Conscious that unsustainable patterns of production and consumption can impede sustainable development, and recognizing the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and well-being of all peoples. −United Nations General Assembly, …

It’s the GDP-obsessed growth model, many reformers argue, that’s leading us to perdition. They decry the irresponsibility of a relatively few taking more than their share, who are profligate with the earth’s dwindling resources. Certainly this “we’ve hit the limits” framing rings true, for, inarguably, human societies have exceeded the limits …

For the coming generation, the critical challenge is an interior one—a shift inside us that could trigger a tectonic shift outside. Feel-good hokum, you say? Let me attempt a logical case. As we watch ice caps dissolve, forests burn, and species vanish forever, we have to ask: Is our species really so dense that we […]

Could the old adage “Seeing is believing” have it backwards? Increasingly, we’re learning that we humans see our world through a paradigm, as Donella Meadows reminded us in her seminal article, republished in the first issue of Solutions. A paradigm boils down to our “great big unstated assumptions,” she wrote, “or deepest set of beliefs […]

For decades, even centuries, humanity will be dealing with complex climate-change impacts, yet we lack essential democratic assets to meet the challenges. Policymakers must take great care to choose paths that build our democratic-governance muscle—the decision-making structures, policies, citizen practices, and public trust we need to avert …