Think Resilience: A Local Discussion Group Course
See article in the The Davis Enterprise
It’s a new year, and a chance for a new kind of commitment. Yolo Interfaith Alliance for Climate Justice and Cool Davis are offering Think Resilience, an eight week discussion course to get community members seriously thinking about and beginning to create a sustainable future.
The discussion group will meet Tuesday evenings from January 16 through March 6 from 7:00-8:30pm at the Repower Yolo Office at 909 5th Street (the now zero net energy Dairy Queen building across the railroad tracks from Hibbert Lumber).
The course content is based on 22 short videos (10-20 minutes each) developed by Richard Heinberg of Post Carbon Institute, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. The fee for the course is $10, a half-off discount, and includes lifetime access to course videos and supplementary readings, videos, and books.  Register
The weekly discussions will be thoughtful and rewarding, following the Northwest Institute format beginning with a circle question allowing each participant to respond with a few words before diving into a series of deeper content questions.
As the Senior Fellow, Heinberg has been the driving force at the Post Carbon Institute for decades. He is the author of 13 books and scores of articles and essays, blogs, and lectures. He has the gift of making complex topics easily understandable and impossible problems solvable, sometimes adding quality-of- life gains into the bargain, as happens when we trade cars for bicycles.
“I first encountered Heinberg’s work when he spoke in Davis in 2007 to warn us of peak oil and urge us to abandon our reliance on fossil fuels. He had it right. Easily extracted oil did peak in 2005, and since then our new U.S. oil and gas boom relies on extreme fracking techniques that damage the environment and harm our health,” explained Judy Moores, thinking back to Heinberg’s advice a decade ago.
Think Resilience is offered by Post Carbon Institute in hopes of encouraging a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable world. It is based on years of work in energy, literacy, and community resilience.
The course condenses a lot of information into just four hours of short videos. Topics fall into two categories: analysis of our predicament and how to build a resilient community.
First, the course will explore how to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. The sequence of videos provides a framework to understand the systemic forces driving the unfolding drama of our times, allowing us to understand how we got here and how to make wise decisions that avoid reacting blindly to our predicament.
Second, the focus will be on how to build community resilience. We all find ourselves alternately acting in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, which is certainly better than no action at all. However, Heinberg contends building community resilience is perhaps the most essential response to addressing the sustainability crises in a comprehensive way.
The purpose of the course is to provide an overall framework to understand the converging crises, the nature of the changes required of us, and the steps to transforming our community. By understanding the true nature of the issues we face, we will be able to think strategically and systemically about how to respond. Hopefully, class participants will be motivated to build resilience into their own lives and our community by the end of the eight weeks.
The course lessons can be found on p. 7 of the Discussion Guide. The last session may well lead to next steps.
Interested residents can preview course videos by selecting the Think Resilience tab.  In addition, enrollees can access www.resilience.org and have the option to receive a weekly Resilience e-newsletter of timely and invigorating articles.
Jim Cramer, one of two facilitators, reports, “I am impressed with the clarity, organization, and depth of the Think Resilience content. It provides us a way to grapple with what is happening in energy, population and consumption, depletion and pollution on one level added to political and economic structures, belief systems, biodiversity and collapse on another level. With that comprehensive background assessment of our situation, the rest of the course focuses on how to think broadly about systems and our culture to build community resilience from the ground up. I can’t wait to engage in a deep conversation on these topics.”
The second facilitator, Lynne Nittler, adds, “I’ve been looking forward to a rigorous discussion of how to bring economic resources to local projects here in our community as we identify emerging social justice, food, and educational needs.”
Facilitators are asking participants to commit to all or most of the Tuesday night sessions.
Register for the Davis Discussion Group of Think Resilience. Registrants will be asked for contact information and then be directed to the Think Resilience registration page. Apply the discount code for 50% off of the self-guided course online, for a total of $10 for all eight sessions.
Interested residents can also take the course on their own for $20. For more information, email to interfaith@cooldavis.org. Read more about Richard Heinberg at the www.PostCarbon.org .
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