Traumatic experiences and post-traumatic stress are highly prevalent in people with psychosis, increasing symptom burden, decreasing quality of life and moderating treatment response. A range of post-traumatic sequelae have been found to mediate the relationship between trauma and psychotic experiences, including the “traditional” symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The International Classification of Diseases-11th Edition recognizes a more complex post-traumatic presentation, complex PTSD (cPTSD), which captures both the characteristic symptoms of PTSD alongside more pervasive post-traumatic sequelae known as ‘disturbances in (...) self-organization’ (DSOs). The prevalence and impact of cPTSD and DSOs in psychosis remains to be explored. In the first study of this kind, 144 participants with psychosis recruited from North West United Kingdom mental health services completed measures assessing trauma, PTSD and cPTSD symptoms and symptoms of psychosis. Forty-percent of the sample met criteria for cPTSD, compared to 10% who met diagnostic criteria for PTSD. PTSD and DSOs mediated the relationship between trauma and positive symptoms, controlling for dataset membership. Both PTSD and DSOs mediated the relationship between trauma and affective symptoms but did not explain a significant proportion of variance in negative symptoms. Cognitive and excitative symptoms of psychosis did not correlate with trauma, PTSD or DSO scores. These findings indicate the possible value of adjunct therapies to manage cPTSD symptoms in people with psychosis, pending replication in larger epidemiological samples and longitudinal studies. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

Next SectionAn attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the solution of the Sleeping Beauty Problem in the framework of the Many-Worlds Interpretation led to a new controversy regarding the Quantum Sleeping Beauty Problem. We apply the concept of a measure of existence of a world and reach the solution known as ‘thirder’ solution which differs from Peter Lewis’s ‘halfer’ assertion. We argue that this method provides a simple and powerful tool for analysing rational decision theory problems.

The challenge of pursuing sustainability in agriculture is often viewed as mainly or wholly technical in nature, requiring the reform of farming methods and the development and adoption of alternative technologies. Likewise, the purpose of sustainability is frequently cast in utilitarian terms, as a means of protecting a valuable resource (i.e., soil) and of satisfying market demands for healthy, tasty food. Paul B. Thompson has argued that the embrace of these views by many in the consumer/environmental movement enables easy co-optation (...) by agribusiness. It also reflects a critical weakness in this movement: a lack of commitment to philosophical principles that depart from the utilitarian premises of the industrial model of agriculture. This paper draws on the writings of Thomas Berry and Liberty Hyde Bailey to identify the philosophical principles of what we call planetary agrarianism. From the perspective of planetary agrarianism, the pursuit of sustainability is a broad and challenging moral, educational, and political task. Berry helps us see that it is fundamentally a project of worldview transition, which requires a new cultural narrative that must rival, in form and appeal, the mythic power of the utilitarian industrial vision. Liberty Hyde Bailey, author of The Holy Earth (1915) and a leader in the land-grant education and nature-study movements, took up the project of worldview transition in his life work. While in some ways dated and flawed, Bailey’s writings are a valuable source of guidance for developing and pursuing a viable philosophy of agriculture for the 21st century. (shrink)

