Chelsea Green Blog
Politics & Public Policy
Mass Layoffs: Destructiveness and Doubt
Addressing the pressing issues affecting everyday Americans is essential—and one of our nation’s most profound challenges is the devastating impact of mass layoffs. Layoffs upend people’s lives, cause enormous stress, and lead to debilitating personal debt. The societal harm caused by mass layoffs has been known for decades. Yet, we do little to stop them.…
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Facing the Beast: Practicing Courage and Reflection
What does facing the beast mean? In this time of uncertainty, we must practice regular reflection to achieve optimal happiness and health. The metaphor below gives insight into confronting and facing it, regardless of what “the beast” is to you. The following is. an excerpt from Facing the Beast by Naomi Wolf. It has been adapted for the…
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About Time: What Makes Time Such A Valuable Resource
We’ve all heard of the phrases “time flies” and “time heals all wounds,” but what really is time, and how does it impact our lives? The concept of time may be even more powerful than we think, especially when it comes to the money we save and spend. The following is an excerpt from The…
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The Upstream Questions: What We Ask Of Science
“Climate change asks us questions that climate science cannot answer,” — Dougald Hine When it comes to climate change, it seems as if there are always new questions arising: How did we get to this point? How can we stop it? What’s next? Unfortunately, there is no black-and-white, straightforward answer to any of them —…
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A Conversation On Climate Change: Which Path Will We Take?
Dougald Hine has spent most of his life talking to people about climate change. And then one afternoon in the second year of the pandemic, he found he had nothing left to say. Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological destruction want to stop talking about climate change now? In the excerpt below, Hine…
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Vandana Shiva’s Beginnings: An Icon In the Making
“All of us who care about the future of Planet Earth must be grateful to Vandana Shiva.”—Jane Goodall, UN Messenger of Peace Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, leader of several forums and movements, twenty-time international award recipient, author and editor of a score of influential books, and a tireless crusader for…
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History of The Seed Sovereignty Movement: Reclaiming the Seed
Vandana Shiva has been described in many ways: the “Gandhi of Grain,” “a rock star” in the battle against GMOs, and “the most powerful voice” for people of the developing world. For over four decades she been at the forefront of seed saving, seed sovereignty, and connecting the dots between the destruction of nature, the polarization…
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The Coronation: An Introduction
“Charles Eisenstein is one of the most original writers working today, and his essays on the social and spiritual impact of the pandemic event are among his best work. The Coronation is essential reading for anyone concerned about the damage that has been done to our societies and how we might recover and collectively go…
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Mechanistic Thinking: Solitude, Social Connections and Sense of Meaninglessness
The world is in the grips of mass formation as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink. “Humans have found themselves in a state…
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An Era of Climate Chaos: Finding Hope
Scientists maintain that a mere 2 percent increase in the carbon content of the planet’s soils could offset 100 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions going into the atmosphere. But how could this be accomplished? What would it cost? Is it even possible? The following is an excerpt from Grass, Soil, Hope by Courtney White. It has been…
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Making the Great Resignation Even Greater
People are quitting their jobs and retiring at an alarming rate all over the country. Dubbed “the great resignation,” this change in the American workforce is causing shortages and supply chain issues in many sectors, from healthcare to retail. The following is an excerpt from Scanned by Nick Corbishley. It has been adapted for the…
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The Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil
In 1947, Daniel Dennett, America’s sole master spy in the Middle East (code name “Carat”), was dispatched to Saudi Arabia to study the route of the proposed Trans-Arabian Pipeline. The plane carrying him to Ethiopia went down, killing everyone on board. In Follow the Pipelines, investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett, digs into the mystery of her…
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Going to Seed: Where It All Began
At a young age, Simon Fairlie rejected the rat race and embarked on a new trip to find his own path. He dropped out of Cambridge University to hitchhike to Istanbul and bicycle through India. He established a commune in France, was arrested multiple times for squatting and civil disobedience, and became a leading figure…
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Hemp History 101
The historical prominence of hemp can be seen in dozens of American towns that still bear its name, including Hempfield, PA, Hemphill, KY, Hempstead, NY, Hempfork, VA, and more. How did humanity’s longest utilized plant, that has more than 25,000 uses and so many towns named after it, end up nearly extinct in the U.S.?…
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The Three Pillars of Immune Health
Staying healthy is at the top of everyone’s to-do lists. But what is the best way to do it? The key is keeping your immune health in check. While that sounds daunting, there are a lot of small tweaks we can make in our everyday lives to keep our immune system in tip-top shape. If…
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What If Schools Nurtured Imagination?
Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most. In his book, author Rob Hopkins asks why imagination is in decline, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it.…
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Chelsea Green’s Audiobook Gift Guide
We all have one of those people on our gift lists. You know the type: the hardcore hobbyist with very specific taste who is sick of socks and isn’t all that into reading. Lucky for you, some of our most popular (and interesting) books also come in audiobook form! Get your loved-ones the gift of storytelling and knowledge…
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What You Didn’t Learn About “Leaves of Grass” in School
In her book Outrages, Naomi Wolf shows how legal persecutions of writers, and of men who loved men affected Symonds and his contemporaries, including Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, and the painter Simeon Solomon. All the while, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was illicitly crossing the Atlantic and finding its way…
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What Does a Sustainable Future Look Like?
In a time of looming uncertainties, what would a truly resilient society look like? Farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje argues that organizing society around small-scale farming offers the soundest, most sustainable, and most reasonable response to climate change and other crises of civilization—and will yield humanity’s best chance at survival. The following excerpt is…
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Discovering John Addington Symonds
In 1861, John Addington Symonds, a twenty-one-year-old student at Oxford who already knew he loved and was attracted to men, hastily wrote out a seeming renunciation of the long love poem he’d written to another young man. In her book Outrages, Naomi Wolf chronicles the struggle and eventual triumph of Symonds—who would become a poet,…
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Seeding the Future
Widespread poverty and malnutrition, an alarming refugee crisis, social unrest, and economic polarization have become our lived reality as the top 1% of the world’s seven-billion-plus population pushes the planet—and all its people—to the social and ecological brink. In Oneness vs. the 1%, Vandana Shiva takes on the Billionaires Club of Gates, Buffet, and Zuckerberg,…
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Lessons From a Small Country
People say good things sometimes come in small packages, and the little country of Whales is an example of just that. As Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales, Jane Davidson proposed the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015—the first piece of legislation on Earth to place regenerative and sustainable practice at the…
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Making Change, Big and Small
In a time when change is necessary and inevitable, leading by example is invaluable. Not only has Jane Davidson spent a significant portion of her professional life working on legislation to build a greener, brighter future, but she has also integrated green changes into her personal life. It’s easy to talk the talk, but walking…
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Election Year: Inspirational Reading Before Voting
The following is from the Chelsea Green 2020 Spring Journal. It has been adapted for the web. Rules for Revolutionaries Becky Bond and Zack Exley A riveting behind-the-scenes look at how a small “distributed organizing” team operating on the fringes of the Bernie Sanders campaign was able to identify, recruit, train, and activate hundreds of…
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6 Books That Bring Hope to Life
Books can bring comfort, happiness, and most important: hope. Let these books fill you with inspirational stories of perseverance, hope, and innovation. Following the collapse of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy, social activist Ruairí McKiernan questions whether he should join the mounting number of emigrants searching for greater opportunity elsewhere. McKiernan embarks on a hitchhiking odyssey…
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