Everything You Want to Know About Population
World population passed the 7.5 billion mark in the Spring of 2017, and it could rise to 11 billion by the turn of the century. If we keep adding over 200,000 to the population every day as we do...
Think Resilience Chapter 5: Pollution
In nature, waste from one organism is food for another. However, that principle sometimes breaks down and waste becomes poison. Humans aren’t the only possible sources of environmental pollution. But these days the vast majority of pollution does come...
What keeps me going?
Permaculture Magazine recently asked me to write something about how I maintain momentum and energy over time in dark and difficult times. The piece appears in the latest edition, available here, alongside another article about what a truly local...
Think Resilience Chapter 4: Depletion
Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg sat down to deliver a 22-chapter lecture series entitled “Think Resilience: Preparing Communities for the Rest of the 21st Century,” which explores how communities can build resilience in the face of our...
Juggling Live Hand Grenades
Recent Papers and Articles Here are a few useful recent contributions to the global sustainability conversation, with relevant comments interspersed. Toward the end of this essay I offer some general thoughts about converging challenges to the civilizational system. “Oil...
Reclaiming Conversation – the Power of Talk in a Digital Age: Review
This is one of the best books I have read in a very long time. Essential reading for any parent, for anyone who interacts with digital technologies, social media, smartphones, indeed for anyone living in the complex world of...
Building a National Community Resilience Corps
In the dark days of May 1934, U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt expressed deep concern about the lasting impact of the Great Depression on young people, who had no previous experience of rewarding work or prosperous times to recall....
Why We Need The Yellow House More than Ever
Place Lamartine is a busy place these days. Traffic thunders through it, and a major roundabout now sits at its heart. When I arrived there yesterday, a big fair was setting up, with roundabouts, bumper cars, and other rides....
Think Resilience Chapter 3: Population and Consumption
Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg sat down to deliver a 22-chapter lecture series entitled “Think Resilience: Preparing Communities for the Rest of the 21st Century,” which explores how communities can build resilience in the face of our...
Surviving S-Town
Spoiler alert: If you haven’t yet listened to S-Town podcast you might want to do so before reading the following essay, which discusses key facts revealed during the course of the story. I admit, it was strange to hear...