One of the best books I read this summer was Stephen Duncombe’s ‘Dream: re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy’. Written during the last days of the presidency of George W. Bush, it was a plea for progressive...
People engaged in the climate debate are often bewildered by society’s lack of response. How can we ignore such overwhelming evidence of an existential threat to social and economic stability? Given human history, we should never have expected anything...
David Fridley Richard Heinberg
A lot of people are asking the question these days—including serious folks who work full-time on climate and energy policy.
As hurricanes and typhoons slam into the Southeastern US and the Philippines, there is growing focus on how climate disruption is contributing to more powerful storm surges. Even as President Trump pulls the U.S. back from the Paris global...
The core assumption and focus of people who work to drive sustainability through markets – as corporate leaders, investors, NGOs or thought leaders – is that we need to convince existing companies and their shareholders that sustainability is first...
To the extent that we are today eroding the carrying capacity on which future generations would otherwise depend, our way of life could be characterized as intergenerational “predation”; to put it crudely, the old are “eating” the young.
Many look around at today’s crises – climate change spinning out of control, inequality driving political instability and our oceans filling with plastic – and despair at the prospects for serious change. Most then try to apportion blame or...
When donors contribute to a DAF, they take a tax deduction — often a big one. But those funds can then sit in the DAF for years, even generations, before they’re granted out to charities working to meet real...
Human Predators, Human Prey: Society as Ecosystem in a Time of Collapse, Part 1 This is Part 1 of a three-part essay that uses predation as a metaphor to unpack power relations in human societies. (Read part 2 and...
Down the street from my office, a luxury residential tower is rising, the fifth such project in Boston in the last decade. The 61-story “One Dalton Place” is being marketed as “New England’s tallest and most luxurious residential building.”...