health

Busy doing nothing – seven reasons for humanity’s inertia in the face of critical threats and how we might remove them

from Fleeing Vesuvius, by Mark Rutledge and Brian Davey. Seven reasons why humans have failed to curb their excessive resource consumption are outlined here, some of which are systemic, others the result of the way humanity evolved. Our best chance of counteracting them will come when the crisis pushes us out of our comfortable ruts.

Health and biodiversity

by Elizabeth Cullen. All of our food and many important medicines derive from our biodiversity. Our psychological and spiritual well being is enhanced by the joy and private moments of wonder in contemplation of the natural world. How can our way of life be changed so as to enhance our life giving and life affirming biodiversity, rather than undermine it?

Is over-consumption hard-wired into our genes?

It's very easy to look around and conclude that human beings are subject to unending desires which are never satisfied. Many of us have an apparently unquenchable thirst for the latest gadget or fashionable knick-knack. So how has this come about? Is the tendency towards over-consumption an unavoidable part of human nature, deriving from the laws of evolution, as some have suggested?

Cultivating hope and managing despair

from Fleeing Vesuvius. Psychologist John Sharry describes how societies are struggling to come to terms with the nature and extent of the changes facing them both now and in the future. Modern psychological models of motivation and change, and of how people deal with threat and loss, suggest strategies that can be used to help individuals change and to galvanise communities into collective action.

The Second Feasta Review

Growth: The Celtic Cancer, Why the global economy damages our health and society

Read this book online in its entirety

A new issue of the Feasta Review was published in November 2004. "The aim of the Review is to present in a permanent form some of the thinking that has been going on in the Feasta network since the previous one appeared" says John Jopling, who edited it with Richard Douthwaite. "It is three years since the last issue and there's a lot to report."