Why I’m writing a book about imagination
Today I want to tell you about a change to my role, and to what I will be doing for the next 12 months. As we celebrate 10 years of Transition Network, I am fortunate to have been offered...
Think Resilience: Introduction
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...
Disengage from the spectacle
Behold today’s edition of Empire’s End—the biggest, best-ever 24/7 reality TV show! It’s been decades in preparation, with a budget in the trillions, a cast of billions! Its hero-villain is far more colorful and pathetic than Tony Soprano or...
The Curse of the iPad Stalks the Land or In Praise of Boredom
Last night I watched the latest episode of Panorama, ‘Sleepless Britain’. It explored the problems of sleeplessness faced by many families, with visits to hospital caused by poor sleep having tripled in the last 10 years. A generation of...
Helping Forests Migrate
A few weeks ago I had coffee with Connie Barlow, an author of popular science books (including The Ghosts of Evolution, 2002), as she and her partner Michael Dowd stopped in Santa Rosa en route southward. Among other things,...
10 Years of Transition Network: The Early Days
As Transition Network turns 10, Rob Hopkins looks back to when it all began… This month represents the 10th anniversary of the founding of Transition Network. That’s Transition Network the organisation you understand, not the network of Transition groups...
“Traditionalism” through the Lens of Cultural Ecology
A battle is raging in Washington for ultimate power, and while it’s being defined by personality (specifically, one “yuge” ego), it also hinges on political philosophies. The common terms liberalism and conservatism have lost their usefulness in navigating these...
To Billionaire Doomsday Preppers: Your Wealth Won’t Save You
With Donald Trump’s election and the rising perils of war, climate upheaval, accelerating inequality, and civil unrest, some of the richest people in the United States are making escape plans. In a recent New Yorker article, “Doomsday Prep for...
What’s the Role of the Legal System in Creating an Equitable Economy?
In this episode of Next Economy Now, Erin Axelrod, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews Janelle Orsi, founder of The Sustainable Economies Law Center. Orsi is an attorney living and working in Oakland, California. Her law and mediation practice...
Awaiting Our Own Reichstag Fire
Millions of Americans now share the profoundly disturbing experience of watching and waiting as their nation lurches toward authoritarianism. In a previous essay, I described the Trump administration as a “presidency in search of an emergency”—i.e., a crisis that...