When I was growing up, moving from one country to another was not a very difficult thing. Yes, you needed to get a visa, and a residency permit, but these were not impossible to come by. We lived in Mexico, in France, in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada before returning to the United States in 1991. It was no big… Read more →
Conclusions: A Foot in Two Worlds
Driving around in small-town America, it’s hard to imagine that this all could collapse. The momentum of modern culture is enormous. But as Buckminster Fuller reminded us, there is often a trimtab that can enable the giant rudder to alter the course of a large ship, and if we know how to move that trimtab we can eventually change the… Read more →
Chapter 5: Can We Restore the Climate?
The escalating climate crisis has prompted a reevaluation of our goals and strategies. While achieving net-zero emissions is crucial, it may not suffice to ensure a livable future. The concept of climate restoration, championed by physicist and entrepreneur Peter Fiekowsky, advocates for reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to pre-industrial levels, thereby restoring the climate conditions under which humanity has historically… Read more →
Revised Chapter 3: Restoring the Carbon Balance and Rethinking Climate Solutions
The Earth’s carbon cycle is a complex system that has been in balance for a long time before human industrial activity began to disrupt it. This natural system regulates the flow of carbon between the atmosphere, the oceans, the soil, and the biosphere. For most of Earth’s recent history, the planet has maintained a relatively stable climate, allowing life to… Read more →
Chapter 4: Mitigating the Climate Crisis — The Global Carbon Reward
In the face of escalating climate challenges, innovative economic strategies are essential to drive meaningful change.One such proposal is the Global Carbon Reward (GCR), conceptualized by Delton Chen, which introduces a novel approach to incentivizing carbon mitigation efforts through financial rewards. Understanding the Carbon Cycle and Its Imbalance The Earth’s carbon cycle involves the movement of carbon among the atmosphere,… Read more →
Chapter 3: Rebalancing the Carbon Cycle
A Reckoning with Urgency and Innovation The Earth’s carbon cycle is profoundly out of balance. After thousands of years of relative stability, human activity—primarily the burning of fossil fuels and large-scale deforestation—has driven atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to heights not seen in millions of years. Rebalancing the carbon cycle is no longer a question of whether we can afford to… Read more →
Pages Version (April 2025)
PDF File: PossiblePlanetBook2025-10Apr2025.pages Pages file: PossiblePlanetBook2025-10Apr2025 Read more →
Conclusions: Our Letter to the Future
A recent headline in the Washington Post stated, Writing to the future is one of the most powerful climate actions you can take Social scientists say writing a letter to loved ones in the future can overcome a critical climate problem: inaction. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/29/climate-action-letter-to-the-future/ Apparently, having people write letters to their future children is one of the best ways to motivate… Read more →
Chapter 6: Rethinking the Economy: From Extraction to Regeneration
The economy as we know it is not a law of nature. It is a human construct, based on a set of assumptions, incentives, and institutions that have evolved over time. Yet today, these assumptions no longer serve the wellbeing of humanity or the living systems on which all life depends. As climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality converge… Read more →
Aside: A Note on the Role of AI
Without artificial intelligence, this book would never have been written. While all the ideas are mine, elaborating and articulating all the arguments is now beyond my patience and endurance, so I invariably turn to AI to spell things out and elaborate the arguments. It rarely fails to surprise and delight me, even though I sometimes have to curb its worst… Read more →