Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future argues that the crises of climate change and peaking oil production are really one: a carbon problem. The book brings together six world-class experts to explore where we stand now and where we might be headed. Learn more »
The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization sets out a theory of the growth, crisis, and renewal of societies. Some kinds of crisis can open up extraordinary opportunities for creative, bold reform of our societies, if we’re prepared to exploit these opportunities when they arise. Learn more »
Is our world becoming too complex and too fast-paced to manage? The Ingenuity Gap argues that a dangerous gulf is opening between our need for practical, innovative ideas to solve our increasingly difficult problems and our actual supply of those ideas. Learn more »
Environment, Scarcity, and Violence shows how scarcities of critical renewable resources like cropland, fresh water, and forests will contribute to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence in poor countries. Learn more »
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Displaying 3 of 171 results for: Politics and Democracy
The attacks of last September 11 tore a ragged hole in the fabric of our reality. Through that hole we glimpsed something hideous. As is in our worst nightmares, it was indistinct and incomprehensible. We couldn’t see its beginning, its end, or its true form. But we knew immediately that this thing – whatever it was – was both profoundly dangerous and utterly terrifying.
It has been a month since we finally learned that George W. Bush will be the next president of the United States. Pundits have issued their solemn assessments of the presidential-selection process and moved on to comment on the next wave of momentous events in our adrenaline-charged political universe. But in their rush, they’ve missed a key lesson behind the fracas in Florida.
A major force shaping our political landscape is the lightening-fast advance of information technology. This advance is part of a larger process – a technology-driven shift of power from the state to individuals and subgroups. As technologies become easier to use, cheaper, faster, and more potent, we become individually more powerful relative to large, cumbersome, hierarchical institutions that are weighed down by bureaucracies and rigid standard operating procedures.
