My latest article on HuffPost is a summary of a conference hosted by The New Yorker magazine.

Dubbed “The New Yorker Summit: The Next 100 Days,” the U.S. policy-centric event assembled leading intellectuals to discuss the state of the Obama administration, the economy, the environment, geopolitics, health care, climate change, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the challenge of Pakistan, you name it.

Speakers included Malcolm Gladwell, Naomi Klein, Esther Duflo, Jeffrey Sachs, Nicolas Nassim Taleb, Mary Anne Hitt, David Kilcullen, and Seymour Hersh.

On this recent post I wrote on The Huffington Post, I parse a pithy line that Bruce Sterling, sci-fi author, blogger, design critic at large, etc., delivered at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2009. He said,

“In times of trouble like today, pessimists die quickly.”

Enjoy my attempt to unpack, and kindly let me know what you think!

Three weeks from the start of spring, I’m happy to report that I have a piece, “Who You Callin’ a Slumdog?: America sees its future in Oscar-winning film,” on The Huffington Post. I hope you like it.

And regarding that excellent blog—which I feel absolutely delighted to write for, by the way—I’ll now be posting there quite regularly and also here.

At the moment, though, I’m juggling furiously. So, if you appreciate the writing that pops up on this blog from time to time, I do value your patience and promise to work out a more tenable (and regular) blogging schedule during the next couple of months.

To viewers of “Chai Time” on Omni TV who might have followed the link on the show to reach my blog, I thought I’d (a.) link to the article the host Tarannum referred to and (b.) say a little bit more about my background.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was awarded a scholarship (the Ranjit Azad Singh Memorial Scholarship) and a fellowship (the Basant and Harnam Kaur Singh Fellowship) in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC.

These scholarships, which were endowed by members of the Indo-Canadian (Punjabi) community, made it possible for me to explore issues of identity and culture in the writing of personal narrative (creative non-fiction). After graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing, I turned to corporate freelance writing (along with technology journalism) to make ends meet, primarily in the United States and Europe, which over time led to writing about environmental, technological and social trends for major companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Nokia and Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA. And, in the midst of it all, I made the acquaintance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who taught me about making a closer spiritual connection with the land as a way to work out my own crises of cultural identity (I’d experienced quite a bit of racism growing up) and reconnect with my Punjabi and Sindhi roots.

So, since I didn’t have a chance to do so yesterday, my thanks once again to the donors of scholarship funds to the UBC Creative Writing program. I benefited greatly from working with some of Canada’s top authors; and the ability to write well is coming in especially handy as I synthesize trends (and my personal experiences) to understand the large questions of our time, questions revolving around the economy and the environment — and our individual abilities to develop the inner strength we’ll need to face the tumult of the coming years and decades.

Finally, thanks to Chai Time for the opportunity to be on their excellent program!

Colin Beavan, a.k.a. “No Impact Man,” cites an article on the BBC web site written by Joanna Benn, who, as a “journalist, writer and consultant specialising in environmental issues,” writes: “When I see babies, not only do I see the beauty, joy and miracle of life, I also see nappies, landfill waste, vast amounts of food and money needed, and a very shaky, unpredictable future.”

Beavan’s post also mentions that author and environmentalist Bill McKibben has written an impassioned book called Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families.

Well, here’s the perspective of the Realistic Sanctuary Blog:

1. Dispense with hand-wringing and guilt

We need children so that innocence, love and kindness remain central to the human legacy. Whatever positive aspects of human nature we can nourish in times of growing crisis will be of great import to present and future generations. And while climate change and economic and agricultural shifts do imply natural disasters, competitiveness and scarcity, which historically tend to bring out the primal desire to survive and the worst in many people, the only way I can imagine to avoid being overcome by this is to be even more engaged with, and loving toward, any future children you may wish to adopt, raise or give birth to.

2. Intuit your way forward

Today, we’re experiencing climatic instability that was scarcely imaginable just 20 years ago and that hasn’t been seen since the dawn of civilization, approximately 10,000 years ago. Given the presence of tremendous climatic and economic forces alongside the mass psychology of fear (the latter may well subvert the best-laid plans of avoiding climatic catastrophe), hand-wringing and guilt won’t be of any use. Nor will any attempt to rationalize why your NOT having a child, or having only one, will somehow save the planet. The fact is, the forces now at play are vastly greater than human agency.

