PCI's Top Picks from 2023

Post Carbon Institute is made up of a small staff of readers, thinkers, and listeners. When we're not working to educate others on The Great Unraveling or helping individuals and communities build resilience, we're most likely listening to a podcast, reading a new book, dissecting articles, walking our dogs...you get the idea.

So, we thought it would be fun (and hopefully useful) to compile a list of our top picks from 2023. Not all of these items launched or were published this year, but hey, they were still highlights for us.

Books

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin

Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.

Read PCI Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg 's analysis of the book here.

Altar to an Erupting Sun by Chuck Collins

Altar to an Erupting Sun?is a?near-future story of one community facing climate disruption in the critical decade ahead.?Rae Kelliher is a veteran environmental activist and pioneer in the death-with-dignity movement. Facing a diagnosis of terminal illness, she engages in a shocking suicide murder, taking the life of an oil company CEO for his role in delaying responses to climate disruption. Seven years later, Rae’s friends and family gather at her Vermont farm community to try to understand her violent exit and the rapid social transformations around them.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting o? the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.

Democracy in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and Democratic Transformation by David W. Orr

Democracy in a Hotter Time calls for reforming democratic institutions as a prerequisite for avoiding climate chaos and adapting governance to how Earth works as a physical system. To survive in the “long emergency” ahead, we must reform and strengthen democratic institutions, making them assets rather than liabilities.

Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers. Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behavior patterns that are killing the planet we're part of.

How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human by Melanie Challenger

How to Be Animal tells a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. We possess a psychology that seeks separation between humanity and the rest of nature, and we have invented grand ideologies to magnify this. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Challenger's book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the way we distance ourselves from other species.

Escape from Overshoot: Economics for a Planet in Peril by Peter A. Victor

In Escape from Overshoot, celebrated ecological economist Peter A. Victor takes us on a grand tour of the overshoot crisis. From the history of economic thought through energy and material blindness, we learn how we got here and why collapse is inevitable unless we change course. But as the clock ticks, what pathways are possible and plausible?

Podcasts

Tipping Point: The True Story of "The Limits to Growth"

Tipping Point: The True Story of The Limits to Growth was the culmination of a four-year research effort to understand why humanity ignored the seminal 1972 book The Limits to Growth, and what we can learn from it. Based on late author Dana Meadows' unpublished memoirs and featuring rare original audio recordings, this podcast accompanies Dana and Dennis Meadows and their team of scientists on their mission to educate the world about coming ecological crises and their solutions.

The Great Simplification hosted by Nate Hagens

A podcast that explores the systems science underpinning the human predicament. Conversation topics span human behavior, monetary/economic systems, energy, ecology, geopolitics and the environment. The goal of the show is to inform more humans about the path ahead and inspire people to play a role in our collective future.

Planet Critical hosted by Rachel Donald

One of the world's top-rated podcasts on the poly-crisis and systems change, Planet: Critical uncovers the big picture of the climate crisis by mapping the energy, economic and political crises. Each episode is a critical interview with the world’s best scientists, economists, academics, activists, politicians and journalists battling to save our planet.

Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far-Right hosted by Garrett M. Graff

Long Shadow’s second season explores how the modern domestic extremist movement grew from a fatal shootout on a mountain top in Idaho and led to a riot on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Crackling with rich archival sound and riveting interviews, this seven-episode limited series examines a thread of history that’s vitally relevant to our current political climate.

entangled world hosted by Najia Shaukat Lupson

Welcome to Entangled World, where we explore our interrelated, existential social, economic, ecological, and technological challenges, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge.

Other Resources

Multisolving Institute

Multisolving Institute is the leading global organization making the case for addressing climate change, equity, health, well-being, and biodiversity in an integrated fashion and the trusted source for inspiration, ideas, and tools for multisolving.

Climate Resilience Project

To uplift the wisdom and liberatory climate resilience strategies needed to keep each other safe, care for our communities, and fight back against the climate crisis.

Force of Nature

We help young people turn climate anxiety into action, and work with leaders to drive intergenerational solutions.

The Belonging Barometer?by Nichole Argo, PhD and Hammad Sheikh, PhD

Belonging is a fundamental human need, and one that is linked to many of the most complex challenges of our time. Without a sense of belonging, individuals and communities suffer; with it, they thrive. Yet, because belonging is notoriously difficult to measure, it is often ignored in efforts to address the deep fractures in our societies.

Gen Dread by Britt Wray, PhD

Gen Dread is the first newsletter out there that shares wide ranging ideas for supporting emotional health and psychological resilience in the climate and wider ecological crisis.

Andrew Millison on YouTube

Andrew Millison is a permaculture teacher and practitioner, media maker, and gardener. This is his personal channel for the videos he produces, as well as some produced by Oregon State University, where he is an instructor in the Horticulture department.