By Ted Wysocki Posted on March 11, 2015

“Because the thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, what we can hope for, what we can demand from ourselves and our leaders.” – Naomi Klein

Forget about blue states and red states or Democrats versus Republicans. There is only one distinction to be made going forward: Do you support an “extractivist” or “regenerative” energy policy? You can’t equivocate. There’s no time.

In her book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein has made the convincing argument that we have now reached “Decade Zero” of the climate crisis. Planet Earth cannot endure temperatures rising more than two degrees Celsius as a result of further carbon emissions. The door to reach two degrees is closing—not in the next decade, but in 2017 it will be closed forever with no room for any additional increase in emissions.

“In short, it means changing everything about how we think about the economy,” Klein underscores, “so that our pollution doesn’t change everything about our physical world.” Klein challenges us to live “nonextractively” by relying overwhelmingly on resources that can be continuously regenerated. Renewable energy is a prime alternative, yet governments throughout the world continue to subsidize fossil fuels directly or indirectly as oil and utility companies play lip service to investing in it.

http://www.shelterforce.org/article/4066/this_book_changes_everything/

By Miriam Axel-Lute Posted on February 4, 2015

It’s not often that you get a new hardcover book in your conference swag. But CFED decided it was worth weighing down the luggage of everyone at their Assets Learning Conference in September with a copy of Scarcity.

I have to say I agree.

In Scarcity, Mullainathan, a behavioral economist, and Shafir, a cognitive scientist, explore how brains react to the experience of scarcity—whether it’s poverty, extreme busyness, or other types of scarcity, such as the enforced calorie scarcity of dieters. (They recognize that poverty is the most important of these, and it is clearly their real target.)

Their conclusion, supported by numerous fascinating research experiments, is that scarcity affects brain function. It has some positives—the focus dividend, what happens when you can suddenly work because of an impending deadline. It’s also the reason many people in poverty are such masters at stretching a dollar. However, it has negative effects as well, from over-focus (which they call tunneling) to dramatic reductions in certain kinds of brain function, including executive function, which allows for self-control and willpower. The authors speak at length about what they call the “bandwidth tax” of functioning under scarcity.

Scarcity would be useful reading for anyone who has been poor, works with the poor, or has opinions about poverty. One of its greatest strengths is the way it describes the experience of poverty in great scientific and conceptual detail without victim-blaming. The authors don’t fall into the trap of blaming poverty on culture, behavior, or inherent deficits, but they also don’t sidestep the fact that many people in poverty exhibit patterns of poor choices and poor cognitive functioning. The authors make a powerful case that these are effects of poverty, not causes.

http://www.shelterforce.org/article/4032/economic_security_first/

By Miriam Axel-Lute Posted on February 4, 2015

I live in the small city of Albany, N.Y., which I often describe as the best of both worlds—public transit, walkable neighborhoods, culture, diversity, but also a bit of a small town social feel. (We call it Smalbany.) We also enjoy local food that hasn’t traveled far, an affordable cost of living, and quick access to green space in every direction.

That perspective is part of why I was lucky enough to be a researcher and writer for PolicyLink’s 2007 report on smaller cities—To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities. In that report we observed both the up and down sides of small cities. We are, for example, often left out of national policy discussions and are less likely to be home to major corporate headquarters, foundations, or even branches of community development intermediaries. The research led me to an acute awareness of how often small cities, which are home to millions of people, are overlooked.

So imagine my delight to discover Small, Gritty, and Green. Written by Catherine Tumber, an urban upstate New York native, it focuses on small cities and their particular potential for the low-carbon future we need to be moving toward.

Tumber has a counter-narrative to the Richard Florida–type predictions that the larger cities are going to continue spreading into ever-larger mega regions, and those places left behind will wither away. To Tumber’s eyes (like mine) small cities are able to offer the best of both worlds. In one example, she argues that what is often considered a small city weakness, namely, overreliance on an old manufacturing base, can, if it’s captured before the skills and infrastructure are lost, be parlayed into perfect locations for green manufacturing—from solar to electric cars. What seem like unrealistic pipe dreams about rebooted manufacturing sectors to the many “realists” who want everyone to retool only in service of the “knowledge economy,” appear much more plausible after Tumber takes you on a detailed tour through some of these regions, their workforces, and the industries who are interested in them.

http://www.shelterforce.org/article/4033/we_may_be_small_but/