Jason Peters : Wendell Berry: Life and Work Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9291-1 Authors Jacob Jones, Department of Religion, University of Florida, 107 Anderson Hall, P.O. Box 117410, Gainesville, FL 32611-7410, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom ed. by Bruce Ellis Benson, Malinga Elizabeth Berry, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, and: Bearing True Witness: Truthfulness in Christian Practice by Craig HoveyGuenther “Gene” HaasReview of Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom EDITED BY BRUCE ELLIS BENSON, MALINGA ELIZABETH BERRY, AND PETER GOODWIN HELTZEL Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. 225 pp. $35.00Review of Bearing (...) True Witness: Truthfulness in Christian Practice CRAIG HOVEY Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. 258 pp. $27.00Christian thought and practice in North America—especially in the evangelical world—has undergone significant changes in recent years. Prophetic Evangelicals and Bearing True Witness deal with two areas where this is evident: first, the attention many evangelicals are now giving to social justice and peace and, second, their determination to witness to the truth about Christ in a manner consistent with the Christian gospel. Prophetic evangelicals is the name the editors apply to a new generation of evangelicals who believe that the gospel of Christ requires a commitment to proclaim and embody “the just and peaceable kingdom” (2). These evangelicals view Jesus as inaugurating “a new social order that is a radical alternative to the order of empire” (7).This trend among evangelicals to move beyond the preaching of the gospel in a narrow sense (over against the liberals’ emphasis on social justice) is the culmination of a trend that has been happening since the publication in 1947 of Carl Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. What is new about many younger evangelicals in recent decades is their embrace of the Anabaptist perspective on justice and peace. It is clear in the introductory and concluding chapters by the editors—with their appeals to John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas and their references to the “cultural captivity” of the church—that this is the trend they have in mind. One also reads hints of liberation theology in the editors’ references to the needs of the people being “holy” (12), to God’s being on the side of—and the gospel always being in favor of—the “least” (47), and to a critique of “the order of empire” (7). Of course, [End Page 221] non-Anabaptist evangelicals are also concerned with these themes as part of their commitment to justice and peace. But it is the distinctive emphasis of this book—with some exceptions among the contributors—that it highlights the ways Anabaptist evangelicals are prophetic.The chapters consist of expositions on the following biblical themes: creation, shalom, justice, kingdom, news, Mary, the cross, church, freedom, reconciliation, resurrection, and hope. The authors include a wide range of evangelicals: from a Kuyperian (Vincent Bacote on creation) to a committed Anabaptist (David Gushee on shalom), to postcolonial Christians (Gabriel Salguero on the cross, and Raymond Alfred on freedom). Although the term is slippery, the inclusion of two contributors raises the question about who the editors consider to be an “evangelical”: Helen Slessarov-Jamir (on justice) agrees with her students’ desire not to learn theology from “dead white men” (77) and embraces religious pluralism (85); Pamela Lightsey (on reconciliation) embraces liberalism and liberation theology and calls herself a “womanist theologian” (169).The chapters contain a diversity of contributions in length and quality. Some are good, short expositions of themes: creation (Bacote), kingdom (Christian Collins Winn), Mary—actually about suffering—(Ruth Padilla DeBorst), church (John Franke), and resurrection (Cherith Fee Nordling). Gushee’s chapter contains a good exposition of the Anabaptist view of shalom, along with typical sweeping statements about the “Constantinian compromise” and the evangelical compromise with the state (72). Two chapters deserve special recognition. Chris Boesel’s chapter, “News,” is an excellent account of the Christian call to justice as part of the full goodness of the gospel. He criticizes both liberal-progressive and evangelical-conservative assumptions about the church’s mission and calls for a “recovering evangelical faith” that pursues justice with repentance, humility, and a reliance on the Holy Spirit. Telford Work’s chapter, “Hope,” also articulates a perceptive critique of the activism of both the Christian Right and the Christian Left. Rejecting all alignments with worldly power, he calls on the... (shrink)

_A Communion of Subjects_ is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of the conceptualization of animals in world religions. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including Thomas Berry (cultural history), Wendy Doniger (study of myth), Elizabeth Lawrence (veterinary medicine, ritual studies), Marc Bekoff (cognitive ethology), Marc Hauser (behavioral science), Steven Wise (animals and law), Peter Singer (animals and ethics), and Jane Goodall (primatology) consider how major religious traditions have incorporated animals into their belief systems, myths, rituals, and (...) art. Their findings offer profound insights into humans' relationships with animals and a deeper understanding of the social and ecological web in which we all live. Contributors examine Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, African religions, traditions from ancient Egypt and early China, and Native American, indigenous Tibetan, and Australian Aboriginal traditions, among others. They explore issues such as animal consciousness, suffering, sacrifice, and stewardship in innovative methodological ways. They also address contemporary challenges relating to law, biotechnology, social justice, and the environment. By grappling with the nature and ideological features of various religious views, the contributors cast religious teachings and practices in a new light. They reveal how we either intentionally or inadvertently marginalize "others," whether they are human or otherwise, reflecting on the ways in which we assign value to living beings. Though it is an ancient concern, the topic of "Religion and Animals" has yet to be systematically studied by modern scholars. This groundbreaking collection takes the first steps toward a meaningful analysis. (shrink)

Existential claims are widely held to be grounded in their true instances. However, this principle is shown to be problematic by arguments due to Kit Fine. Stephan Krämer has given an especially simple form of such an argument using propositional quantifiers. This note shows that even if a schematic principle of existential grounds for propositional quantifiers has to be restricted, this does not immediately apply to a corresponding non-schematic principle in higher-order logic.

