ASHER MILLER

We’re excited to announce the publication of our first Community Resilience Guide: Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity by PCI Fellow Michael Shuman. This book series will be part of a larger new effort we have launched—the Community Resilience Initiative.

As long as we allow proponents of unconventional oil and gas to claim a false choice between energy and economic security and the environment, and as long as we allow them to vilify opponents as being somehow unpatriotic or radical, we run the very real risk of losing a battle where the future of our planet and species is at stake. Ok, so maybe I am being a little bombastic. But am I wrong?

It's all too easy to feel that hope is lost. But with your help, we're determined to make 2012 the year that resilience built.

2011 has been another turbulent year ... looming behind it all — increasingly acknowledged, but still not often addressed — resource, environmental, economic, and social constraints.

For Post Carbon Institute, the question has not been, “What to do?” but rather, “What to do first?” There are so many challenges, all of them interrelated, and so many areas that need attention. Building on the wise counsel of our Fellows, Board, Advisers, Allies, and Supporters, PCI has developed three primary strategies:

• Setting the Agenda
• Changing the Conversation
• Building Resilience

Like so many others, we at Post Carbon Institute have watched the growth of the #Occupy movement with a mix of hope and curiosity. As you know, we sent Ben Zolno, an enterprising young filmmaker, to Occupy Wall Street a few weeks ago with copies of The End of Growth and a bunch of questions...
Last week we sent him back, this time with a few recommendations...

On an almost daily basis, the American public is presented with false solutions, rhetoric, and partisan bickering. The only conclusion I can come up with is that one or both of the following is true:
1) Our elected officials think we’re too childish to speak to honestly about the complex issues and choices we face.
2) Our elected officials are, themselves, too childish to govern.
But here’s the thing… When it comes to facing these daunting economic, energy, and environmental crises, we’re all going to need to grow up. And fast.

On the surface, the nuclear crisis in Japan and the political crisis in Libya (along with at least five other countries in the region) might seem unrelated. But when it comes to our self interest here in the United States, there's one thing that binds them together: our unquenchable need for energy and the price we pay for that addiction. And there are a few lessons I think would behoove us to learn from this month in hell...

Did you hear anything surprising in Obama's State of the Union address last night? Anything truly visionary? Me neither. Of course, that wasn't the point.

'Tis the season of giving and Oprah is in a giving mood. For most of the last decade, the TV personality and cultural trendsetter has annually bestowed upon unsuspecting studio audiences a smorgasbord of gifts large and small. The reaction of audiences is almost impossible to believe, let alone describe. I have to admit to watching clips of this year's "Oprah's Favorite Things" over and over again, with a mix of fascination and revulsion.

Authors from three politically disparate think tanks—American Enterprise Institute, Brookings, and Breakthrough Institute— recently published a report on how to foster deployment of clean energy technology. Most worrying (though least surprising) is the authors' belief that clean energy innovation breakthroughs can drive continued economic growth. Conservation is not something most environmental think-tanks or NGOs (not to mention the likes of American Enterprise Institute) want to discuss, but I dare say it will have a much bigger role in our energy future than "innovative, small-scale nuclear reactors."

After major disappointments in Copenhagen and Washington D.C., millions of us concerned about the climate crisis have been left wondering "what now?". The stakes couldn't be higher, and the political and infrastructural challenges so large and complex, that it's no surprise to see soul-searching and disagreements over the best course of action. Especially when legislative and diplomatic efforts to date have fallen flat. When folks like Dave Roberts — who fiercely advocated for admittedly weak Cap & Trade legislation because he felt that it was our best hope for progress — have given up on the nation's capitol, it's clear that a lot of people are being forced to re-evaluate.