It is said: “when a student is ready, the teacher appears.” For over 20 years, I have been asking the question of how can we live in ways that sustain and restore the earth, and ourselves? Over that time, I have been blessed to learn from some amazing teachers, each adding new dimensions and experiences… Read more
Category: Sustainability
Collaboration Over the Long Haul: Community Revitalization in Lawrence
Last week, I had the opportunity to tour the Spiket River Greenway, a community restoration initiative in Lawrence, MA that provides an inspiring story of vision, collaboration, and persistence over decades. The tour was part of a “learning journey” organized as the kick-off event of the Great Neighborhoods Network sponsored by the MA Smart Growth… Read more
Blueprints for Collaboration from Nature
As someone who has long been fascinated and inspired by what we can learn by mimicking nature’s patterns, the field of permaculture feels like one I could study and practice for a life time and never run out of more to learn. Permaculture has various definitions, such as the science of resilience or how to… Read more
Dashboards to Track Progress on Greenhouse Gas Emissions
This week, the State of Massachusetts just launched a new dashboard to track the progress of greenhouse gas emission reductions and related indicators. The Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Project (GWSP) Network has been working with the state to develop a meaningful set of metrics to enable progress to be evaluated.
Creating the Structures for a Generative Economy
A friend handed me a copy of Marjorie Kelly’s new book Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution; Journeys to a Generative Economy and said he thought it was so good that he had bought a case of them to share with colleagues and friends. By the time I was 50 pages into the book,… Read more
Rational and Not Rational at the Same Time
The resistance to taking action on climate change is a classic example of what in systems thinking terms is called “bounded rationality,” where people act in their rational self-interest in the short-term yet together create results no one wants. “Bounded rationality” was a term coined by Herbert Simon, an economist. Donella Meadows, the late scientist,… Read more
The Math of Climate Change: Visualizing Energy and Carbon Emissions
A lack of “energy literacy” is one of the challenges of building public support for action on climate change and for implementing climate action plans within government and business. We turn on the lights and how the energy gets to us and the impacts of that power generation are essentially invisible. Equally challenging and critically… Read more
Doing More with What the Earth Produces
This blog is part of a series about permaculture, drawing on experiences in a Permaculture Design Course I am taking with Chop Wood Carry Water Permaculture in Nottingham, NH. “We must stop expecting the earth to produce more, but start doing more with what the earth produces.” – GUNTER PAULI, Upsizing: The Road to… Read more
Overcoming "Functionally Insane" Short-Term Thinking
This blog begins a series of posts about permaculture, drawing on what I am learning in a Permaculture Design Course I am taking with Chop Wood Carry Water Permaculture in Nottingham, NH. Green Biz reported on a recent speech by Al Gore where he shared a story of a survey of CEO’s several years ago…. Read more
Fragmented Bureaucracies or Integrated Policy Coordination?
NPR’s Living on Earth show recently ran an interview with David Suzuki, author of “The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for Our Sustainable Future,” where he shared a moving story illustrating the interdependence of the temperate rainforest ecosystem. He contrasted that to how compartmentalized our government agency approaches are to “managing” our forests. Coincidentally, the same… Read more