How do we change the normative landscape by making requests? It will be argued that by making requests we create reasons for action if and only if certain conditions are met. We are able to create reasons if and only if doing so is valuable for the requester, and if they respect the requestee. Respectful requests have a normative force – it will be argued – because it is of instrumental value to us that we all have the normative power (...) of creating reasons by making requests. The normative power has the potential for creating and shaping valuable interactions and relationships for the requester and the requestee. This potential could not be realized if we did not have the normative power of making requests. It will also be shown why this account of the normative force of requests should be preferred to the two alternative accounts of the reason-giving force of requests that have been put forward by James H.P. Lewis and David Enoch. (shrink)

Kinship terminologies are basic cognitive semantic systems that all human societies use for organizing kin relations. Diversity in kinship systems and their categories is substantial, but constrained. Rácz, Passmore, and Jordan explore hypotheses about such constraints from learning theories and social pressures, testing the impact of a community‐size driven learning bottleneck against the social coordination demands of different kinds of marriage and resource systems.

We present Birch and colleagues with a dilemma. On one interpretation, they aim to chart the distribution of a sort of minimal perceptual awareness across the animal kingdom, where that awareness can be fully characterized in third-person psychological terms. On this interpretation, the project is worthy but dull, since it doesn’t touch the question that has excited most people: whether other animals are phenomenally conscious. On an alternative interpretation, in contrast, they hope to resolve this latter question, arguing that phenomenal (...) consciousness is extremely widespread. But if this is their intention, then their argument begs the question. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the place of Marx's thought within Adorno's writings from his 1931 inaugural lecture to his famous 1962 seminar on Marx. It focuses on three areas: the critique and transformation of philosophy; the sociology of the commodification of art; and the social ontology of the objectivity of illusions, derived from the critique of political economy. Adorno, it argues, ended his academic life significantly more of a Marxist than he had entered it, leaving a legacy that was distinctive both (...) for its dialectical appropriation of Marx's critique – and suspended supersession – of philosophy and for its philosophical interpretation of Marx's critique of political economy. (shrink)

This paper argues that as a name for a speech act, epistemologists typically use ‘testimony’ in a specialist sense that is more or less synonymous with ‘assertion’, but as a name for a distinctive speech act type in ordinary English, ‘testimony’ names a unique confirmative speech act type. Hence, like any good English word, ‘testimony’ has more than one sense. The paper then addresses the use of ‘testimony’ in epistemology to denote a distinctive kind of evidence: testimonial evidence. Standing views (...) of a hearer’s testimonial evidence see it as partly supervening on a speaker’s assertion that P. The paper argues for a broader account that sees a hearer’s testimonial evidence as partly supervening instead on the hearer’s representation as of a speaker meaning that P. This broader account is the comprehension view of testimonial evidence. The upshot is that not all so-called “testimony-based beliefs” are caused by a speaker’s testimony. (shrink)

In this essay, I claim that certain passages in Book IV of Benedict de Spinoza’s Ethics suggest a novel version of what is known as metaethical constructivism. The constructivist interpretation emerges in the course of attempting to resolve a tension between Spinoza’s apparent ethical egoism and some remarks he makes about the efficacy of collaborating with the right partners when attempting to promote our individual self-interest . Though Spinoza maintains that individuals necessarily aim to promote their self-interest, I argue that (...) Spinoza has an atypical conception of self that allows the interests of other people to be partially constitutive of one's own self-interest. In this way, Spinoza can account for the rationality of concern for the interests of others . This interpretation attributes to Spinoza a form of constructivism that differs in important ways from contemporary Humean and Kantian constructivisms and which can in principle be detached from Spinoza’s particular metaphysical commitments in order to yield a third general category of constructivist view . Though my treatment is necessarily brief, it is my hope that it can serve both to motivate a constructivist reading of Spinoza and, perhaps even more crucially, to suggest a Spinozistic variety of constructivism as a live theoretical option in metaethics. (shrink)

