It's the new year, which means it must be time for Jon's annual conversation with Bruce on the WELL:

"I think "we" in the largest sense, planetary civilization, world culture or whatever, we're closer to a consensus idea of futurity than it's been since, say, 1997. It's a green futurity. People don't like it much, but they know it's coming anyway.

...Serious-minded people everywhere do know they have to deal with the resource crisis and the climate crisis. Becaus the world-machine's backfiring and puffing smoke. Joe and Jane Sixpack are looking at four-dollar milk and five-dollar gas. It's hurting and it's scary and there's no way out of it but through it.

Everybody's reluctant to budge because they sense, probably correctly, that they have to wade through a torrent of mud, blood sweat and tears. Maybe, then, they emerge into the relatively sunlit uplands of something closer to sustainability.

There's lots more -- go join in!