The impactful and insightful exhibition marks the culmination of the Think Resilience course series. It has been an incredible journey! Thank you to all the amazing artists who dedicated their time to watching the videos and reflecting on their intricate content. I hope the course served as a turning point in their understanding of our interconnected crises (ecology economy, energy, and equity) —challenges without straightforward solutions, yet ones we can address through meaningful responses and action. By the end of the course, it is evident that building resilience starts with comprehending the complexity of our situation and then collaborating with our communities. ~ Michele Guieu
“Manufacturing, transportation, and buildings use energy to provide goods and services; transforming these sectors will entail finding ways to use less energy for these purposes, ways to use it that suit renewable energy sources, and ways to provide for human needs while using fewer material resources and producing less pollution. Land use planning touches on every aspect of local government concern, involving decisions on air quality, water quality, biodiversity, transportation options, economic vitality, and quality of life. And sound public policy is essential to community resilience efforts—with the recognition that imposing policies from above without adequate understanding of, or support for, those policies from community members will lead to political failure.” – Richard Heinberg
If you have any questions, please send an email to: info@whatsnextforearth.com
Think Resilience Course
“Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.”
Richard Heinberg
Think Resilience is hosted by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s leading experts on the urgency and challenges of moving society away from fossil fuels.
We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval. What should we do?
Think Resilience is an online course offered by Post Carbon Institute to help you get started on doing something. It features twenty-two video lectures—about four hours total—by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. Think Resilience is rooted in Post Carbon Institute’s years of work in energy literacy and community resilience. It packs a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of the course you’ll have good start on two important skills:
1. How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.
2. How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.
The links take you to the corresponding What’s Next for Earth’s online exhibitions:
Think Resilience is hosted by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s leading experts on the urgency and challenges of moving society away from fossil fuels.
We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval. What should we do? Think Resilience is an online course offered by Post Carbon Institute to help you get started on doing something. It features twenty-two video lectures—about four hours total—by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. Think Resilience is rooted in Post Carbon Institute’s years of work in energy literacy and community resilience. It packs a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of the course you’ll have a good start on two important skills:
1. How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.
2. How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.
“Building community resilience ultimately has to come to grips with the infrastructure that enables any community to function. This lesson looks at food, water, energy, and money systems, and how these can be made more resilient. If any one of these essentials goes haywire, a community loses its support capacity very quickly.” – Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
“Education—particularly early-childhood education—not only sets the foundation for who we become in later life, but also shapes society as a whole. If we want a more resilient society and more resilient communities, we have to plant the seeds today in students both young and old. We need education that trains people in both community and personal resilience-building.” – Richard Heinberg
“Systemic inequality reduces the sustainability and resilience of society as a whole. Capital tends to reproduce itself and become more consolidated and centralized over time—that’s its purpose—but only some members of society are motivated or able to set aside money and goods for the purpose of capital accumulation. Inequality is also created, sustained, and worsened over time through institutionalized racism, which results in chronic conditions of poverty and lack of access. Ultimately, promoting equity will require strategies like cooperative ownership of business and expanding the commons—the cultural and natural resources that should be accessible to all members of a society, and not privately owned.” – Richard Heinberg
“The local challenges created by globalization can be partly countered by economic localization. It starts with communities supporting local business rather than giving subsidies such as tax breaks and free utility hook-ups to large, non-local businesses, as is so often done. In fact, half of all private-sector U.S. jobs are still provided by small businesses, and almost all of these businesses are local. Moreover, local dollars have a multiplier effect—when spent within the regional economy, they increase local wealth, local taxes, jobs, charitable contributions, tourism, and entrepreneurship. Local economic development benefits everyone—except maybe big multinational corporations.” – Richard Heinberg
“Globalization is largely about the relentless pursuit of economic efficiency. And while there are benefits to efficiency (increasing profits, minimizing waste), as an economic strategy it has serious costs to community resilience. Wealthier countries lose jobs for higher-paid wage laborers, as well as the skill base and the infrastructure to produce goods and equipment. The offshoring of manufacturing to poorer nations reduces domestic pollution but increases pollution in the exporting nations (which often have less stringent regulations). Economic inequality increases, both within nations and between nations. And as regions specialize, there is an overall loss of local diversity in jobs.” – Richard Heinberg
“In 2015, Post Carbon Institute surveyed the academic literature on resilience and talked to scholars, activists, and local leaders around the country to determine how the concepts of resilience might be most usefully applied in communities by people who aren’t resilience scientists. We found an easily understood framework that speaks directly to the challenges communities face regarding equity, group decision-making, and their complex social and economic contexts. We identified six foundations that appear necessary for community resilience-building efforts to be successful. And these are: people, systems thinking, adaptability, transformability, sustainability, and courage.” – Richard Heinberg
“In this video, we’re going to bring resilience, which we defined and discussed in the last video, into the context of this century’s simmering and complex “E4” crises, with (1) ecological, (2) energy, (3) economic, and (4) equity dimensions. We’ll clarify the relationship between sustainability and resilience, and show why a lot of the climate change resilience discussion—while necessary—doesn’t go far enough. And we’ll explain why this video series focuses primarily on building resilience at the community level, as opposed to the global, national, or household level.” – Richard Heinberg Video transcript here.
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