Vision Other Resources

Core Readings

How many people?

• Engelman, Robert. (2011). "An End to Population Growth: Why Family Planning Is Key to a Sustainable Future." Solutions for a Sustainable and Desirable Future. Link 20 min

Engelman performs a careful and well-supported analysis of the possibility and promise of ending population growth short of the 9 billion so many consider inevitable.

• "Condoms Fight Climate Change But Nobody Wants to Talk About It" Link 4pp., 4 min.

Woodrow Wilson Institute scholars describe link between population and climate change and difficulty of publicly making it.

Drawing upon what natural material inputs? Converting them by what processes?

• "Zero Carbon Britain." Link 6pp, 6min. (I consider this an evidence and reason-based response to MacKay's near-insistence upon using nukes. Link 1p., 3min.)

The creators of this site have a fairly detailed plan for bringing Britain's carbon budget into balance without reliance upon fossil fuel or nuclear fission. This summary is dense. Skim it to grasp the main ideas. Mark Jacobsen of Stanford and colleagues have developed similar proposals for each of the 50 States.

• Crabb, Peter. (2008). "Technology Traps." Link. 2pp, 5 min

Peter Crabb asserts that technology is a trap into which we've fallen, and that we're avoiding a fundamental issue of how to satisfy human wants with available resources.

• Gunter, Linda Pentz. (2013). "Pandora's False Promises: Busting the Pro-Nuclear Propaganda." Link 1p., 2min

Read executive summary. Look at whatever else you want. Yes, counterarguments are many; however, we anticipate that those who reap narrow benefit from nuclear fission power will continue to inundate us with these, and we want to expose you to a viewpoint less readily accessible.

• Monbiot, George. (2014). "The Impossibility of Growth." Link 3pp., 3 min.

Monbiot describes why collapse is inevitable and necessary.

• Rowan, Michael. (27 February 2014). "We Need to Talk About Growth." Persuade Me Link (I'm asking you to read sub-headings 1. and 10. Read more if you like.)2pp, 2min; 20pp, 20min

Australian Michael Rowan discusses the necessity for an end to growth, quoting people from Adam Smith to Sarkozy to support his case, and calculating both the consequences of various scenarios in which we continue growing and prospects for prosperity in its absence.

• Jackson, Tim. "Prosperity Without Growth." Link 9pp., 10min.

Summary of Tim Jackson's book, "Prosperity Without Growth." Look especially at Box 1 on last page. Those of you who've been asking as we moved through the quarter, "How shall we deal with all this?" may find in Jackson's proposals basis for individual and collective action.

• Alpervitz, Gar. "The Next System Question and the New Economy." Solutions. (Volume 4, #5, October 2013) Link 2pp, 3 min

Alpervitz makes a case for systemic, rather than superficial change, and gives examples of how we've already begun. The creators of this website have collected and generated much thoughtful work about where we go from here.

• Rocky Mountain Institute. "Reinventing Fire: Electricity." Link 5pp., 5min.

Writers at organization directed by Amory Lovins describe how to implement transition to a distributed electricity generating system with broad social and environmental benefit.

• Shwartz, Mark. "Stanford scientist unveils 50-state plan to transform U.S. to renewable energy." Stanford Report. (26 February 2014) Link 5 min

Mark Jacobson of Stanford has devised 50 plans for 50 states to convert to 100% solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and hydro power by 2050. I hope he's right.

• Anderson, L.V.. "What If Everyone in the World Became a Vegetarian?" Mother Jones (1 May 2014) Link

Anderson presents a rough yet useful analysis of the mixed effects of a universal shift to a meatless diet. 5 min

To what ends?

• "Weaving the Community Resilience and New Economy Movement: Voices from the Field." Post Carbon Institute Link 26pp., 30 min.

Almost twenty people representing organizations working to these ends collaborate to outline lessons learned and directions they're headed. I found useful their lists of approaches and common ground elements. People looking for meaningful livelihood may find these suggestive.

