Have We Hit Peak Wealth Inequality?
20 billionaires now have more wealth than half U.S. population When will we become alarmed about so much wealth in so few hands? The Great Recession and its anemic recovery only deepened the economic inequality that’s drawn so much...
La Grande Négociation: while we bargain, our ultimate fate comes down to acceptance
I have to confess a certain reluctance in sharing my views about the Paris climate talks, knowing as I do that it’s all too easy to judge from a distance while so many wonderful, dedicated colleagues are in Paris...
Water Resilience with Sandra Postel
Post Carbon Fellow Sandra Postel gave this interview at the BSR 2015 conference where she was a keynote speaker.
Competing Visions of Sustainability: Scarcity or Abundance?
Bill Sheehan, Ph.D., is Founder, UPSTREAM. This article is from a talk given at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine on September 14, 2015. “Sustainability” has become the master term for...
Paris: How can we start unpicking the spiral of humiliation and violence?
Last weekend’s dreadful events in Paris were appalling. Like many people I am still in shock and grief, and want to send huge love and support to everyone affected, especially our friends doing Transition across Paris. I hope they...
Can We Afford the Future?
As a child of the 1950s I grew up immersed in a near-universal expectation of progress. Everybody expected a shiny new future; the only thing that might have prevented us from having it was nuclear war, and thankfully that...
What are the essential elements for successfully building community resilience?
Introducing Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience, PCI’s new report which describes how communities can approach the full scope of the 21st century’s challenges equitably and sustainably. It’s all too easy to look at the news these days and...
Beyond Keystone: Why Climate Movement Must Keep Heat On
The key passage — the forward-looking passage — of President Obama’s speech last week rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline came right at the end, after he rehashed all the arguments about jobs and gas prices that had been litigated...
On Halloween costumes and Christmas cups
Over the last few days, my social media feed has been dominated by two stories: 1) student protests at the University of Missouri and Yale over the universities’ respective handling of racial incidents and concerns; and 2) Starbuck’s “controversial”...
Keystone XL: History Up Close
A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how...