Methodological questions concerning Chomsky’s generative approach to linguistics have been debated without consensus. The status of linguistics as psychology, the psychological reality of grammars, the character of tacit knowledge and the role of intuitions as data remain heatedly disputed today. I argue that the recalcitrance of these disputes is symptomatic of deep misunderstandings. I focus attention on Michael Devitt’s recent extended critique of Chomskyan linguistics and I suggest that his complaints are based on a failure to appreciate the special status (...) of Chomsky’s computational formalisms found elsewhere in cognitive science. Devitt ascribes an intentional conception of representations that Chomsky repudiates and that is independently implausible. I argue that Devitt’s proposed “linguistic reality ” as the proper subject matter of linguistics neglects the problems of tokens as opposed to types and he misses the force of Chomsky’s arguments against Behaviourism and nominalism. I suggest that Devitt’s case against intuitions as data misunderstands their standard role throughout perceptual psychology. Finally, of more general interest, I argue that Devitt’s position exemplifies compelling errors concerning mental representation seen throughout cognitive science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This chapter is intended to provide the reader with a brief biographical overview of Adorno's life and thought, with an emphasis on the key turning points in his career. It discusses his childhood, his education in Frankfurt, his musical studies, his emigration first to Oxford and then to the United States, his return to Germany after the Second World War, his tenure as professor at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt and his prominence as a public intellectual, and his confrontation with students. (...) Together with biographical details the chapter also offers a simple overview of Adorno's major concerns as a philosopher. (shrink)

This collection of vivid and eloquent testimonies by environmentalists, eco-theologians, and native peoples illustrates a variety of responses to the same universal question: Where are we as a species heading on this planet? Contributors include Rick Bass, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard. Gretel Ehrlich, Barry Lopez, Peter Mattheisen, Thomas Moore, Terry Tempest Williams, and others.

Virtue ethics is often proposed as a third way in health‐care ethics, that while consequentialism and deontology focus on action guidelines, virtue focuses on character; all three aim to help agents discern morally right action although virtue seems to have least to contribute to political issues, such as austerity. I claim: This is a bad way to characterize virtue ethics. The 20th century renaissance of virtue ethics was first proposed as a response to the difficulty of making sense of ‘moral (...) rightness’ outside a religious context. For Aristotle the right action is that which is practically best; that means best for the agent in order to live a flourishing life. There are no moral considerations besides this. Properly characterized, virtue ethics can contribute to discussion of austerity. A criticism of virtue ethics is that fixed characteristics seem a bad idea in ever‐changing environments; perhaps we should be generous in prosperity, selfish in austerity. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that people indeed do change with their environment. However, I argue that virtues concern fixed values not fixed behaviour; the values underlying virtue allow for different behaviour in different circumstances: in austerity, virtues still give the agent the best chance of flourishing. Two questions arise. In austere environments might not injustice help an individual flourish by, say, obtaining material goods? No, because unjust acts undermine the type of society the agent needs for flourishing. What good is virtue to those lacking the other means to flourish? The notion of degrees of flourishing shows that most people would benefit somewhat from virtue. However, in extreme circumstances virtue might harm rather than benefit the agent: such circumstances are to be avoided; virtue ethics thus has a political agenda to enable flourishing. This requires justice, a fortiori when in austerity. (shrink)

_Purpose:_ In order to develop an evidence-based, sport-specific minimum impairment criteria (MIC) for the sport of vision-impaired (VI) shooting, this study aimed to determine the relative influence of losses in visual acuity (VA) and contrast sensitivity (CS) on shooting performance. Presently, VA but not CS is used to determine eligibility to compete in VI shooting. _Methods:_ Elite able-sighted athletes ( n = 27) shot under standard conditions with their habitual vision, and with their vision impaired by the use of simulation (...) spectacles (filters which reduce both VA and CS) and refractive blur (lenses which reduce VA with less effect on CS). Habitual shooting scores were used to establish a cut-off in order to determine when shooting performance was ‘below expected’ in the presence of vision impairment. Logistic regression and decision tree analyses were then used to assess the relationship between visual function and shooting performance. _Results:_ Mild reductions in VA and/or CS did not alter shooting performance, with greater reductions required for shooting performance to fall below habitual levels (below 87% of normalized performance). Stepwise logistic regression selected CS as the most significant predictor of shooting performance, with VA subsequently improving the validity of the model. In an unconstrained decision tree analysis, CS was selected as the sole criterion (80%) for predicting ‘below expected’ shooting score. _Conclusion:_ Shooting performance is better predicted by losses in CS than by VA. Given that it is not presently tested during classification, the results suggest that CS is an important measure to include in testing for the classification of vision impairment for athletes competing in VI shooting. (shrink)