• Smith, Richard. (2013, November 14). "Sleepwalking to Extinction: Capitalism and the Destruction of Life and Earth." Link 17pp., 15min.

An historian frames our times as part of a much longer human story, decries our delusion and denial, and notes signs that we may awaken to realize an "eco-socialist vision" and preserve future possibilities we very much want. Excerpt: "But we can’t stop because we’re all locked into an economic system in which companies have to grow to compete and reward their shareholders and because we all need the jobs."

• Schor, Juliet. (2011, September 2). "Less Work, More Living." Yes! Magazine. Link 5pp., 5min.
• Kaplan, Jeffrey. "The Gospel of Consumption." Orion, September/October 2008. Link 15 min

How we've come to be obsessed with working and buying, making historical reference to an early 20th century experiment with a 30-hour week by workers and managers at the Kellogg company.

• Harmsen, Peter. (2014, May 29). "Swedes Test Future: Less Work, More Play." AFP. Link 5 min

Swedes are experimenting with a 30-hour work week.

With what information?

• Jensen, Derrick. (2004). "Reading, Writing, Revolution." Orion Magazine. Link 3 pp. Jensen urges us to look deeply within as we contemplate what to learn and how to use it. He cautions that much education is of little worth in learning to live and die well.
• Konnikova, Maria. "I Don't Want to Be Right." The New Yorker. (19 May 2014.) Link 9 pp., 10 min

Konnikova reports on research about resistance to changing inaccurate beliefs and ways to overcome it. Hidden take-home message: people who feel worthy are better able to see self and world more accurately.

• Mooney, Chris. (2011). "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science." Link 16 min
• Speth, Gus. "Change Everything Now." Orion, September/October 2008. Link 6pp., 6 min. (For more essays from the Orion series, "Change Everything Now," follow links at Link

Co-founder of Natural Resources Defense Council and former Dean of Yale School of Forestry calls for mass political action to fundamentally restructure corporations and society.

• Lehrer, Jonah. "Why We Don't Believe in Science." The New Yorker. (7 June 2012.) Link. 5pp, 5min

Learning to override arational mental predispositions with thinking based on fact and reason is a teachable skill. In its absence we rely often on naive "intuition" and previous belief, however counterfactual (cognitive biases). Lehrer also reports on research showing that often learning accurate information entails unlearning contradictory, much of which may informed by genes or early experience which we accepted uncritically and with which we are now identified. I read this as more reason to question deeply.

• Sachs, Adam. Grist. (24 August 2009). "The Fallacy of Climate Activism." Link 6pp., 6min

Sacks calls global warming one of many symptoms, declares the fight against it a failure, and calls for radical truth and radical change. To change other behavior we'll change discourse, speaking "truth" to power.

• Wikipedia. "Dunning Kruger Effect." Link

When we're ignorant and incompetent we think we know and perform better than we do; when we're knowledgeable and competent we think we perform less well. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect (cognitive bias). Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was put forward in 1999, Dunning and Kruger have noted similar historical observations from philosophers and scientists, including Confucius ("Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."),[3] Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision", see Wikiquote),[12] and Charles Darwin, whom Dunning and Kruger quoted in their original paper ("ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge").[2] Geraint Fuller, commenting on the paper, noted that Shakespeare expressed similar sentiment in As You Like It ("The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole." (V.i)). 2pp., 2min.

• Graeber, David. "Give It Away." Link 10pp, 15 min

David Graeber of Yale reviews the concept of "gift economy" described by Marcel Mauss in a landmark essay, and details why he thinks Mauss and his modern day intellectual heirs are profoundly radical and pose a threat to key economic ideas in the dominant narrative.

• Pizzi, Ed. "Shallow Analysis: The Los Angeles Times Water Footprint Visualization." (28 May 2015). Los Angeles Times. Link - 7pp., 7min.

Pizzi offers a thoughtful critique of a nominally "scientific" analysis of water required to grow different foods. I consider this an excellent example of how to practice science to read and qualify material published in the popular press.