resilience
sastyk | April 13, 2010A reader of mine named Aaron emailed me to ask if I'd respond to Alex Steffen's latest piece at Worldchanging. Aaron writes:
I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about Alex Steffen's recent post over at worldchanging.com. I think that it is a well considered and well informed post that addresses many of the things that make me uncomfortable in your writing.
I'm really not interested in criticizing your work, or anything of that sort; I believe that the sustainability movement as a whole needs to have a strong and well reasoned message if it is to take root with the public at large…
sastyk | January 3, 2010Longtime readers will know I'm a deep admirer of _The Automatic Earth_ where Stoneleigh and Ilargi do economic analysis. I think Stoneleigh has outdone herself this time, with a primer on resilience, cycles and where we're headed. Definitely worth a read - probably two reads.
I particularly like this bit of work on resilience, which clarifies and expands slightly on Buzz Holling's.
Resilience arises from a redundancy that has the appearance of inefficiency and a lack of critical structural dependency on specialized hierarchy, neither of which conditions are likely to be met at the peak of…