Sustainability

Why Some Cities Go Green Faster Than Others

April 19, 2026 Christof Brandtner, Next City. Strategize! City Design, climate crisis, Green Transition, Sustainability

The librarians at the San Mateo Public Library were literally in the dark when they decided to go green. Property owners in San Mateo County had just passed a general bond obligation contributing $35 million for a new library building, topped off by the State of California with a $20 million grant. “We had several public meetings asking our citizens: What do you want in your new public library?” a senior library management analyst recalled. It was the late ‘90s, when California utility PG&E was experiencing rolling black outs, and a teacher who was starting a sustainability studies program raised her hand during one of those meetings. “[She] said: ‘Why can’t we build a sustainable building?’ It was like a light bulb went off.”

Modern Agriculture Is Collapsing Under Climate Change

April 6, 2026 Miacel Spotted Elk, Intercontinental Cry. Create! climate crisis, Farming, Food and Agriculture, Indigenous Knowledge, Sustainability

In the last five years, Indigenous agriculture has received attention in academia as an alternative model, though on a smaller scale, to modern farming systems. Research has shown that some traditional farming systems — such as growing maize, beans, and squash together — protect soil health, reduce biodiversity loss, and support Indigenous knowledge, known as traditional ecological knowledge. How many of these elements from traditional farming can successfully translate into larger crop production models, when little research defines their economic value, is a question Kamaljit Sangha, a researcher in ecological economics at Charles Darwin University, wanted to explore in a new study published earlier this month in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

Black Paper: Decolonize Accounting Systems

March 12, 2026 Arnie Saiki, Decolonize Accounting. Create! Decolonization, Economic Democracy, Finance, Sustainability

“The wine is made from plantain, but even if it turns sour, it is our wine.” José Martí’s line from Nuestra América is the right opening for this Black Paper because it states the core political principle in plain terms: institutions must be built from the realities of our own societies, not enforced from external powers. Decolonial accounting begins from that principle. It treats accounting as both revolution and self-determining and asks who defines value, who sets measurement rules, and who decides the terms of market entry.

Degrowth And Its Future

March 2, 2026 David Bollier. Create! climate crisis, Degrowth, Sustainability, The Commons

Humanity cannot continue to expand production and consumption exponentially on a finite planet. It’s biophysically impossible. The carbon emissions are already producing more volatile weather patterns, more frequent floods, droughts, and wildfires, and disruptions of agriculture, commerce and global supply chains. And yet the US Government and respectable opinion remain in zones of denial or deflection. The Trump administration is savaging climate science, environmental regulation, and international treaties, while saner responsible adults are at least focused on energy efficiency and renewables.

Small-Scale Supply Chains In Action

March 1, 2026 Zoe Gilbertson, Resilience. Create!, Podcast – WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean Cooperatives, Local Economy, Supply Chain, Sustainability

Re-thinking governance requires changing how we organise, share knowledge, and develop structures emphasising value beyond the monetary. Systems that encourage cooperation require more social input but have many long-term and wide-reaching benefits. Cooperatives provide an enterprise container that can embody agroecological values such as social and ecological care. Due to the complexities of organising complex fashion supply chains, textile cooperatives are a rare form of business around the globe. However, we can find some inspiring examples in France and Spain.

Top Ten Local Policies For 2026

February 27, 2026 Michael Shuman, The Main Street Journal. Create! Green Transition, Local Economy, Local Investment, Sustainability

Last month, I circulated a list of the top ten policies that state governments could enact to support local business and local economies. Some of you wanted me to repeat this exercise for local governments, where the ability to enact law is more limited, but there’s also the possibility of moving faster. Most of my suggestions below really suggest how your community ought to carry out economic development (ED), which sometimes is done by your municipality and sometimes by an independent agency. The starting place for most of our readers is to compare this list with what purports to be economic development in your community right now. Note the gaps—I doubt you’ll find more than one or two of my items being taken seriously—and push for change.

Do-Nothing Hydroponics

February 10, 2026 Mitch Hagney, Ambrook. Create! climate crisis, Food and Agriculture, Hydroponics, Sustainability

When Bernard Kratky left his Hawaiian home and horticulture research in the ‘80s, he went to learn from another island across the planet with similar challenges. Taiwan, and its Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center, was running ambitious experiments to grow resilient crops in developing countries. Breeding sweet potatoes and mung beans, developing disease-resistant tomatoes, and reducing fertilizer inputs were some of their priorities. Among all of the vegetable excitement, Kratky saw researchers growing crops without soil, hydroponically.

The Promise Of A Circular Amazonian Socio-Bioeconomy

February 8, 2026 Daniel Henryk Rasolt, Resilience. Create! Amazon, Self-Organization, Socio-Bioeconomy, Sustainability

Is self-organization the answer to the foundational question of why life exhibits such complexity? And can it also serve as a guiding framework for how best to save complex webs of biodiversity amid the onslaughts of the modern world? Self-organization exists throughout nature and socioeconomic structures. It refers to the spontaneous emergence of collective, complex order within a disordered system, due to localized interactions that follow simple rules, and occurring without external controls. While conceptually abstract, given that uncertainty lies at its core, the applications of self-organization are everywhere.

What Futures Are Possible?

