Category Archives: Ideas

Richard Wilkinson gives a TED talk on impact of inequality

Richard Wilkinson, well known British public health researcher and co-author of the recent influential book on economic inequality the Spirit Level (which has been previously mentioned on Resilience Science) gives a TED talk about his research on the social impact … Continue reading

Posted in Ecological Economics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Zizek interviewed by Al Jazeera on world protests and Occupy Wall Street

Zizek interviewed by Al Jazeera about the Occupy Wall Street movement, claiming that “The [liberal capitalist] system has lost its self-evidence, its automatic legitimacy. And now the field is open. This is a very important achievement.” Continue reading

Posted in Cities, Inequality, Reflections, Regime Shifts | 1 Comment

SFU Convocation Address – Global Resilience Requires Novelty

[On Oct 7th, 2011 Buzz Holling was awarded a Honorary Doctorate of Science at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada. Below is his convocation address - editor] Sixty years ago I was where you graduates are now, but graduating from … Continue reading

Posted in Big Back Loop, General, Reorganization | Tagged | Leave a comment

Links: Melting glaciers, floods, and species responses to climate change

1) BBC News – Rivers of ice: Vanishing glaciers.- David Breashears retraced the steps of early photographic pioneers such as Major E O Wheeler, George Mallory and Vittorio Sella – to try to re-take their views of breathtaking glacial vistas. … Continue reading

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Climate Stablization Wedges – an update, responses and critiques

A well know proposed strategy for reducing carbon emissions was the 2004 “wedges” paper in by ecologist Stephen Pacala and engineer Robert Socolow (Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1100103). For more on wedges see Carbon Mitigation Initiative website at Princeton. Robert Socolow has … Continue reading

Posted in Ecological Economics, Ecological Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Resilience of Totnes

‘Town’ series on BBC2 examines the role of towns in the UK. The last show in the series looks at the resilience of Totnes, the founding site of rapidly growing Transition Towns movement, which is represented locally by Transition Town … Continue reading

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Analysis of impact of recent global crises on development

In the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the UK, writes What impact have the global crises had on development thinking? He summarizes some of the findings from an effort at … Continue reading

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New resilience theory related book Phase Transitions

Ricard Solé, the well known complex systems scientist, has a new book Phase Transitions (here’s Table of Contents). It sounds interesting especially since Solé’s work frequently includes ecological and evolutionary dynamics.  The book looks very similar it is to Marten … Continue reading

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Biotic simplification and ecological reorganization

From a powerful review paper in Science on the Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth (DOI: 10.1126/science.1205106) James A. Estes and many other ecological stars documents the strong role of apex consumers (i.e. big herbivores like elephants) and top predators (e.g. … Continue reading

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A parallel world

From David Denby’s review of Soderbergh’s new movie Contagion in the New Yorker: “Contagion” is, of course, a 9/11-anniversary movie, though probably not one that the public was expecting. Soderbergh appears to be saying, “I’ll show you something far worse … Continue reading

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