Author: icsswpadmin

Laura Wells will discuss the historic decision this year in which the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party created a Left Unity Slate of statewide candidates for the June 7, 2022 primary in California. This cooperative strategy was based on the many shared values between the two parties, all of which will save lives, money, and the planet. Among the values are a single-payer “Medicare for All” healthcare system, real justice not increasing criminalization, truly affordable housing, public ownership of energy, ending wars for profit, public banking, and a comprehensive climate plan including meaningful work that provides a living without destroying the planet. 

Robert Jensen will outline four key challenges facing humanity: size, scale, scope, and speed. What is the sustainable size of the human population? What is the appropriate scale of a human community? What is the scope of human competence to manage our interventions into the larger living world? At what speed must we move toward different living arrangements if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences? The sooner we face the realities of these challenges without unwarranted faith in ideology or technology, the more likely we can create the conditions for a soft landing for humanity. These ideas are drawn from the forthcoming book that Jensen coauthored with Wes Jackson, An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity.

Robert Jensen, an Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas in Austin, collaborates with the New Perennials Project. He is the coauthor with Wes Jackson of An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, which will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in fall 2022. Other books are articles by Jensen are online at https://robertwjensen.org/.

After brief presentations by members of the ICSS Program Committee, we will continue our discussion on the situation on Ukraine. Speakers will include Allan Miller, Mehmet Bayram , Richard Fallenbaum, Gene Ruyle, and perhaps others.