November 5, 2025 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Earthship, Sustainability, Transformation

People have been forecasting the future for as long as they’ve had language. Premodern ideas of what’s to come often featured either a catastrophic end of the world or an eventual paradisiacal condition of peace and plenty. This was true both for many, though not all, Indigenous peoples and for followers of the world’s missionary religions (i.e., Christianity and Islam, and to a lesser degree Buddhism). For some cultures, the arc of time was imagined as a progression from ancient virtue to present corruption and eventual ruin or salvation; for others, time was cyclical, with multiple Golden Ages and periods of decline.

Brazil’s Co-Ops Have Big Asks Ahead Of COP30

October 12, 2025 Anca Voinea, Co-operative News. Create! Brazil, climate crisis, Cooperatives, COP30, Sustainability

With the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) taking place in Belém, Brazil, in November, the country’s co-op movement is trying to boost its presence in climate discussions and reaffirm its commitment to sustainable development. Co-ops are key players in Brazil, accounting for 75% of wheat, 55% of coffee, 53% of corn, 52% of soybeans, 50% of pigs, 46% of milk and 43% of beans produced. The nation’s 4,500 co-ops represent 23 million members. In March, the Brazilian Cooperative Organisation (OCB) published a COP30 Manifesto, after a series of conversations with member organisations and co-op leaders which started at the 15th Brazilian Cooperative Congress in 2024.

Sweden’s ‘Secondhand Only’ Shopping Mall Is Changing Retail

September 4, 2025 Mary-Ann Ball, Next City. Create! Circular Economy, Fashion Industry, Recycling, Retail, Sustainability

As a fashion sustainability researcher, finding the ReTuna shopping mall in Eskilstuna was a delightful surprise. Stepping into this Swedish shopping centre felt refreshingly different – it is the first in the world to sell only secondhand and repurposed items. During numerous visits to the shopping mall over the last 18 months, I have spoken to customers, managers and employees – all of whom seemed excited by ReTuna’s innovative business model. The mall instantly feels very different to the cluttered charity shops or vintage boutiques most of us associate with pre-owned retail. There is a wide range of products on sale – fashion, sports equipment, household items, children’s toys, antiques – and even an Ikea secondhand store selling previously used and repaired furniture.

Bioregioning Is Our Future

August 28, 2025 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Strategize! Bioregions, climate crisis, Indigenous culture, Sustainability

Lately I’ve been reading Andrew Schelling’s Tracks Along the Left Coast, a biography of linguist, anthropologist, and anarchist Jaime de Angulo (1887-1950). De Angulo was a character worth knowing about. His affluent Spanish parents gave him a civilized upbringing in fashionable Paris; nevertheless, he had a wild streak. So, before he turned 20, de Angulo hightailed it to San Francisco, arriving just in time for the Great Quake of 1906. During the next few years, he earned a medical degree, then worked as a cowboy trekking the California coast. The Native Americans he met fascinated and impressed him. As a way of documenting and preserving their way of life, which he regarded as perfectly adapted to the endlessly varied, stunningly beautiful landscape around him, de Angulo (often collaborating with his linguist wife, Lucy Shepard Freeland) learned and described 25 of the roughly 100 Native languages then spoken in California.

BlackRock Pivots From Sustainability Evangelists To Fossil-Fuel Funders

August 4, 2025 Giorgio Michalopoulos and Stefano Valentino, DeSmog. Educate! BlackRock, Fossil Fuels, greenwashing, Sustainability

In 2016, Larry Fink, CEO of investment firm BlackRock, had no doubts about the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG): “Over the long term, ESG issues – ranging from climate change to diversity to board effectiveness – have real and quantifiable financial impacts”, he wrote in a letter on corporate governance in 2016. The CEO of the world’s largest asset-management company has since changed his mind: “The reason I backed away from using the term ESG is that it means something different to everyone. It’s so undefined that it’s become unmentionable”, Fink said in 2023, as a guest on the Wall Street Journal podcast “Free Expression”.

America Should Sprawl? Not If We Want Strong Towns

July 21, 2025 Charles Marohn, Resilience. Create! Communities, Housing, Sprawl, Sustainability, Urban Design

There’s been a lot of buzz around Conor Dougherty’s recent New York Times piece, “Why America Should Sprawl.” The article argues that the country’s housing crisis is so severe—and infill development so insufficient—that we need to embrace aggressive outward expansion of our metro regions, what many would call sprawl, to build the millions of homes America needs. It’s a compelling, well-written piece, and it’s struck a chord with a lot of readers. But from a Strong Towns perspective, the core argument is fatally flawed. Because sprawl doesn’t solve the underlying problem. It is the underlying problem.

Unpacking The Localism Manifesto: Solving Our Crises From The Bottom Up

July 14, 2025 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Featured Campaign, Podcast - Clearing The FOG Democracy, Governance, Local Economy, popular power, Sustainability

The United States is a failing country. Political leaders at all levels have failed to effectively solve the many crises we face such as the climate crisis, economic insecurity and growing inequality, and the need for affordable housing, education, and health care, and more. Action at the local level, where people have the most control, offers a pathway forward. Clearing the FOG speaks with Michael Shuman, author of A Localism Manifesto, which can be found at The Main Street Journal. Shuman explains how decentralized action works, the principles involved, and how it offers a radical new politics that can heal the current polarization of our society.

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