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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.

Perspective similar to milliongenerations.org

milliongenerations.org asks everyone to consider what follows from the assumption that civilizations continues on planet earth while the sun provides a suitable environment, and the concept of civilization is limited to the sharing of information between intelligent beings. Many probably have, although none have been found so far who thought about it in the same way and with the same perspective. Please add any relevant information.

(Online) collaborative efforts

  • The Oil Drum (TOD) is organized by the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future in Colorado. It exists to facilitate civil, evidence-based discussions about energy and its impact on our future. It raises awareness, conducts research, hosts a civil discussion and creates a global community to work on the subject. It seeks to leverage the open nature of the internet to create a global forum for the discussion of energy problems and solutions. Great stuff!
  • The SpaceCollective organizes an exchange of information by participants / bloggers as well as projects by universities, architecture and design schools.
  • Sustainability Science organizes a Forum
  • Us Now is a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet, asking what happens to power and government in a world in which information is like air. It outlines the scope of change that collaboration might bring about. (Not quite sure whether or not it is a collaborative effort itself)
  • Wiser Earth explores various ways of collaboration including a network, forums and Wiki Pages.

Long term thinking

(see also Futurology below)

  • 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.)


Motivating sustainability

  • Philosophers have worked on if and why the living have obligations towards future individuals.
    • Tim Mulligan in Future People: A Moderate Consequentialist Account of Our Obligations to Future Generations (2006, ISBN: 0199556733) states that our obligations to future generations deserve to be the central topic of moral philosophy
    • John Nolt explains why we care about future generations
    • R. I. Sikora and Brian Barry edited Obligations to Future Generations in 1972 (ISBN: 0-87722-128-6)


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's articles on sustain and sustainability discuss various concepts and understandings of the term.

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Theories about sustainable economy

  • Andrew Oswald Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick has worked extensively on the link between circumstances and happiness, and links papers and presentations on his website.
  • Herman Daly: "ECONOMICS IN A FULL WORLD", Scientific American, September 2005, Vol. 293, Issue 3. Daly maintains that man-made capital (e.g., boats) can not substitute for natural capital (e.g., fish) and advocates steps to strong sustainability:
    • Limiting resources use of to rates that result in levels of waste that can be absorbed by the ecosystem.
    • Exploiting renewable resources at rates that allow their regeneration
    • Deplete nonrenewable resources at rates that, as far as possible, do not exceed the rate of development of renewable substitutes.
  • Richard A. Easterlin, now at University of Southern California, found in the mid-1990s that beyond a certain threshhold our happiness is depends on relative wealth (i.e., status), which growth can not raise for everyone. At least it depends on status much more than on absolute wealth. Whether or not the Easterlin paradox in its strong form is true, the additional benefit of extra absolute wealth certainly reduces as wealth increases. Easterlin publishes about The Economics of Happiness.
  • Herman Daly (Editor): Toward a Steady-State Economy, 1973 W. F. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-0793-4, containing contributions of Barry Bluestone, Kenneth E. Boulding, Preston Cloud, John Cobb, Herman E. Daly, Paul R. Ehrlich, Richard England, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Garret Hardin, John P. Holdren, Warren A. Johnson, Leon R. Kas, C.S. Lewis, Donella Meadows, William Ophuls, Jorgen Randers, E.F. Schumacher, Walter A. Weisskopf. I Biophysical Constraints on Economic Growth. II The Social World and Adjustment to a Steady State. III Values and the Steady State.
  • McKibben argues in his book Deep Economy that we need to move beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. Video of Bill McKibben.
  • Henry George believed that that the public collection of the rent of land leads to vigorous, sustainable prosperity. In 1880 he published Progress and Poverty with a chapter On Capital
  • John Stuart Mill in 1848 wrote Of the Stationary State, as part of his "Principles of Political Economy". He challenged the idea of eternal economic growth and welcomed the "impossibility of ultimately avoiding the stationary state", maintaining that the "stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement".


  • Status. In a society relative status seems to have been beneficial if not determining reproductive success, so the longing for status, especially in young males, would have evolved and is not something we can easily get rid of. Thus it does not surprise that status or relative income/wealth is a major factor in our happiness, making us healthier and live longer. Even if growth does not advance everyone's relative income, absolute gain temporarily suggests relative gain, driving growth. Unless we find a way to deal with it, our hardwired wish to pass on our genes would cause the end of civilization or maybe even the species. Any viable vision on sustainable economy would have to take our longing for status into account, channeling it in other ways than material growth.



