My new free newsletter, and supporters-only podcast I am very excited to share some recent news with you. My newsletter The Snap Forward is now live on Substack. It’s all about the planetary crisis, climate and sustainability, preparing for discontinuity and seeing opportunities in change, foresight and strategy for a…

Or, why it would have been a good idea to do so… (I wrote this for Worldchanging back in 2008, or so.) The Anthropocene is a proposed new geological era, meant to signal the idea that we’ve changed the Earth’s biosphere and climate so dramatically that we’ve left the Holocene…

Today’s cars are costly, dangerous and an ecological nightmare. What if the solution to the problems they create, though, has more to do with where we live than what we drive? — This is a rough draft of a long essay about why I believe building compact communities should be one of America’s highest environmental priorities, and why, in fact, our obsession with building greener cars may be obscuring some fundamental aspects of the problem and some of the benefits of using…

I’m a climate futurist. My work explores how natural and human systems are changing each other, and what those changes mean for us. Every few years I share some key trends I see emerging — ones big enough to alter our lives and fast enough to matter now. So, what’s…

Hey folks, I wrote an open letter foryoung climate advocates, sharing some things I’ve learned over the years I’ve been fighting for climate sanity and sustainability. It might speak to you… https://thenearlynow.com/how-to-be-young-in-a-climate-emergency-b2935eb07647 Best Alex

A letter to those getting ready to march. — You have been called on to become worldchanging. This Friday, you will be joining millions of others around the world in the largest climate protests in history. Demanding the future that is your right to claim. Fighting against powerful foes to save everything. That future you’re fighting for? That’s what…

I got an email recently which asked the question, “If our world is really looking down the barrel of environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now?” I know the standard answer: “Be the change.” This motto — shorthand for Gandhi’s instruction that “We must be the change…

[I posted this at Worldchanging shortly after the BP Spill. It seemed worth republishing now that Trump and his gang are undoing the off-shore drilling protections that were put in place in the aftermath of that tragedy in the Gulf.] We’ve gotten a few inquiries lately about why we aren’t…

The Whole Earth Catalog turned 50 years old, recently. This is a (very) rough draft of a proposal I drew up for reviving the Catalog, in 2002. Before it could go anywhere, The Point Foundation (which owned Whole Earth) went under. Many of the good ideas here instead became the…