Nevertheless, I’d suggest that if we don’t access our intuition to guide our own unique path forward, others’ panic and fear could well influence us to make decisions, like whether or not to have children, in the grip of the cliquish, wrong-headed idea that overpopulation means it’s irresponsible to have more than one child. On the contrary, it implies that having any number of children, and then raising them to be self-absorbed and nihilistic, won’t contribute to building a new generation of increasingly cooperative and community-minded citizens. We need that new generation.

3. If you wish to have children, have as few (or as many) as you’re capable of loving and caring for

If you choose to have one or a few children, treat them well, encourage active participation in community activities, and celebrate the happiness they bring to your life and to the lives of others.

4. Help your children through simplicity, contentedness and generosity

That way, you and your children can navigate the coming changes with essential strength… and can contribute goodwill to the local community. (Local communities are likely to form the foundation for most people’s survival.)

So, enough guilt already. When it comes to having children, follow your heart, knowing that indeed the future, while dire at times, will also be poorer and more bereft without children who have been well loved and raised.

I was surprised and humbled to be included among 100 or so thinkers whom leading sustainability publication Worldchanging asked the following question just prior to Obama’s historic presidential victory:

In 100 words or less, what should the next president do in his first 100 days to address the planet’s most pressing problems?

My two cents?

Coordinated Nationwide Public Information Campaign on Economy and Climate
Today, the global economic meltdown and the climate crisis are key forces affecting civil society. That is why the new president will need to bring to public awareness sound climate science and policy aimed at supporting innovation and civic sustainability. Americans need the new presidential administration to help them understand the grave ramifications of environmental degradation and profligate energy use. Within its first 100 days in office, the new administration should conduct a massive, nationwide public information campaign encouraging every citizen to cooperate on making their locales more humane, inclusive, and resilient to predictable economic dislocation and climate chaos.

Now, the rationale. Under the past eight years of the Bush administration, coordinated efforts to downplay the reality of climate change induced widespread confusion among the U.S. populace about the nature and extent of the threat of global warming, representing an incalculable setback to public education and actual work done to mitigate the potential scope of damage. (In a recent report on the Yale Environment 360 website, New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert asks, “But can a new U.S. administration act swiftly enough to compensate for two terms of inaction? And if so, what must it do?”)

In answer to Kolbert, a good starting point is to make certain credible, actionable information about our current predicament reaches the American public rapidly. To achieve this end, the imprimatur of the U.S. government is required as is a U.S. president who’s willing to be a key spokesperson in a nationwide public education initiative. This initiative, as noted above, would focus citizens on developing the kind of local resilience that could provide support amid increasingly intense economic and climatic disruptions.

Enough said. The Worldchanging article includes 47 valuable contributions from people like Danah Boyd, Jamais Cascio, Jeremy Faludi, Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben, Pierre Omidyar, Darius Rejali, Howard Rheingold, Bruce Sterling, John Thackara, and many, many other fine thinkers. Read the full article here; it’s worth it.

perfect storm (a) a particularly violent storm arising from a rare combination of meteorological factors; (b) (chiefly US) an especially bad situation caused by unfavourable circumstances.

—  from Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth edition, Volume 2 N - Z

“But it would fair for the new administration to point out how conservative ideology, the belief that greed is always good, helped create this crisis. What F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — ‘We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics’ — has never rung truer.”

—  Paul Krugman, “The Obama Agenda,” Nov. 7, 2008, New York Times

Given crisis conditions in politics, the economy, the environment — and, by the way, world hunger and charity, too — the term “perfect storm” has infiltrated the current dialog about pretty much everything.

You might say a perfect storm of perfect storms has led to the growing usage of “perfect storm.”

First, massive hurricanes and cyclones are on the rise.

Second, there’s an economic crisis, caused by intense economic volatility, but is it really a perfect storm?  (If you ask me, it was a storm caused by human imperfection, namely greed, making it an “imperfect storm.” But I digress.)

Third, carbon emissions are way up, leading to more rapid climate change, melting of polar ice, influenced by a series of factors — human, industrial, oceanic, and otherwise — that some are also calling a perfect storm.

And, fourth, Obama’s election victory has led pundits to say that his victory resulted from a perfect storm of (a.) political miscalculations by the Republicans and (b.) the economic meltdown that began in September with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and A.I.G.

Nevertheless, the question remains: Why is the term “perfect storm” being used so often at the moment?