The primary aim of this important study is to produce a reliable account of Peter Martyr’s life before he left Italy in 1542. Earlier biographers had been content to follow the Swiss Calvinist Josiah Simler, who knew Peter Martyr in later years, delivered his funeral oration and published it in 1563. Dr McNair has tried ‘to delve beneath Simler to contemporary records’. He has discovered, for example, that Peter Martyr was born in 1499 not, as is usually (...) said, in 1500. He has been concerned to find out when Peter Martyr left his order and his Church, suggesting that there is little reason to believe that his apostasy began in his years at the University of Padua, 1518-26; it was in Naples, between 1537 and 1540, when he came to know Juan de Valdés, that Peter Martyr’s conversion took place. ‘He arrived a reformer after the order of Ximénez, he left a reformer after the order of Zwingli’, writes Dr McNair, meaning by this the Zwingli of the years immediately before 1523, when he wished to go further than Erasmus but not so far as Luther. (shrink)

RésuméJe critique dans cet article la théorie «naïve»des attributions de croyances, selon laquelle la signification d'un nom propre dans la clause qui figure comme complément d'une telle attribution est son référent. Je soutiens que l'usage que nous faisons de ces attributions dans l'explication du comportement oblige à rejeter la version simple de la sémantique «naïve» au profit de sa cousine plus sophistiquée. Et je soutiens que la théorie «naïve» sophistiquée se compare défavorablement à des versions plausibles de la sémantique non (...) naíve. (shrink)

Suppose that time is infinitely long towards the future, and that each feasible action produces a finite amount of utility at each time. Then, under appropriate conditions, each action produces an infinite amount of utility. Does this mean that utilitarianism lacks the resources to discriminate among such actions? Since each action produces the same infinite amount of utility, it seems that utilitarianism must judge all actions permissible, judge all actions impermissible, or remain completely silent. If the future is infinite, that (...) is, the prospects for utilitarianism look bleak. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to set out an Aristotelian account of individual autonomy. Individual autonomy is the capacity of the individual to make and act upon judgments for which he is held morally accountable. This sense of autonomy may be contrasted to a number of other senses. Of these, the most important are political or legal autonomy and Kantian principled autonomy. Political or legal autonomy concerns the environment in which an individual operates. It exists where individuals are able (...) to operate reasonably freely.1 For the most part we will not consider this sense except insofar as it is necessary to explain the importance placed on respecting individual autonomy. Kantian principled autonomy has been described recently by Onora O‟Neill in a series of writings.2 On this account, autonomy is seen as a characteristic of the principle behind action rather than of action per se and is not a characteristic of agents at all. (shrink)

AnlaB, dieses Bueh niederzusehreiben, ist ein empiriseh-analytisehes Unbehagen. Besehaftigt mit einer Untersuehung zur Anwendung sozialwissensehaftlieher Erkenntnisse in Wirtsehaftsbetrieben und in der politisehen Administration, muBten wir feststellen, daB die Grundlagen der Befragung einer theoretisehen Klarung besonders bedurftig waren. Dieser die Untersuehung begleitende ProzeB der theoretisehen Se1bstverstandigung begann mit der Einsieht, daB der empiriseh-analytisehe Erfahrungsbegriff der Sozialwissensehaft die Wirkliehkeit dieser Wissensehaft nur unvollkommen erreieht. Es war daher naheliegend, zunaehst einige methodologisehe Grundfragen zu diskutieren, die fur die sozialwissensehaftliehe Theorie und Empirie konstitutiv sind. (...) Das Ergebnis dieser Diskussion laBt sieh dahingehend zusammenfassen, daB die Grunddisziplin der Sozialwissenschaft dann die Philosophie sein muB, wenn die Inter­ pretation empiriseher Befunde nieht beliebig sein solI. Und zwar eine Philosophie, die sieh nieht aussehlieBlieh mit einer wissensehafts­ theoretisehen Naehzeiehnung wissensehaftlieher Methoden begnugt, sondern deren inhaltsbezogene Kategorien Bestandteil der sozial­ wissensehaftliehen Theorien se1bst sein mussen. Sozialwissensehaft wird vor diesem Hintergrund eine Form mog­ lieher Erkenntnis, einer Erkenntnis, die beispielsweise im Gegensatz zur Physik, ihren Erkenntnisgegenstand im wesentliehen mit dem AlI­ tagswissen teilt. Sozialwissensehaftlieh zu ersehlieBende Erfahrungen konnen also nieht von den Erfahrungen des alltagliehen BewuBtseins vollig abstrahieren; aber sie mussen diese Form des BewuBtseins der­ art konkretisieren, daB seine Erfahrungen in ihrer Komplexitat und vie1fliltigen gesellsehaftliehen Bezogenheit verstehbar werden. (shrink)

