Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kurt Cobb The move by OPEC last week to raise oil production to compensate for outages among the group’s members shows that U.S. shale oil (properly called “tight oil”) is still in its cross hairs–and that the economics of tight oil remain abysmal.
A leaked U.N. climate change report warns that the Earth’s climate could endanger economic growth in the decades ahead. I think the problem is the other way around.
We humans will always seek reductive explanations for “why” things happen in the world around us and try to use those explanations to gain advantage for ourselves and our fellow humans in the fight for survival within our biosphere. But if we see the limits of such explanations and therefore their dangers, we might move more humbly among the vast array of creatures and Earth systems with whom we live and upon whom we depend for our very survival.
The global predicament cannot be solved other than through a Transition Towns movement, and the emergence of such a movement has been of immense importance. But I fear that the present movement is not going to do what’s needed.
The desire to make our lives maintenance-free often creates unintended environmental and health consequences. Every decision to transfer a maintenance task to a chemical substance only complicates the goal of creating a healthy environment.
Writers have previously imagined the dangers of such a moment, but now the democratization of genetic engineering is at hand. The dangers stem in part from our not understanding that we are mistaking a part for the whole. Humans are not just their genes.
With Donald Trump’s decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday, it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American experience in the Greater Middle East, is that it won’t be pretty.
There is no substitute for potable water—despite what economic theory may wish to assert. To get enough of it in many locales will be increasingly expensive as we turn to ever more exotic means to extract water while both population grows and climate-enhanced droughts diminish replenishment of existing sources.
For those worried about Trump, and about populism, it is not enough to mobilize a politics of protest and resistance; it is also necessary to engage in a politics of persuasion. Such a politics must begin by understanding the discontent that is roiling politics in the US and in democracies around the world.
Few have made a more commendable contribution to saving the planet than George Monbiot. His recent book, Out of the Wreckage, continues the effort and puts forward many important ideas…but I believe there are problems with his diagnosis and his remedy. … the main goal is not a town containing nice things like community orchards, nor indeed one with robust community, but a town we run on principles of frugal, cooperative, needs-focused, local self-sufficiency.
Right now humans are not getting the feedback from their own systems needed to set society on a sustainable course. Could an emerging new form of organization change that and provide the structure for making rapid progress on critical issues such as climate change and resource depletion?
The model of the heroic CEO fearlessly leading a company or nonprofit to success is coming to an end as a new model of organization that coordinates the passions of extended groups and focuses them on solving major societal problems emerges. Management consultant John Hagel explains the advent of the organization based on scalable collaboration and learning.
