Category: Sustainability Education Forum

SEF News-Views Digest No. 183 (10-4-17)
Clifton Ware, Editor-Publisher

In our modern world of plentiful energy and dependable services, the series of natural catastrophes in recent weeks have been shocking eye openers. Many people have encountered enormous survival challenges, as normal energy sources and supplies have become unavailable. At times, most so-called “first world” citizens have experienced short-term electricity outages due to storms or mechanical disruptions, but the long-term lack of electricity or other energy sources is relatively rare. That is, was rare, before such catastrophic events as super-powerful hurricanes, like Katrina, Sandy, Irma, and Maria, poured havoc on several U.S. states and territories.

SEF News-Views Digest No. 182 (9-27-17)
Clifton Ware, Editor-Publisher

By any standard of material wellbeing, my wife and I are very well off. Indeed, we have everything we need—or want. Thanks to the frugal practices of our Great Depression era parents, we learned how to live comfortably within limited financial means. I offer this personal disclosure as a prelude to addressing how the accumulation of extreme wealth by the top one-percent of individuals—along with large corporations and organizations—is exerting excessive socio-economic and political influence over every aspect of modern life.

SEF News-Views Digest No. 181 (9-20-17)
Clifton Ware, Editor-Publisher

It appears that Nature has had it with humanity’s profligate ways. If our species refuses to live in harmony with Nature, then there will be increasingly severe consequences, as we’ve witnessed this summer, with some of the hottest temperatures and natural disasters ever recorded.

This summer has been particularly rife with a number of unprecedented natural disasters,

SEF News-Views Digest No. 180 (8-23-17)
Clifton Ware, Editor-Publisher

I was pleasantly surprised this week upon reading an essay-sized book titled Night Thoughts, by playwright-character actor Wallace Shawn. Recently, he appeared in a public TV interview to discuss this book, and Bettye and I were impressed with the depth of his thinking and speaking. The following excerpts summarize his basic message, which speaks to our current extremely conflicted socio-cultural-political scene, whereby the very fortunate have-a-lots (winners) live very well, while the suffering have-nots (losers) struggle to survive.

SEF News-Views Digest No. 179 (8-16-17)
Clifton Ware, Editor-Publisher

The creative team of Post Carbon Institute’s Richard Heinberg and colleagues has chalked up two more successful publications. Not long after debuting the innovative educational course Think Resilience, they’ve produced an impressive new manifesto titled #NoApp4That, which you’ll want to check out. But first, you might want to watch a short animation, Hello Humanity, It’s Me, Technology. We Need To Talk, which is making the rounds on social media.