“We had other currencies that we could find work in – the currencies of movements: passion, spirit, creativity.”

According to new research emerging from many quarters that our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually

We celebrate the birth of one who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.

Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem, for two reasons. One is the habits of the West in terms of consumption. The other is the incredible iniquity between poor countries and rich countries on this planet.

We use the web to help people organize in the flesh, and then we take the images of those events and put them back on the web to make them add up to more than the sum of their parts.

A voluntary simplification of life-styles is not beyond our abilities, but it is probably outside our desires.

We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)

In fact, corporations are the infants of our society – they know very little except how to grow (though they’re very good at that), and they howl when you set limits. Socializing them is the work of politics. It’s about time we took it up again.

Certainly, packets of sea ice, in say the Arctic, which have failed to fully reform in the last couple of years.

In the States we’ve had by far the largest demonstrations in the last few years. The largest civil disobedience actions about anything in US history in the last 30 years have all been centred around the climate.

We’re not at the point of trying to stop global warming; it’s too late for that. We’re trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity

It’s off the charts – and if you don’t believe the scientists, ask the insurance industry, the people we pay to analyze risk in our society.

You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet

If one wanted to stigmaitise, that’s how one would do it – lots and lots of people saying “we’re severing our ties”.

Probably nothing that we have ever managed to do quite equals the basic undermining of the physical stability of the planet on which most of the world’s poor people depend.

“Science,” of course, replaced “God” as a guiding concept for many people after Darwin. Or, really, the two were rolled up into a sticky ball. To some degree this was mindless worship of a miracle future, the pursuit of which has landed us in the fix we now inhabit.

Without a movement pressing for change, there’s little hope. We’ve got to work the political system to make this happen fast. The physics and chemistry are daunting. The resources on the other side are very large.

Time is clay. Go make something.

Catastrophe and creation are twins.

Creativity is people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it.

In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.

Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.

As a rule I don’t like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.

Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.

Ingenuity requires creativity.