Recovering from Covid
Count me among the tens of thousands of cancer survivors who’ve said, “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me.” When I told friends, in 2004, that I had...
Doom or denial: Is there another path?
I was recently asked to comment on a dustup between some members of Extinction Rebellion (see Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall, and Colleen Schmidt, “The Faulty Science, Doomism, and Flawed Conclusions of Deep Adaptation”) and Jem Bendell, founder of Deep...
Sherri Mitchell on decolonizing the mind
The recent surge in Black Lives Matter protests following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, along with growing evidence that COVID-19 is disproportionately hitting communities of color, have raised urgent questions about structural racism and...
Avalanche
How bad could it get? For the United States, it seems there is no bottom. Back in March, I wrote that the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic would likely shape its economic, political, and geopolitical fortunes for years or decades...
When the Chickens of Imagination Come Home to Roost
In ‘From What Is to What If’, I suggest that we are living in a time in which our collective imagination, our ability to, as John Dewey put it, “see things as if they could be otherwise”, is in...
It Will Get Darker Before the Dawn
This is about choice, not about our capacity to deliver. Each and every ‘black elephant’ is fixable – if we act in time.
Please Don’t Read this Blog. Do Something Else Instead.
I haven’t yet written a comprehensive, illuminating blog about these Days of the Coronavirus, partly because many other people far wiser than me are already doing it far better than I would, but also because I am still trying...
COVID-19 and the Death of Market Fundamentalism
On top of the countless human tragedies, there will be many long-lasting social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps none will be more profound though, than the death of free market fundamentalism and the return of the...
Pandemic Response Requires Post-Growth Economic Thinking
Amid a horrific human tragedy of sickness and death, much of it taking place in hospitals staffed by brave but overworked and under-equipped doctors and nurses, we are all learning once again what it feels like when economic growth...
The US Would Be Better Off with Fewer Billionaires
When folks say that billionaires shouldn’t exist, it’s nothing personal. Some billionaires are nice enough. Some spend generously on philanthropy. That all sounds great. But we don’t need more do-gooder billionaires that give to charity — we need fewer...