More Editorials
This inaugural issue of Solutions marks the beginning of what we hope will be a long and fruitful dialogue across our global society. To help build a shared vision of where our society wants to go and initiate a broad agreement about how to get there—these are our intentions.
We want Solutions to help us move beyond the debate that dominates public discussion toward substantive and constructive...
A Copernican shift is underway in fields as diverse as agriculture, materials science, architecture, engineering, business, economics, urban planning, waste management, national security, and many others. In every case, it is driven by the need to discover patterns and larger systems essential to reaching higher levels of efficiency and lower environmental impacts—and by the requirements of...
Last September I attended the Prairie Festival at The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas. At the institute, Wes Jackson and his colleagues are undertaking one of the most important agricultural research projects in the world. They have gone back to first principles and are breeding new grain crops that are perennials rather than annuals. To do so, they cross high-yielding annual crops, such as...
A patient diagnosed with cancer must confront a long, difficult road to recovery. The same can be said for the hundreds of mountaintops in Appalachia that have been ravaged by strip mining. America’s addiction to cheap energy has spread disease amongst some of our most beautiful natural resources. From a fatalistic point of view, we fear that Appalachia might soon die.
Once a lush, verdant...
