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1. Emissions trading: why a social focus is critical to sound economic and environmental outcomes
This is an updated version of an article originally published in The Age, 2 July 2007, ‘Business Day’ section, Back Page (p. 8), ‘New Economics’ segment, under the title ‘Think globally, manufacture locally’ (the original version can be viewed here).
2. CO2 – Kick the Habit: From treating symptoms to long-term recovery
This is a speech given at the Engineers Without Borders and Parsons Brinckerhoff World Environment Day event, 4 June 2008, “CO2 Kick the Habit”.
3. How to foresight?
This is an extended version of a presentation given by video to the MiMeR / Boliden Foresight Seminar on future directions for metals recycling, held in Luleå, Sweden on 22 April 2008.
4. Design beyond technology: rethinking our automotive futures
This is a presentation given at the Victorian Government automotive conference Change by Design 2005: The Challenge of the Future, 2 March, Melbourne Convention Centre, Melbourne, Australia.
5. Meeting energy demand in the post-peak world? The blind spot in The Millennium Project’s Challenge 13: A response to the 2009 State of the Future Report
This is an updated version of a submission made to the Millennium Project’s 2010 State of the Future Report, in my capacity as steering committee member for the Australasian Node. The submission responds to the 2009 report’s Challenge 13—How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?
6. Discussion paper: Nine principles for practicing embodied foresight—a work in progress
This discussion paper started a number of years ago as an early attempt to identify the most general themes at the heart of The Knowledge Base of Future Studies (Richard Slaughter (Ed.), 1996, The Futures Studies Centre, Kew). On returning to these reflections from time to time, I continued to find them useful for finding orientation in what is a very broad field of practice. Over the years since, these ideas informed my ongoing inquiry into the practice of foresight as an embodied skill. Here, they are presented as a set of provisional principles for guiding the development of such practice.
Read the discussion paper here
7. Postgraduate study and the path to mastery
This is a speech to prospective students in Master-level programs offered by the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship in Swinburne University’s Faculty of Business and Enterprise, 20 August 2008. The speech reflects key learning principles that underpin highly effective foresight work.
8. Asia Pacific Foresight Conference 2012 closing plenary talk
This is the paper accompanying a short talk presented as part of the closing plenary at the Asia Pacific Foresight Conference 2012, 16-18 November, Perth, Australia. The title for the session: Sense-making and acting for des(c)ent futures: Human and cultural pathways.
9. A primer on worldviews and sense-making in foresight practice: innovation and cultural values
An introduction to the role of worldviews in sense-making for foresight. The ideas are applied to a understanding innovation and sustainability from a cultural values perspective, in order to move beyond a common impasse whereby these are treated as fundamentally opposed to one another.
10. The ‘green-tech’ future is a flawed vision of sustainability
Article for The Conversation (28 August 2015) challenging the popular idea that developments in technology alone will lead to futures in which humanity’s environmental impacts redressed. Co-authored with Samuel Alexander.
11. Phasing out fossil fuels for renewables may not be a straightforward swap
Article for The Conversation (2 May 2016) reporting on preliminary findings from an energy transition modelling exercise aimed at supporting viable pathways for global transition towards renewable energy sources. Co-authored with Anthony James.
12. Economic Trend Report: Energy Descent, Transition and Alternatives to 2050
13. Thinking about the inherent growth imperative of large-scale civic societies
Draft document based on correspondence with colleagues in June 2020 exploring the basis for the idea that large-scale civic societies have an inherent growth imperative, regardless of the political-economic ideology by which they are organised. Read the document here.
14. Energy-society futures investigation paradigms: a review (draft working paper)