Julian Scaff, design leader and futurist at the ArtCenter College of Design in California, has some ideas on "Designing for Degrowth and Sufficiency" — how to plan and build the better civilization that might come next, after this one collapses.

The time to start doing that is right now.
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Rather than designing for engagement, scale, and consumer satisfaction, we must begin designing for enough. In a post-growth world, convenience is not a virtue. It’s a trap.

Designers must create experiences that slow users down, that reward repair and discourage waste. Instead of accelerating extraction, design can become a force for restraint, consciousness, and care. We must abandon metrics that measure “success” by clicks and conversions and embrace indicators like ecological impact, user resilience, and system health.

If we fail to act, the likely outcome is not a cyberpunk techno-dystopia but ecological collapse, mass migration, food and energy crises, and a dramatic reduction in the global population.

In the worst-case scenario, surviving humans may return to small-scale, subsistence farming or hunter-gatherer societies, clinging to life in the last habitable zones near the poles. Our most advanced tools, languages, and cultures could be lost, or preserved only as myths.

But we have another choice.

If extractive capitalism gave us addictive apps, infinite scrolling, and fast fashion, then the next civilization must give us designs that honor limits, restore ecosystems, and reflect the dignity of all life.

This is not an incremental design challenge. It is a civilizational one.
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FULL ESSAY ➡️ medium.com/the-futureplex/7-st…

#Economics #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth

Oh geesh, @Tooden ! There's a lot going on Down Under!

Extreme weather could send milk prices soaring, deepening challenges for the dairy industry
Phys.org
6 days ago
Australia's dairy industry is in the middle of a crisis, fueled by an almost perfect storm of challenges.

The future for Northland weather: Storm alerts are 'the new normal'
rnz
1 day ago
This year has already brought almost every possible weather extreme to Northland, with record rain hot on the heels of a drought, a cyclone and even a tornado. Is this a sign of things to come?

5 killed and thousands affected by latest Australian floods
World Socialist Web Site
25 days ago
Another extreme weather event on Australia's eastern coast highlights government inaction on disaster preparation and climate change.

Parts of Australia got months worth of rain in just a few days. | CNN
CNN
26 days ago
Rescuers in parts of Australia are saving people trapped in their homes by flooding. The area got months worth of rain in just a few days and more rain's coming. CNN's Lynda Kinkade has the story.

How Australia's climate is changing amid week of weather extremes
Sky News Australia
80 days ago
Australia is famously a land of "droughts and flooding rains" - but the climate is not the same as when Aussie poet Dorothea Mackellar wrote her famous poem describing the "sunburnt country".

#GlobalWarming #ClimateCrisis #GlobalHeating #ClimateCatastrophe
#RenewablesNow #BigOilAndGas #Degrowth #Oiligarchy
#Capitalism #AustraliaWx #ExtremeWeather

#Greenland and #Iceland saw #RecordHeat in May. What does that mean for the world?

By ISABELLA O’MALLEY
Updated 1:42 PM EDT, June 11, 2025

"Human-caused #ClimateChange boosted Iceland and Greenland ’s temperatures by several degrees during a record-setting May #heatwave, raising concerns about the far-reaching implications melting #ArcticIce has for weather around the world, scientists said in an analysis released Wednesday.

"The Greenland ice sheet melted many times faster than normal during the heat wave, according to the analysis by World Weather Attribution, with at least two communities seeing record temperatures for May. Parts of Iceland saw temperatures more than 10°C (18 °F) above average, and the country set a record for its warmest temperature in May when Egilsstadir Airport hit 26.6°C (79.9 F) on May 15.

"The findings come as global leaders put more focus on Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments that he would like to annex the mineral-rich island.

"Burning #FossilFuels for electricity and transportation releases pollutants such as carbon dioxide that cause the planet to warm unnaturally fast. The Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth.

"Even in today’s climate, the occurrence of such a strong heat wave in the region is relatively rare, with a 1% chance of occurring in a year, the analysis said. But without human-caused climate change, such an event would be “basically impossible,” said Friederike Otto, associate professor of climate science at Imperial College London, one of the report’s authors.

"The extreme heat was 40 times more likely compared to the pre-industrial climate.

Global impacts from a melting Arctic

"Otto said this extreme weather event affects the world.

"As the Greenland ice sheet melts, it releases massive amounts of fresh water into the salty oceans. Scientists say this could slow down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation [#AMOC], an ocean current that circulates water from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe and then the Arctic.

"Such a slowdown could disturb global climate and weather patterns.

“The nature of weather in the Northern Hemisphere is directly tied to what’s happening in the Arctic, because that ice floor basically at the bottom of the atmosphere helps determine the weather patterns that we get,” said Waleed Abdalati, who heads an environmental sciences institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. He was not involved in the WWA analysis.

"The Greenland ice sheet and other ice covering the Arctic can influence where and when wind blows, how much water content the wind has and whether precipitation falls as rain or snow.

"Most of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet happens in June, July and August. The May heat wave means there will be a longer melting season this year.

"Melting ice sheets and glaciers also contribute to #SeaLevelRise that is threatening to flood coastlines globally and inundate low-lying island nations in the Pacific Ocean.

"#Indigenous communities in Greenland are increasingly encountering dangerous travel conditions as sea ice that was once constantly frozen begins to thaw. Access to traditional hunting locations are lost, and sled dogs can no longer travel the same routes. Thawing #permafrost can destabilize buildings and increases the risk of #landslides and #tsunamis caused by landslides."

Read more:
apnews.com/article/iceland-gre…

#GlobalWarming #ClimateCrisis #GlobalHeating #ClimateCatastrophe #FossilFuels #RenewablesNow #BigOilAndGas #Degrowth #Oiligarchy #Capitalism