by Don Hall in Resilience.org…CATL supports them all by organizing events, creating educational resources, facilitating collaboration and resource sharing, and helping to raise millions of Euros for startups and expansions. It has also established a partnership with the City of Liège to lease public lands to local growers, helped form a district-wide food policy council, and regularly consults with schools about sourcing locally. According to CATL, which maps local producers on their website, all of this has led to a doubling of market gardeners in their area over the past decade, with much more still to come.
Derailment risk: A systems analysis that identifies risks which could derail the sustainability transition
by Laurie Laybourn in Earth Systems Dynamics…How will the effects of climate change, nature loss, and other environmental change impact our ability to tackle the causes of these problems? There is already a high demand on resources to respond to worsening climate shocks, knock-on impacts for areas such as food production and health, and the many other growing consequences of changes to the Earth system.
Looking Back at the Future of Humanity Institute
by Tom Ough in Asteriskmag.com…The rise and fall of the influential, embattled Oxford research center that brought us the concept of existential risk.
Responding to platform firm power: differing national responses
by Angela Garcia Calvo in New Political Economy…In the second half of the 1990s, the commercial internet emerged as a remarkable connectivity tool that promised ever tighter integration of economies and societies. The desirability of internet use meant that it diffused globally with astonishing speed. In the US, technological leadership, enormous sums of venture capital, a large, single market, and a neoliberal, laissez-faire political economic environment, unleashed an ongoing process of entrepreneurship that resulted in the emergence of what became the global platform leaders.
Combining AI and Crispr will be transformational
by Jennifer Doudna in Wired.com…The genome-editing technology can be supercharged by artificial intelligence—and the results are already being felt.
Dancing with a permanent emergency
by Jonathan Rowson in The Joyous Struggle…In the real world, there is scope to change the opponent (whether that is fossil fuel companies, politicians, or ourselves), the goal(we can do so much better than GDP), and the rules of the game (climate litigation) and some of those transformative possibilities are where my work is now focussed.
FBI warns Americans to start using encrypted messaging apps
by Matt Novak in Gizmodo.com…It’s all about protecting against China, but there’s the added benefit of protecting against Trump.
Three-quarters of the Earth has gotten permanently drier
by Jeffrey Kluger in Time…By century’s end, up to 20% of all Earth’s land could experience abrupt ecosystem transformation, such as forests becoming grasslands, with attendant extinction and collapse of ecosystems. Farming could suffer too.
Using emergence to take social innovations to scale
by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze on Margaretwheatley.com…Emergence is the fundamental scientific explanation for how local changes can materialize as global systems of influence. As a change theory, it offers methods and practices to accomplish the systems-wide changes that are so needed at this time. As leaders and communities of concerned people, we need to intentionally work with emergence so that our efforts will result in a truly hopeful future.
Big tech’s class war politics
by John Ganz in Unpopularfront.news…I think we are in a crisis of hegemony moment: neoliberalism is dying, but its replacement is yet to be born. And, as in pre and post-hegemonic times, the field of politics is fragmented and incoherent, there’s no hegemonic class or portion of a class that’s able to lead, so everything reverts to “the economic-corporate phase,” when different social interests seek their own short-term benefits rather than coalescing behind a vision of social development.
More in this tag
Jul
06
2023
Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement
by Dr. Michael Lawrence at The Cascade Institute….. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or more fast-moving trigger events combines with...
Mar
24
2025
After Spaceship Earth
An expansive look at the contemporary artists confronting, challenging, and reimagining R. Buckminster Fuller's techno-utopianism to envision sustainable futures...
Mar
24
2025
Playing with time: Introducing a foresight practice to build hopeful futures through transformative stewardship
by Cat Tully in School of International Futures…I want to help us unstick from this present, apply a practical set of approaches to help our communities navigate...
Mar
24
2025
Future Signals – what we’re watching for in 2025
From Nesta…Our annual series about the trends and developments that are set to shape the coming year
Mar
21
2025
The militia and the mole
by Joshua Kaplan in Propublica…A Freelance Vigilante: A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t...
Mar
20
2025
The turbulent world of resilience: 2 Interpretations and themes for transdisciplinary dialogue
by Susanne Moser, et al. in Climatic Change…In this paper we have tried to delineate – from a workshop and a literature review – fundamental differences in...
Mar
19
2025
Zero-problem philanthropy
by Christian Seelos in SSIR…Moving away from endless problem-solving and toward creating healthy context.
Mar
18
2025
Octavia Butler on creativity, the power of our obsessions, and how we become who we are
by Maria Popova in The Pocket…“Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful positive obsession blunts pain, diverts rage, and engages each of us in the greatest,...
Mar
17
2025
Strategy 2030 mid-term review and forecast
From IFRC Solferino Academy…As we reach the midpoint of Strategy 2030, we are entering a new humanitarian era. A complex mass of emerging trends is changing the...
Mar
17
2025
Looking Forward
by Steven Ascher in his film Looking Forward…“W.H. Auden called the postwar era, ‘The Age of Anxiety.’ It seems we’re in another one now.”
Mar
14
2025
Empowering residents to drive the redevelopment of a trailer park
from Habitat for Humanity Cost of Home report…Rosensweig adds that Southwood has the potential to be a model for sustainable and equitable redevelopment of both...