On being told that "translation is an impossible thing," Anatole France replied: "precisely, my friend; the recognition of that truth is a necessary preliminary to success in art." The task of Transplantings is to add flesh and bones to that familiar quip. Indeed, Daniel Weissbort notes that Viereck's study represented a sixty-five year long project. Now, it is finally being brought to print in its full form, with the completion of the final manuscript shortly before Viereck's death. If translation is (...) a special genre in its own right, the translation of poetry, especially from major foreign languages, is a special subset of that genre. What emerges in the imperfect act of translation is an aesthetic dimension that Viereck considers unique in its own right. Transplantings provides new insight into Viereck as a poet of substance, but more than that as a public intellectual. He is critical in probing the work of the major figures such as Stefan George and Georg Heym. To round out this monumental new look at German poetical history, Viereck reviews Goethe, Novalis, and Rilke among others. For Viereck, the difference between the poetical and the political is critical. The quality of poetry is not measured by politics, nor can the worth of political action be defined by commitment to the poetical. The experience of German thought, as well as French and Italian efforts, reveals a divide that can be narrowed but hardly bridged by rhetoric. Transplantings does not simplify the task of the reader. Rather it shows without doubt that the passion of great poetry is part of a national tradition. Efforts at translation indicate how such poetry becomes part of an international culture. This is a major work by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. It merits reading, and then, re-reading. "Peter Viereck was that rare scholar who captured the European experience with America, while fully realizing the American encounter with Europe. He did so with consciousness of and compassion for both sectors of Western Civilization" --Irving Louis Horowitz, Society Peter Viereck was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, critic, and historian. He held the Kenan Chair in History at Mount Holyoke College. He was known as one of America's conservatism's early leaders and was the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships both in history and poetry. (shrink)

A vexing modern conundrum is to be solved. The use of oil, gas, and coal is extremely short-lived as a historical phenomenon: a mere blink of an eye at a little more than 1% of total urban history of 10,000 years to-date. Yet current urban civilization is almost entirely based on it. And the fossil-fuel economy poses not only a massive security risk, it also lies at the root of the vast majority of urban sustainability problems. Fresh water depletion, air (...) pollution, widespread human fatalities can be directly traced to the excessive use of these dirty energy sources. Climate change, predominantly triggered by fossil-fuel combustion, only deepens the very questions the impending petroleum peak raises about the survivability of the global urban system. The fossil disease is a complex global pandemic. To many, conquering this pandemic is an extraordinary challenge of technology: of reengineering the manner in which urban civilization is powered, advancing a future envisioned in numerous studies since the 1970s. Yet foremost, this is a cultural, psychological, and political challenge. The global economy is systematically identified with its underlying fossil supply frameworks—it is a fossil economy. It is marked by an incendiary illusion: the celebration of abundance promised as achievable by all, driving virtually all aspects of contemporary culture. Yet it is also marred with enormous pockets of deprivation, and deep cracks of disbelief, criticism, and dissent. Reinforcing this challenge is the psychoeconomical transaction cost of change, the sheer inertia of an infernal development system, however short-lived it inevitably is. Despite all lip service paid to ‘energy savings’ and ‘environmentally sustainable development’ in urban policy documents and brochures across the globe, dominant political and financial interests demand that as much fossil fuel as possible is used, and as quickly as possible, to secure the highest possible profits for the most powerful, and in the shortest period of time. Hence many national governments and international bodies find it so difficult to place fossil-fuel replacement on the global agenda. It is easier to avoid this topic and talk about buffering, mitigating what are little else than subsidiary, flow-on effects and collateral outcomes of an unsolved energy conundrum: air, water and soil pollution, public health problems, deforestation or fresh water depletion. Rarely, if ever, is petroleum abuse clearly noted as a root cause. A historical revolution is in progress: the move from fossil fuels, nuclear power, and other forms of unsustainable energy use generation to a renewable and sustainable power base for urban communities, cities, towns, and villages. Many examples of positive initiatives encourage, and are testimony to the ability of cities and towns to perform as communities, and evolve into settings of greater independence from fossil and nuclear power sources. They carry the promise of greater energy autonomy based on renewable energy, of recapturing regional productivity, advancing local resources, and enabling new industries and employment opportunities. (shrink)