Juliet Schor

Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College, a member of the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network, and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream. She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”

It might be a bit of a hunker down message, but it’s about focusing on people’s needs: security, resilience, and minimising risks.

Is this sharing’s big breakthrough? Or business as usual?

In a few short weeks a rag-tag group of under-thirties has been able to transform the global conversation about economic issues by focusing on three basic points, all of which are essential for stopping runaway climate change and ecological overshoot.

This beautifully drawn 5-minute video provides a vision of what a post-consumer society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale enterprises that can help reduce the overall size and impact of the consumer economy.

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released revised figures for the Gross Domestic Product going all the way back to 2007, and they aren’t pretty. The recovery is a failure; the economy is lousy; and the official discourse is in deep, deep denial.