Nov 21, 09
Surveying Student Activism for Sustainability and Social Change
Everybody knows that hope for the future starts with youth. There's a ton of activity on campuses from elementary through higher-ed related to sustainability, environmental responsibility and social justice. Here are a few highlights from current student projects and campaigns: The Sustainable University: The Chronicle of Higher Education published a special issue examining progress towards sustainability on university campuses in everything from the buildings themselves to the research...
Incremental Change on a Radical Scale
by Worldchanging Portland local blogger, Ethan Timm: While planetary accords and national legislation are vital for addressing carbon emissions and climate change at a scale as massive as the problems we face, the emergence of widespread local, incremental change and the regional reimagining of cities and watersheds are beginning to create real shifts leading us towards a more sustainable world. Margaret Wheatley writes: Large-scale changes that have great impact do not originate in...
An Interview with James Howard Kunstler
If there's one thing we steer away from around here, it's doom and gloom and the sometimes-too-tempting sense of hopelessness that can come with thinking seriously about the world's problems. For this reason, there was no passive acceptance from the WC editorial team when James Howard Kunstler's "we're screwed" attititude gained attention around the release of his 2005 The Long Emergency. Of course, the contention was a result of the fact that we are in agreement with Kunstler that the...
Apocaphilia, Peak Oil and Sustainability
Although I recognize that the depletion of oil supplies is a serious problem, I haven't always been entirely supportive of the "peak oil" movement. There's a good bit of "apocaphilia" in many of the peak oilers, a fascination with the end of the world that goes well beyond terriblisma. I'm not saying that they look forward to things falling apart, the center not holding, and mere anarchy loosed upon the world, but some may well be looking forward to being able to say "I told you so." More...
Smart Sprawl
On balance, it's not too difficult to think up ways to make cities more sustainable if you're able to create something new. Figuring out the right combination of transportation, infrastructure, and services to promote livability, strengthen the economy, and keep efficiency up and resource use down is much easier when you can plan out the whole thing in advance. But such opportunities are rare -- and, as we see in New Orleans -- are themselves often fraught with tragedy. Building sustainable...
Retro: The Post-Oil Megacity
Will the inevitable (and potentially quite near) end of the oil era mean disaster? A growing number of pundits say yes -- that we are all far too dependent upon petroleum to fuel our economies, and we cannot adapt swiftly nor sufficiently to a world with limited or no oil. Urban theorist James Howard Kunstler has become the foremost voice in this movement, and in The Post-Oil Megacity, Alex takes on Kunstler's doom-laden vision. Not only is it possible to move beyond the oil era, Alex argues,...
Peak Oil and the Curse of Cassandra
I'm getting a shiver of deja vu these days when I read the peak oil-related websites. Some are boggling over the fact that "global warming" got more attention than "peak oil" in the discussions over the recently-passed Energy Bill in the US, while others are simply furious that the American public (and these websites seem predominantly American in focus) isn't taking peak oil sufficiently seriously. They're particularly bothered that mainstream discussion of the idea, when it happens, often...
Viridian Critique of "The Long Emergency"
Remember James Howard Kunstler's "Long Emergency"? In his latest Viridian note, Bruce Sterling publishes Kunstler's piece with Viridian annotations.
Amory Lovins vs. James Kunstler
Opinions on James Howard Kunstler's latest tract, The Long Emergency, vary pretty widely here at WorldChanging. Alex disagrees pretty strongly with Kunstler's dystopic vision; JonL found it (at least its manifestation in an interview in Salon) to be a "breath of fresh air." Personally, I'm in Alex's camp -- I'm tired of Apocaphilia in its various manifestations, and Kunstler in particular seems to claim that we can do nothing to head off disaster. Moreover, any attempts to invent better, more...
One long emergency
The Worldchanging Team has discussed the clear and compelling evidence that the USA and industrial nations can't sustain the lifestyle we've made for ourselves, and there's no way our fossil-fueled economies can scale globally with existing resources, let alone sustain a world of suburbs, SUVs, cheap gasoline and food, and weekend trips to Cancun. The editors think that we can live sustainably and still meet all of our needs if we innovate and change and adapt to a world without cheap oil....
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