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4 weeks ago | 
countercurrents.org | Robert Jensen |Rob Hopkins |Phila Back |David Bollier
For the next few weeks, the buzzword in US debates on the liberal/left about economics and ecology will be “abundance” after the release of the book with that title by Ezra Klein (New York Times) and Derek Thompson (The Atlantic magazine). The book poses politically relevant questions: Have policies favored by Democrats and others on the political left impeded innovation with unnecessary red tape for building projects?
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1 month ago | 
countercurrents.org | Rob Hopkins |Phila Back |David Bollier |Bharat Dogra
Rob Hopkins, a pioneer in sustainability and community-driven change, believes that the future isn’t something we stumble upon—it’s something we actively create or fail at. At the heart of his work lies a question: what happens when we lose the ability to imagine a better world? For Hopkins, imagination is more than just creativity—it’s a survival tool essential for unlocking the sustainable, resilient, and equitable futures we are desperately in need of.
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1 month ago | 
countercurrents.org | Michael Hudson |Bruce Lerro |Gary M. Feinman |Phila Back
This text is adapted from Michael Hudson’s foreword to At the Origins of Politics by Giorgio Buccellati, and this excerpt was produced by Human Bridges. Archaeologist and scholar Giorgio Buccellati’s book At the Origins of Politics describes how Mesopotamia’s urban revolution in the late fourth millennium BC shaped a new mentality.
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1 month ago | 
countercurrents.org | Phila Back |David Bollier |Bharat Dogra |Tom Murphy
Since its creation I have supported Rupert Read’s Climate Majority Project as the answer to achieving the climate action we need. Read observes that the majority of people are concerned about climate change and to effectively combat it, that majority must act. The same is now true with our current crisis of democracy, as the majority of American voters did not support Trump in the 2024 election.
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Phila Back
The result of the 2024 U.S. presidential election signals the end of federal action to combat climate change and a bonanza for fossil fuel extraction and consumption. These are coming now as climate change impacts are escalating and affecting our day-to-day lives. This summer and fall there have been record high temperatures where I live, and a record drought is now in progress with mandatory water conservation plus wildfires breaking out, some threatening homes in a nearby city.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Phila Back
One of my sublime joys is seeing my delphiniums bloom, the seeds of which I planted in the spring of the previous year and which I transferred from pots to the ground that fall. Another is looking at my masses of New England asters flowering in early autumn. After enjoying my coneflowers, I delight in watching goldfinches pluck seeds from the dried heads. The final joy I will mention is that of sensing the morning awakening of life in my garden.
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Phila Back
In this time of more or less total crisis the people must act, yet the vast majority don’t. As a grassroots organizer I see that what people need are motivation and direction. While there are countless campaigns that direct particular actions, large scale progressive motivation eludes us. What is the problem, and how do we fix it? I recently found a decades-old work that moved me to read Braiding Sweetgrass and proceed to discover an answer in the two books together.
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Mar 28, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Phila Back
On a recent morning I noticed a skunk roaming around my back yard. This surprised me, since over the thirty-one years I have lived here I have many times smelled evidence that a skunk had visited in the night but recall having seen one only once. Skunks are nocturnal, so it didn’t look right that one should be so active in broad daylight.
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Jan 11, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Phila Back
Seeing the orange sky and feeling the 103°F heat index on a day in the summer of 2023 I also observed that the people around me were proceeding with business as usual, oblivious of the climate crisis that, after decades of warnings, was finally upon us in force. This was just my latest experience of being alone in recognizing a problem and urgently wanting my community to respond to it.
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Sep 13, 2023 | 
resilience.org | Simon Evans |Molly Lempriere |Kurt Cobb |Phila Back
A UK government auction has secured just 3.7 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable capacity – only a third of the total last year – and failed to contract any new offshore wind. The 95 projects winning “contracts for difference” (CfD) from the government are expected to generate around 9 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity, less than 3% of current UK demand. This is 82% lower than last year’s auction, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