In all likelihood, it’s because myriad varieties of “especially bad situation caused by unfavourable circumstances,” which feed “particularly violent” (real and metaphorical) storms, are now increasingly commonplace rather than anomalous.

That’s why, in a real and collective sense, these bad situations represent the perfect storm that’s caused the usage of “perfect storm” to achieve a new normalcy.

And that makes perfect storms something we’re going to have to learn to get used to, whether we like it or not.

Worldchanging is one of my favorite sustainability publications.

Over the past five years, executive editor/co-founder Alex Steffen and his global posse of contributors have painstakingly built up a treasure trove of valuable insight into the politics, technology, strategy, and tactics of sustainability, and they are currently preparing to celebrate their five-year anniversary on October 1, 2008.

How? With a retrospective selection of the 8,500 articles that they’ve archived since their founding—and, on October 1, with a BIG announcement (sorry, I don’t have any insider information on what it might be).

As an occasional contributor to Worldchanging since July 2007, I’m honored that four three articles I wrote for the site have been chosen as part of the retrospective.

Solastalgia and the Mental Affects of Climate Change

Re-Shirt: Reimaging the Cotton T

The Paradox of Innovation: The People’s Car Comes to India

Identifying the Urban Garden with Mobile Phones

The impact of Worldchanging has been tremendous: The site and the companion book have made a real difference in the debates surrounding everything from addressing climate change, to building resilient communities, to fostering eco-design innovation that supports humanity’s basic needs.

In fact, Worldchanging has covered so many salient environmental issues that my brief summary can’t possible do justice to the site’s phenomenal depth and breadth.

Which is why I happily suggest you peruse Worldchanging, a site replete with sane, intelligent, dynamically written articles, blog posts, and practical resources.

Worldchanging’s commitment to positive change has made a difference in my life; I hope it makes a difference in yours.

On the day of the debate to boot. Anyway, here’s the Reuters.com link to my open letter to U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

Hope you enjoy it; have a good weekend.

Open letter to Barack Obama and John McCain

Dear Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain:

I am a foresight researcher and a fellow North American.

I’m writing this open letter to share my concerns about the United States’ future.

Civil rights

In the 1970s, as a school-aged child in Canada, I learned about the U.S. civil rights movement, and the moral struggle for an American Dream of racial equality—and equality of opportunity.

Perhaps as a result of experiencing racism myself, the promotion of civil liberties by U.S. liberals, such as John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and thousands of unheralded and unknown civil rights activists), touched me deeply.

Call of decency

The honesty and courage of Dr. King and the Kennedys convinced me that racial equality, education, rising incomes, robust middle classes, and secular democracies with separation of church and state would together rid the world of prejudice, helping undo a shameful human history of violence, conquest, and suppression of dignity.

I and so many others began to believe creating a just society, and building a consumer society, went hand in hand.

But that idea seems, more and more, to be coming undone.

Because today, a thirty-year legacy of poor decisions must be reckoned with.

From administration to administration, corporation to corporation, three decades of unwise economic, political, social, and strategic decisions have yielded runaway consumption, growing gaps between rich and poor, a shrinking middle class, rising food commodity prices, increasing domestic and global hunger, trillions of dollars of debt, legislative incursions on civil rights, a weakened democracy, massive expenditures on long-term foreign wars, a physical infrastructure deficit of $1.6 trillion, environmental degradation and overshoot—and accelerating climate change.

Furthermore, the cumulative impact of these phenomena has exhausted the possibility for a healthy and secure collective future.

Whither the American Dream

Now Wall Street is in upheaval and the age of climate chaos is closing in.

It would appear Dr. King’s dream of an America where freedom rings for “all of God′s children” will remain unrealized.

Yet many look to Americans for inspiration and innovation.

So, what is the New American Dream?

What sort of prosperity can America provide its citizens when, in less than a generation, the economy may well be in tatters, the earth’s once-plentiful bounty even more significantly depleted?

What will inspire kindness and compassion if credit evaporates, shrinking the U.S. middle class further—and unleashing among Americans a sense of anger and betrayal?

Will the United States, Canada, and the rest of the world ever be able to understand what Thoreau meant when he said, “Goodness is the only investment that never fails”?

These are questions that one of you, the victor of the 2008 presidential campaign, will have to answer for posterity.

I urge you to consider them.

Yours sincerely,

Sanjay Khanna