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Enable the future of human civilization, increase resilience of human civilization, make human civilization sustainable

    • Wiser Earth is "an online community space for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and those that support their work." It lists organizations that form what Paul Hawken, the founder of Wiser Earth, says is "humanities immune response to resist and heal political disease, economic infection, and ecological corruption, caused by ideologies." The project is run by the Natural Capital Institute. Paul Hawken explains the movement in his address at the Bioneers conference 2006.
    • Project Worldview has list of links on sustainability and enoughness
    • 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.


  • 350.org, an organization started and headed by Bill McKibben with the mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis—to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet. Its focus is on the number 350--as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere and take the number as a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.
  • 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.
  • Ray Anderson has implemented an impressive program on "Mission Zero" to eliminate any negative impact the company has on the environment by 2020 at his company Interface, a maker of carpets, and spreads the word of responsibility towards future generations e.g., on youtube or at TED in 2009, where he cited a poem by Glenn Thomas: Tomorrow's Child, follow the links to the lyrics and the [poem performed as a song.
  • Yann Arthus-Bertrand's film "HOME" makes the point that in 200.000 years on earth humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it's too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten yearsto reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoilation of the Earth's riches and change its patterns of consumption. The film wants to lay a foundation for the edifice that, together, we must rebuild.
  • In the same direction are two more projects Yann Arthus-Bertrand is involved in:
    • 6 billion others / 6 milliards d'autres: in 2003, after "The Earth seen from the Sky" Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with Sybille d’Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, launched the project “6 Billion Others”
      • 5,000 interviews were filmed in 75 countries by 6 directors who went in search of the Others.
      • From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes
      • "What have you learnt from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children? What difficult circumstances have you been through? What does love mean to you?"
      • Forty or so questions that help us to find out what separates and what unites us. These portraits of humanity today are accessible on this website.
    • The Good Planet Foundation works on public’s awareness raising and on the elaboration of concrete solutions in favor of a more responsible lifestyle ; more respectful of the planet and its inhabitants by
      • Sensitizing a large number of citizens to the world’s problems to give each one an active role in the future of the planet and its inhabitants ;
      • Mobilizing the economic actors and policies by linking them with the activities of the association and by helping them to set up their own sustainable development related procedures ;
      • Acting on the implementation of programs which intend to give concrete answers to the environmental crisis.
  • The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists informs the public about threats to the survival and development of humanity from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences and suggests measures to reduce the threats.
  • Jamais Cascio's piece in Foreign Policy on The Next Big Thing: Resilience. Resilience hopefully is more than another fad but something intelligent beings can build into their way to communicate knowledge. His list of principles for resilience (diversity, redundancy, decentralization, collaboration, transparency, fail gracefully, flexibility and foresight) is a bit of a wish list rather than a scientific analysis of resilient systems, but a very good start. It does not include understanding some principles that govern the system one lives in, which would not include real foresight, but would probably help more.
  • Carbonrally is a web-based activism platform offering individuals and groups a fun, simple and social way to have a measurable impact on climate change.
  • The Darwin Project (started by David Loye) intends to support and expand Darwin's original full vision to reveal caring, love, moral evolution, and education as the prime drivers for human evolution. It's website has Links to a Better World.
  • De Kleine Aarde is a Dutch organization providing inspiration for sustainable living.
  • The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact. Its mission includes createing a web platform to enable the conversation about opportunities and challenges associated with creating products and services that make positive social and environmental impact.
  • Dot Earth is a blog on the NY Times website where reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.
  • The Earth Charter Initiative s a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society for the 21st century.
  • The Earthship Biotecture is a company promoting "proven, totally sustainable designs, construction drawings & details, products, educational materials, lectures / presentations, consultation & guidance toward getting people in sustainable housing".
  • The Ecological Design Institute is a non profit organization dedicated to research and education that applies ecological principles and practices to the redesign of our environment. Founded in 1969 by Sim Van der Ryn, the Ecological Design Institute was one of the first non profit organizations to focus on a whole systems approach to the design of the built environment by integrating architecture, human and natural ecology.
