Economics

When three worlds converge: tribal life in Ethiopia

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One image sums up my time in the Omo Valley: the remote area in south-west Ethiopia where tribal cultures still flourish. I’m attending a wedding in a village several miles down a dusty path, barely usable by vehicles.  The woman in front of me has the braided, red-dyed hair typical for women of the Hammar … Read more

How Modern Economics Erodes Social Resilience

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In systems design, a key way to create resilience is via duplication or even redundancy: for any crucial component, there is a counterpart which can hum into action if the main one fails.  This principle is important in sustainability too: organic farms have several kinds of crops, and livestock, which mean that if one fails, … Read more

Don’t Even Think About It: why our brains are wired to ignore climate change by George Marshall

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Don’t Even Think About It: why our brains are wired to ignore climate change. This book is an eloquent explanation of the issue in the title: well-researched, and refreshingly written. It is serious, but not a depressing lecture: the book is entertaining and engaging, partly through its use of stories and interviews as a way of getting past our hard-wired resistance. The table below gives a summary of the major issues covered in the book, and Marshall’s suggested antidotes.