An Optimist’s Vision for the Future — The world is utterly broken, in two separate ways. First, the natural systems we inherited—how we interact with the planet—are broken insofar as those that benignly supported us since the outset of homo sapiens sapiens decreasingly do, as we continue to wage war on them in the name of economics…

We have made reversing climate change seem complex, expensive, and nearly insurmountable. In truth, it’s dead simple. We are simply looking at the wrong equation. — A disturbing multi-media Op-Ed I read today in the New York Times brings its readers to every country in the world, one by one, illustrating the tangible impacts of climate change in each. …

The fastest—and perhaps only—way to fully reverse climate change is neither the retooling of the energy sector nor the retrofitting of every building on Earth, supported by an all-electric fleet. The answer is literally underfoot (and overhead), and the numbers are stunning. — Bill Reed is the co-founder of the LEED green building rating system and one of the world’s leading experts on the environment. Several years ago I invited him to speak at an event I hosted. Chatting privately, he said two things that changed my perspective on sustainability.

‘Enough’ is anti-consumerist. For one, it espouses limits. For another, it looks at needs, not wants. And above all, it values long-term societal health over short-term personal gain. It just might save us. — Enough isn’t a sexy doctrine. Far from the life of the party, it’s the rational voice that tells you skip the nightcap and get a good night’s sleep. While everybody knows it’s right to espouse these things, nobody enjoys the reminder.

“The Jewish Question” dates back to 1750’s Britain and pertained to the legal, political, civil, and national status—aka legitimacy—of Jews as a people within European societies. That chilling debate is very much alive today. As in the past, the very existence of the planet’s most persecuted people is again being debated. — As reported in a Nov. 9, 2023 article in the New York Times on free speech at U.S. campuses, Jason Rubenstein of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale—a Jew—penned an open letter in which he asserted that he is “no defender of many of Israel’s policies.”

We think of forgiveness as an act of external absolution, rather than the internal engine for self-awareness, growth and intimacy that it truly is. On Yom Kippur, some thoughts on “atonement”. — Forgiveness is generally thought of as a request made by a “transgressor” to an “aggrieved party”, in which we hope to box up an uncomfortable past interaction and put it on a shelf to gather dust, in the attic of yesterday.

The biggest and most famous artifacts on Earth have long been more about politics and power than about the literal functions they serve, turning fame and fortune-seeking architects into pawns and abettors in a hubris-laden game. We can do better. — It read like a skit from Monty Python: “a group of mathematicians pull out their calculators to show one of the planet’s most powerful men—a royal, no less—that he must’ve made an error, and that the 170km (110mi) long city he’s building from scratch should’ve been a circle instead of…

Email has lowered the quality of our communication while increasing our workload, turning workplaces into veritable towers of Babel. With measurable collateral cost to our mental health, why do we submit to it? — I clearly recall the moment in the early nineties that my then-colleagues and I each received a hand-delivered memo from our employer, outlining in stark terms that employees would punished if we were found using a new online tool “on company time”, while they were paying us to work.

In the glow of Burning Man’s still-warm embers, I offer a few front-row reactions to the hyperbolic news reports. — We used to joke, when I still lived in Canada, that on the rare occasions we were mentioned in American news, it was because we had finally done something that fit their preconceptions of us. The last time I remember it happening, it was in response to a group of…