  • Apparently to reduce environmental problems in the US, the Federation on American Immigration Reform organizes a debate around immigration, overpopulation and environmental disaster. While immigration policy may be necessary for nations, the author of these lines fears that such interests will not contribute ultimately sustainable solutions to environmental issues. In light of million generations on this planet the focus on one nation seems neither obvious nor helpful, humans come in one kind and unless someone finds sustainable ways to live on this planet no single part of it is will be able to continue.
  • The guardians of the future believe that people who live today have the sacred right and obligation to protect the commonwealth of the Earth and the common health of people and all our relations for many generations to come.
  • Global Shift Unleashed, initiated by Ervin László is The Graduate Institute’s new series of Graduate Courses and Certificate Programs focused on working effectively towards the solution of the world’s most vexing and universal problems, those undermining the attainment of productive, happy and healthy human life, ecological equilibrium and world peace.
  • Raymond Kurzweil is the author of several books on artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism and a leading optimist regarding technological developments. He points to the exponential nature of both evolution and technological progress and believes we will succeed in reverse engeering the human brain in the 2020ies resulting in a technological singularity. One of his websites presents a discussion of the various dangerous technologies and the KurzweilAI.net Mind·Exchange, an open forum with a focus on emerging trends in technology and related fields. The site also contains a large number of articles by "big thinkers" on the subject. Wikipedia's article on Raymond Kurzweil references a lot of his work, and its entry on his book The Singularity is Near contains a summary and a list of Kurzweil's predictions.
  • The The Loka Institute's vision is to kindle a vibrant popular movement for community-driven policies in research, science, and technology that will advance democracy, social justice, and ecological sustainability at every level.
  • La Marguerite is a blog started by Marguerite Manteau-Rao "focused on behavioral solutions to climate change and other sustainability issues"
  • The UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was initiated by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and involved a US$24m effort from 2001 - 2005 to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. In a number of reports it found that human actions are depleting Earth’s natural capital and that with substantial changes in policy and practice, which are not currently underway, it is possible to reverse the degradation of many ecosystem services over the next 50 years.
  • 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 Oil Drum (TOD) Great stuff! Focus energy and resources. Described above under collaborative efforts.
  • Redefining Progress a public policy think tank dedicated to smart economics works on solutions that ensure a sustainable and equitable world for future generations by integrating assets as clean air, safe streets, and cohesive communities into a more sustainable economic model. It offers a quiz to estimate one's ecological footprint, simlar to the one of the World Footprint Network's.
  • The Resilience Alliance is multidisciplinary research group that explores the dynamics of complex adaptive systems to research resilience in social-ecological systems, a basis for sustainability
  • SustainLane.com is a web based people-powered guide to sustainable living. SustainLane.com contains personal accounts of how-tos, news, and local business and product reviews for sustainable living. SustainLane US City Rankings is a national survey that ranks the largest 50 US cities in terms of their sustainability practices.
  • The David Suzuki Foundation has worked to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us. Focusing on four program areas – oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, and the Nature Challenge - the Foundation uses science and education to promote solutions that conserve nature and help achieve sustainability within a generation.
  • The Transiton Network (driven by Rob Hopkins) states its mission as: to inspire, to encourage, to network, to support and, to train communities as they consider, adopt, adapt and implement the transition model in order to establish a Transition Initiative in their locale. The transition model emboldens communities to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this big question: for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to: significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change)? Typically, self-determined solutions will involve some flavour of relocalisation.
  • Foundation Urgenda intends to stimulate and accelerate processes that aim for a more sustainable civilization, starting in The Netherlands.
  • Worldchanging magazine is a solutions-based online magazine that works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together.
  • Wonderingmind42 created a series of videos making a compelling case for action against climate change based on a risk management perspective, from which resulted the Manpollo Project (as in Manhattan & Apollo project].
  • YESSS, Young Ecosystem-Scholars Support Services is an initiative of Paul Horan who offered a reward to “deserving young eco-geniuses” for their reflections on “what’s sustainable and what’s not"
  • ZeroGrowth answers the question "why zero growth?" with another question: "why not?" The concept would seem to deserve a clearer explanation.

