We are a selfish, short-sighted lot. As many a game theory experiment has shown, we simply aren’t as motivated by the promise of collective future benefits as we are by the gratification of instant private rewards.

A group of researchers based at NYU now argues that this kind of self-interest can throw. . .   Read More

“Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth”
Monday July 29, 02013 at the Marines’ Memorial Theater, San Francisco

When thinking about the planet, climate change, and our environmental future, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers and lose track of what things actually look like on the ground. Enter Craig Childs. . .   Read More

Pandora’s Promise, a new documentary by filmmaker Robert Stone, takes a look at nuclear power as a possible player in the mix of technologies we’ll need to meet energy demand without pushing atmospheric CO2 beyond safe levels. Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand and other former SALT speakers Mark Lynas, Gwyneth Cravens and. . .   Read More

When a devastating flood destroyed much of the southwestern Netherlands in 01953, its government decided it was time for action. Over the next few decades, the nation poured research and financial resources into the construction of the Deltawerken, a massive network of dams and storm barriers that now protects the country’s lowest lying provinces. . .   Read More

This lecture was presented as part of The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking.

The Nine Planetary Boundaries: Finessing the Anthropocene
Tuesday March 6, 02012 – San Francisco

Video is up on the Lynas Seminar page for Members.
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Audio is up on the Lynas Seminar page, or you can subscribe to our. . .   Read More

“The Nine Planetary Boundaries: Finessing the Anthropocene”
Tuesday March 6, 02012 at the Cowell Theater, San Francisco

Journalist and environmentalist Mark Lynas has a knack for getting deep down into the crux of problems and scraping out the science. Though we shouldn’t ever mistake a clear view for a short distance, this knack is. . .   Read More

The second season of FUTURESTATES has been released, a film series featuring visions and stories of the “not-too-distant future.” Participants imagined narratives based on scenarios such as extreme climate change with environmental refugees, gated communities that regulate the genetic makeup of their offspring, and the proliferation of software that charts our likes and. . .   Read More

Since the end of the last ice age a little over 10,000 years or so ago, human civilization has blossomed in a climatically friendly epoch known as the Holocene. The flowers are still blooming, but as climate change begins to mix things up some have been predicting that the story of recent and pending. . .   Read More

Climate change continues to demand solutions, but a unified global response remains elusive. Even among those who want to address the issue, debate about how rages on. We could cut consumption, increase alternative energy production, develop fusion power, implement population control, seed the atmosphere, block the sun… For every proposed solution, there is a counter. . .   Read More

One of the critical elements of the Clock of the Long Now to keep good time over ten millennia is the part of the clock that is synchronized to solar noon. We have several schemes that allow this mechanical synch from sunlight, but one of the questions that came up as we designed these systems. . .   Read More