The Planet Blog

We learn in school that recorded history began with the invention of writing, when the first civilizations appeared some 5,000 years ago. People who lived before this are called “prehistoric” and thought of as animal-like cavemen with clubs or, worse yet, Neanderthals. But there was much before this.

The state of the world is … permacrisis. That’s a new word Collins Dictionary has chosen as the word of the year for 2022, defining it as “an extended period of instability and insecurity, esp one resulting from a series of catastrophic events”. It’s synonymous with polycrisis and a meta-crisis.

In the northern hemisphere December brings short days and long nights as the path of the sun slips ever-lower in the southern sky. For nature-based people long ago, this descent into darkness was terrifying, and the return of the sun – what we now call the Winter Solstice

The Planet Project fosters on-the-ground local action in addition to online actions. We featured the ALL Careers Contest in our latest blog and newsletter. Now we are issuing a challenge to our Planet Movement members who live in Boulder County: help make the ALL Careers Contest a success!

Funnels and dipsticks. That is how Roger Briggs, long-time public school educator and Planet Project Co-Founder, describes our current approach to education in the United States. Our school systems are designed to pour facts into the passive minds of their students.

We all love democracy, right? And we all think we know what it means, but when you actually try to define it and say what it really is, things aren’t so simple. The word democracy originates from the Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía), meaning “rule of the people”…

Plastics, or synthetic organic polymers, did not exist on our planet until 1833 when French chemist Henri Braconnot synthesized nitrocellulose, a long chain molecule. This new substance was a curiosity at first with no apparent use, but in 1868 the Hyatt brothers…

By Steve Melville, Planet Project Staff As you probably noticed, the Planet Project is all about shifts. This month, the project itself is shifting into a new phase. Until now, our focus has been on sharing information and galvanizing interest in the root cause of our...

The war in Ukraine feels like deja vu: a strongman with a big army, bigger ambitions, and an even bigger ego invades another country, and countless innocent people are maimed and killed while he lavishes in luxury at home telling big lies to his own people. How many...

Astrobiologists are scientists who combine biology and astrophysics to study the possibility of life – especially intelligent life – elsewhere in the universe. A new paper published February 7, 2022 in the International Journal of Astrobiology*, proposes that our...

The launch of the Planet Project is occurring while we witness the horror and heartbreak of Russia’s unprovoked aggression in the Ukraine and the courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people. If the Planet Project is to make a difference in the world…

The Planet Project asserts that the pervasive and deeply seated assumptions (memes) of our current cultural stage are the underlying root cause, the common thread, of our multiple existential crises. In response, we advocate cultural transformation at global scale as one pillar of our three-pronged…

The Planet Project aims to spread positive culture in the world, but what do we mean by positive culture? “Culture” itself is a big package, so let’s unpack it a bit. Anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, philosophers, and other scholars have discussed and debated…

Many astronauts who viewed the Earth from space reported having a transformative, life-changing experience. The most famous is Edgar Mitchell, sixth man to walk on the Moon, who said in a 1974 interview in People Magazine: “You develop an instant global consciousness,...