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

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Futurology, Predicting and Shaping the Future

  • Nick Bostrom's article on the future of human evolution argues that evolution does not naturally  points in a desirable direction and  to avoid bad outcomes one needs to assume control over evolution, which require the creation of a singleton.  
  • Richard Hanson's paper on Burning the cosmic commons offers an economic style analysis of the consequences of a wave of colonization having expanded from some source for long enough, and in a decentralized enough manor, that a selection effect determines frontier behavior.
  • IEET: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies intends to become a center for voices arguing for a responsible, constructive approach to emerging human enhancement technologies. It believes that technological progress can be a catalyst for positive human development so long as we ensure that technologies are safe and equitably distributed. They call this a "technoprogressive" orientation.
  • 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. It launched a multiplayer forecasting game Superstruct Game in October 2008.
  • 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.
  • The The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University convenes symposia and conducts interdisciplinary, policy-relevant, and future-oriented research that contributes to long-term improvements in the human condition. The center’s focus is defined by its longer-range vision and is not confined to any particular set of issues. Its work seeks to identify, anticipate, and enhance the long-term potential for human progress; in all its myriad dimensions. The longer-range future the Pardee Center looks is in the 35-200 years range. In a very interesting and wide ranging lecture in 2005 Murray Gell-Mann describes the "Big Picture" and discusses the problems of modelling (prothesis for the imagination), and warning, “We have to get rid of the idea that careful study of a problem in some narrow range of issues is the only kind of work to be taken seriously, while integrative thinking is relegated to cocktail party conversation.” Nonetheless, he seems reluctant to leaving the looking-into-the-future perspective.
  • The SpaceCollective "where forward thinking terrestrials exchange ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction today."
  • UNIDO's Technology Foresight provides inputs for the formulation of technology policies and strategies that guide the development of the technological infrastructure. In addition, technology foresight provides support to innovation, and incentives and assistance to enterprises in the domain of technology management and technology transfer, leading to enhanced competitiveness and growth.
  • The World Future Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan scientific and educational association of people interested in how social and technological developments are shaping the future
  • The World Transhumanist Association advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities. It also explores risks as well as benefits, with the ultimate aim of developing workable strategies and policies to enable societies and individuals to navigate the waters ahead.

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Collapses of civilizations

  • William Catton describes industrialization as a prelude to collapse in an excerpt of his 1982 book "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change" ISBN 0252009886.
  • Theodor Mommsen described the fall of the Roman Empire in his work History of Rome (Deutsche Fassung) where he tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay" for the phases of civilization.
  • Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies (ISBN 052138673X). The author suggests that while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is diminishing returns on investments in social complexity. Listen to Tainter's audio comments


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Threats to survival of civilizations, existential risks

  • The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists informs the public about threats to the survival and development of humanity from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences. In 2007, its Doomsday clock has been advanced by two minutes and is now set at five minutes to Midnight. Many worry about the risks of technical progress to humanity, e.g. Bill Joy's influential call to contain dangerous technologies (robotic, genetic, nanotechnology) "Why the future doesn't need us". Martin Rees estimates a 50:50 chance that this will be our last century, a point made in a book and in a brief presentation at the TED conference in 2005. Progress seems an entirely good thing, but the assymetry of offensive versus defensive capability and the difficulty to predict complex systems make the prospect that with continued progress it is only a question of time until anyone can create pathogens or weapons of mass destruction a serious concern and a leading contender for the solution to Fermi's paradox.
  • Exit Mundi, a large collection of end-world scenarios by Maarten Keulemans (also available as book in Dutch)
  • 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
  • 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
  • Daniel Suarez' thriller "Daemon" describes the onset of an attempt to save civilization from forces within that threaten it, and it looks from a rather unusual angle. It touches on the risks of progress and narrow artificial intelligence, and also on the dependence of finance, power and welfare on technology and the susceptibility of society's monoculture to catastrophic developments. Its main relevance in this context is rather briefly mentioned at the very end; to explain that in more detail might at least partially spoil a fascinating read. The author elaborated on the risks of narrow AI in a presentation to the LongNow Foundation in the summer of 02008.
  • The Worldshiftnetwork issued a declaration on the state of global emergency listing in Annex 2 Main Threats to Human Survival in the 21st Century (Global Warming and Nuclear War) and Current Global Challenges:
    • World Population Growth
    • Resource Depletion
    • Food Production and Distribution
    • Air Quality
    • Freshwater Availability
    • Arable Land



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Surviving threats, resilience

  • The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.
  • Wikipedia entry on Survivalism contains a many references, mostly about surviving on a personal level rather than as a civilization.

The length of a generation increases

100 years a go a generation whas about 20 years, now it is closer to 25 and still increasing. For MG, this implies that in years, the envisioned 25 million years might as well be a shear underestimation. Will it be closer to 50 million, 100 million, or even a milliard?

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