Dissonance and Divestment: Profile of An Activist
“Why should people divest from the fossil fuel sector?” Lisa Renstrom pauses and thinks. “Let me count the ways.” This piece is an updated excerpt from Chuck Collins’ new book, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes...
Coal Is a Dinosaur and so is the growth economy
In a recent paper, Justin Ritchie, a Ph.D. candidate in resources and the environment at the University of British Columbia, and his co-author, UBC professor Hadi Dowlatabadi, pointed out that global estimates of the amounts of coal that are...
This beer kills pipelines
The TransCanada pipeline (called Energy East) is intended to transport oil from the tar sands in Alberta to St. John in New Brunswick, a route of 6,400km across Canada. Once built, 1.1 million barrels of oil are intended to...
How to Go the Resistance Distance: Pop-Up Schools for Novice Activists
More than 200 people crammed into a meeting room at Smith College to listen to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum speak at the May 4 opening ceremony of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership. The new school provides in-person training opportunities in activism in five cities...
Power in our hands
Here’s a talk that Rob Hopkins gave in May 2017 at the Triodos Bank AGM in Bristol, UK, on Transition and his hopes for the future.
Failing President Spites Climate
There are a lot of things that make protecting Earth’s climate really hard. Like the fact that fossil fuels are so deeply embedded in our economy and way of life. Or the fact that all policy makers, in every...
Wealthy Heir Says: “Tax Me!”
Samantha Waxman has personally benefited from access to wealth through her family. But as a child of teachers and a product of public schools, she took it personally when the Council of the District of Columbia opted to give...
Think Resilience Chapter 6: Political & Economic Management
Every society has institutions for making decisions and allocating resources. Some anthropologists call this the STRUCTURE of society. Every society also has an INFRASTRUCTURE, which is its means of obtaining food, energy, and materials. Finally, every society also has...
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...