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We’re darkly fascinated with the “end of the world.” Why?
Apocalypse returns again and again in pop culture as a storytelling device – in the form of zombies, environmental destruction, wicked viruses, nuclear holocaust. We flock to see Dawn of the Dead and Mad Max, and hang onto our copies of The Stand. What is it [...]

If the Copenhagen climate talks fall apart, the US might be in for a rough ride in the international community.
While the Copenhagen deal in December might be thought of as just another symbolic international gesture here in the States – an issue that’ll take the backseat (and maybe even get crammed into the trunk) to [...]

The weekend is here, so I figured I’d take a brief departure from sustainability talk to share a few thoughts on another, growing interest of mine: journalism. Publishing as a whole — but journalism especially — is in dire straits these days, as the paid subscription/ad supported revenue model has all but dissolved with the [...]

In Detroit, you can buy a house for under $900. Nine hundred dollars.
The glut of cheap housing is due, most directly, to the bottom dropping out on the city’s population, and the subsequent foreclosure and abandonment of formerly lived-in homes. Properties that even banks don’t want anything to do with fall apart, slip into decay, [...]

You can’t talk about cultural change without mentioning Copernicus– the guy who, with his hypothesis of a sun-centered solar system, nearly single-handedly launched the scientific revolution, pulled the rug out from under a stagnant church, and pushed forward the Renaissance’s period of rapid cultural change. Not bad for a guy who probably dressed like Robin [...]

I’m not an art critic. And I don’t know much about art history or what sets good art apart from bad art. But it’s pretty clear that art is informed by and inextricably tied to the particular culture from which it comes. The best art can define cultural moments– think of the Expressionist painters– or [...]

Second in a series.
In May, I wrote a post titled, “Banking on Kuznets”, which took a cursory glance at the concept of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC)– a concept that forms the theoretical linchpin of two very different ways of understanding the economy’s influence on our treatment of natural systems. Each has profound implications for [...]

Kathleen Dean Moore, philosopher and author; Bill Tydeman, historian; Alan Weisman, author; Jane Hir

Herman Daly answers the question: "What is the distinction between growth and development?"