Related topics

The list below intends to inform, to help explain the focus of milliongenerations.org and to help avoid repetition. It is far from comprehensive, and does not imply endorsement. Please add references and relevant categories.

Work with a perspective similar to milliongenerations.org

please add work attempting to define the requirements for civilizations or species existing for a very long time or in other ways relevant to milliongenerations.org.

Long term thinking

• The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. (Milliongenerations.org would like to encourage long term thinking but was started in the belief that thinking about a steady state is in many respects easier than thinking about developments in tens, hundreds or thousands of years.)

Explaining sustainability

• The Brundtland comission's report concluded that Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:
  • the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
  • the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.

• Project Worldview has list of links on sustainability and enoughness

• US Environmental Protection Agency EPA defines Sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

• Wikipedia entry Sustainability discusses various definitions

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Steps to sustainability

• Michael Braungart and William McDonough: Cradle to Cradle Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (2002). In this book the authors explain that doing more with less may be less bad but is still no good, because only really fully wasteless (waste is food) ways are sustainable.

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Theories about sustainable economy

• Albert A. Bartlett: REFLECTIONS ON SUSTAINABILITY, POPULATION GROWTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT - REVISITED, January 1998
• Kenneth E. Boulding: THE ECONOMICS OF THE COMING SPACESHIP EARTH(1966)

• Herman Daly: "STEADY-STATE ECONOMICS" (1991): Chapter 5: A Catechism of Growth Fallacies

• Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend: VALUING THE EARTH: Economics, Ecology, Ethics (1993) p.267 - SUSTAINABLE GROWTH: An Impossibility

• Henry George believed that that the public collection of the rent of land leads to vigorous, sustainable prosperity.

• Schumacher, E. F.; Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered : 25 Years Later...With Commentaries !1999). Hartley & Marks Publishers ISBN 0-88179-169-5

• Wikipedia entry Sustainability discusses various economists and theories in its History section.

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Promoting sustainable development

• Lists
  • The Open Directory Project's list of societies concerned with sustainable development
  • Yahoo! collected sites related to Sustainable_Development.

• The Alliance of Civilization (AoC) was established in 2005, at the initiative of the Governments of Spain and Turkey, under the auspices of the United Nations to explore the roots of polarization between societies and cultures today, and to recommend a practical programme of action to address this issue. The Alliance of Civilizations (AoC) aims to improve understanding and cooperative relations among nations and peoples across cultures and religions and, in the process, to help counter the forces that fuel polarization and extremism.

• De Kleine Aarde is a Dutch organization providing inspiration for sustainable living.

• The Earth Policy Institute is dedicated to building a sustainable future as well as providing a plan of how to get from here to there.

• Freedom from Hunger attempts to bring sustainable answers to the global hunger crisis.

• The Natural Capital Institute serves the people who are transforming the world. It describes itself as a team of researchers, teachers, students, activists, scholars, writers, social entrepreneurs, artists, and volunteers committed to the restoration of the earth and the healing of human culture.

• The Sustainable Development Network is a coalition of individuals and non-governmental organizations who believe that sustainable development is about empowering people, promoting progress, eliminating poverty and achieving environmental protection through the institutions of the free society.

• ZeroGrowth answers the question "why zero growth?" with another question: "why not?" Can someone explain this more clearly?

In many instances, "sustainable" seems to have become a fashionable adjective rather independent from a long-term, steady state perspective

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Futurology

• Wikipedia entries on Futurology and Foresight and future studies

• The European Commission's FOR-LEARN Online Foresight Guide

• IEET: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

• IFTF: the Institute for the Future is an independent, nonprofit research group with nearly 40 years of forecasting experience. The core of its work is identifying emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace.

• The Millennium Project of The World Federation of UN Associations is a global participatory futures research think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities.

• Jamais Cascio's Open the Future

• UNIDO's Technology Foresight

• World Future Society

• Wikipedia Article on Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

• Worldchanging magazine

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Collapse of civilizations

• Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). New York: Viking Books. ISBN 0-14-303655-6. Video of a talk of J. Diamond at the Long Now Foundation

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Threats to survival of civilizations

• Armageddon Online collects stories about disasters

• Exit Mundi, a large collection of end-world scenarios by Maarten Keulemans (also available as book in Dutch)

• Frank Furedi "Confronting the New Misanthropy" in Spiked, April 18 2006

• The Guardian April 14, 2005: "What a way to go" Scientists name the greatest dange r to civilization.

• John Hamaker: "The Survival of Civilizations", 1982 (www editon 2002 with annotations by Donald Weaver). Hamaker discusses the threat of a glacial period.

• James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" discusses the end of cheap fossil fuels.

• Jay Hanson, Tom Robertson site dieoff.org provide a lot of links and information on sustainability and energy

• Energy Resources Discussion Group

• Eugene Linden's "The Winds of Change" discusses weather and the destruction of civilisations.

• Stephen Petranek: 10 ways the world could end Video at the 2002 TED conference

1. Asteroids, a question of when and how big
2. Black Hole about a billion miles away could alter earth's orbit
3. Epidemic
4. Solar flares
5. Poles reverse
6. Biotech mishap
7. Particle accelerator mishap creates lasting black hole or strangelets
8. The Ecosystem collapses, solve by ecosystem modelling and huge biodiversity reserves
9. Aliens invade earth
10. We loose the will to survive due to the spreading of depression, the biggest epidemic humans have ever faced

• TV
  • ABC TV program Earth 2100
  • ABC TV documentary Last Days On Earth on 7 real end-of-the-world scenarios (Wed. Aug 30 2006)

• Wikipedia entries on Risks to civilization humans and planet Earth and Societal Collapse summarize and reference a lot of work

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Surviving threats

• Wikipedia entry on Survivalism contains a many references, mostly about surviving on a personal level rather than as a civilization.

• Google.org's Predict and Prevent initiative will use information and technology to empower communities to predict and prevent emerging threats before they become local, regional, or global crises.

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