Online Exhibitions

Review, Assessment, and ACTION!

Review Assessment Action circle copy
| Michele Guieu

This is the 21st What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by Post Carbon Institute.


The impactful and insightful exhibition marks the culmination of the Think Resilience course series. It has been an incredible journey! Thank you to all the amazing artists who dedicated their time to watching the videos and reflecting on their intricate content. I hope the course served as a turning point in their understanding of our interconnected crises (ecology economy, energy, and equity) —challenges without straightforward solutions, yet ones we can address through meaningful responses and action. By the end of the course, it is evident that building resilience starts with comprehending the complexity of our situation and then collaborating with our communities.
~ Michele Guieu

Resilience in Major Sectors: Manufacturing, Transportation, and Buildings

WNFE Resilience in Major Sectors Exhibition button 03
| Michele Guieu

This is the 20th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Manufacturing, transportation, and buildings use energy to provide goods and services; transforming these sectors will entail finding ways to use less energy for these purposes, ways to use it that suit renewable energy sources, and ways to provide for human needs while using fewer material resources and producing less pollution. Land use planning touches on every aspect of local government concern, involving decisions on air quality, water quality, biodiversity, transportation options, economic vitality, and quality of life. And sound public policy is essential to community resilience efforts—with the recognition that imposing policies from above without adequate understanding of, or support for, those policies from community members will lead to political failure.” 
– Richard Heinberg

Meeting Essential Community Needs

WNFE social justice art call instagram 04 copy
| Michele Guieu

This is the 19th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Building community resilience ultimately has to come to grips with the infrastructure that enables any community to function. This lesson looks at food, water, energy, and money systems, and how these can be made more resilient. If any one of these essentials goes haywire, a community loses its support capacity very quickly.”
– Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

Community Resilience and Education

Community Resilience and Education
| Michele Guieu

This is the 18th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Education—particularly early-childhood education—not only sets the foundation for who we become in later life, but also shapes society as a whole. If we want a more resilient society and more resilient communities, we have to plant the seeds today in students both young and old. We need education that trains people in both community and personal resilience-building.” 
– Richard Heinberg

Community Resilience and Social Justice / Equity / Ownership

Social justice exhibition
| Michele Guieu

This is the 17th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Systemic inequality reduces the sustainability and resilience of society as a whole. Capital tends to reproduce itself and become more consolidated and centralized over time—that’s its purpose—but only some members of society are motivated or able to set aside money and goods for the purpose of capital accumulation. Inequality is also created, sustained, and worsened over time through institutionalized racism, which results in chronic conditions of poverty and lack of access. Ultimately, promoting equity will require strategies like cooperative ownership of business and expanding the commons—the cultural and natural resources that should be accessible to all members of a society, and not privately owned.”
– Richard Heinberg

Economic Relocalization

WNFE economic relocalization circle
| Michele Guieu

This is the 16th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“The local challenges created by globalization can be partly countered by economic localization. It starts with communities supporting local business rather than giving subsidies such as tax breaks and free utility hook-ups to large, non-local businesses, as is so often done. In fact, half of all private-sector U.S. jobs are still provided by small businesses, and almost all of these businesses are local. Moreover, local dollars have a multiplier effect—when spent within the regional economy, they increase local wealth, local taxes, jobs, charitable contributions, tourism, and entrepreneurship. Local economic development benefits everyone—except maybe big multinational corporations.”
– Richard Heinberg

Video Transcript of the lesson here.

How Globalization Undermines Resilience

Globalization exhibition
| Michele Guieu

This is the 15th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Globalization is largely about the relentless pursuit of economic efficiency. And while there are benefits to efficiency (increasing profits, minimizing waste), as an economic strategy it has serious costs to community resilience. Wealthier countries lose jobs for higher-paid wage laborers, as well as the skill base and the infrastructure to produce goods and equipment. The offshoring of manufacturing to poorer nations reduces domestic pollution but increases pollution in the exporting nations (which often have less stringent regulations). Economic inequality increases, both within nations and between nations. And as regions specialize, there is an overall loss of local diversity in jobs.”
– Richard Heinberg

Video Transcript here.

Building Community Resilience

WNFE Building Community Resilience exhibition
| Michele Guieu

This is the 14th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“In 2015, Post Carbon Institute surveyed the academic literature on resilience and talked to scholars, activists, and local leaders around the country to determine how the concepts of resilience might be most usefully applied in communities by people who aren’t resilience scientists. We found an easily understood framework that speaks directly to the challenges communities face regarding equity, group decision-making, and their complex social and economic contexts. We identified six foundations that appear necessary for community resilience-building efforts to be successful. And these are: people, systems thinking, adaptability, transformability, sustainability, and courage.”
– Richard Heinberg

Video Transcript here.

Community Resilience in the 21st Century

Community Resilience online exhibition
| Michele Guieu

This is the 13th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute.

“In this video, we’re going to bring resilience, which we defined and discussed in the last video, into the context of this century’s simmering and complex “E4” crises, with (1) ecological, (2) energy, (3) economic, and (4) equity dimensions. We’ll clarify the relationship between sustainability and resilience, and show why a lot of the climate change resilience discussion—while necessary—doesn’t go far enough. And we’ll explain why this video series focuses primarily on building resilience at the community level, as opposed to the global, national, or household level.”
– Richard Heinberg
Video transcript here.

What is Resilience?

What is Resilience Online Exhibition 1
| Michele Guieu

This is the 12th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course written by Richard Heinberg and produced by the Post Carbon Institute

“In ecology, resilience is seen as the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure. In other words, a system that’s resilient can adapt to change without losing the qualities that define what it is and what it does—which together comprise that system’s “identity.” Resilience boils down to an ability to adapt to both short-term disruption and long-term change while retaining the system’s essential identity. Building resilience starts with decisions about what we value about a system. Concepts like the adaptive cycle and panarchy further aid our understanding of resilience in systems.”
– Richard Heinberg