer unprecedented opportunity to shape the New Great Transformation of humanity. The alternative is our extinction. … More The Irony of Crisis and Opportunity
Avoiding societal collapse means building bridges between science and the rest of the world. [Please note: This article is republished with permission from the site, ensia.com. It was accessed at: http://ensia.com/voices/to-build-a-sustainable-world-academics-need-to-tear-down-the-ivory-tower.] Anthony D. Barnosky @tonybarnosky Professor of integrative biology, University of California, Berkeley Elizabeth A. Hadly @LizHadly Stanford professor and global change scientist Paul R. Ehrlich President, Center for … More To build a sustainable world, academics need to tear down the Ivory Tower
The report of the latest “Bloomberg New Energy Finance” (BNEF) annual summit in New York proclaimed on April 14, 2015 that fossil fuels had already lost the race against renewables. “The race for renewable energy has passed a turning point. The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil … More Renewables Transition: It’s Happening, But How, and is it Enough?
We are so used to the idea that we must each have the freedom to choose, well, just about everything in our lives. We imagine that we are independently constructing a “life of our own.” We have, in our minds at least, an inalienable right to choose and to live our own unique “lifestyle.” That … More Climate Imperative, Freedom, and Democracy
Bloomberg News reported on February 3, 2016, that a new report from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts wonders whether currently very high corporate profit margins can be sustained. They are at near record levels, despite a stagnant real economy characterized by record low wages and listless job growth and declining opportunity structures. Well, according to … More Questioning Capitalism: Goldman Sachs on Corporate Profit Margins
COP21, like the United Nations climate conferences before it, appears to be floundering over international non-binding showcase “commitments” to reduce carbon emissions — and is emitting effusive illusions of progress. Pleas of island nations fall on deaf ears. The negotiators are ignoring the scientific evidence that the reductions they are talking about fall far short … More COP21, Bill Gates, and Climate Catastrophe
Humanity must minimize the chaos of a catastrophic convergence of accelerating climate destabilization, growing poverty and food shortages, armed conflict, and massive migrations around the world. Otherwise, while the old plutocratic order will be destroyed, nothing viable will emerge to replace it. A new form of “creative destruction” must occur for human survival. A new … More Trapped by Finance Capital: Business as Usual While Planet Burns Part III: Creative Destruction
Efforts to find a viable path to mitigating climate chaos and forging an ecologically viable economy are just not moving fast enough. They seem bogged down in struggles over old ideas and inadequate actions. Even some of the most esteemed liberal economists who are not on the corporate bandwagon have failed to escape this trap. … More Overcoming Ideology: New Actions and New Ideas
Leave it to a practicing member of an indigenous culture to “say it like it is,” in the most direct way imaginable. I had watched a very interesting episode of “Nature” on PBS (January 28, 2015), about the incursion of killer whales into the Arctic seas. It got me thinking of the predatory practices of … More Predators Like Us
The stories just keep coming. The NSA and the big corporations have been sweeping up massive amounts of data on all Americans. And of course, most others in the world who are “connected” in some way are being spied upon too. We cannot fail to notice that widespread surveillance has become routine practice in diverse … More The Militarised “Big-Data” Threat to Non-Violent Civil Action
