you can download the full report at
Weaving a New Tapestry:
How to Respond to the
Great Unraveling
Faced, as we are, with the rapid unraveling of the tapestry of our
environmental and social systems, it is hard to imagine doing
anything but trying our best to stitch that fabric back together
again. It’s natural to want the world we know to continue.
However, the picture looks different depending on one’s
vantage point. For people in impoverished nations or communities, the status quo has long consisted of political upheaval,
economic hardship, broken social systems, and a degraded local
environment. Still, nearly all societies have enjoyed a protracted
period of global climate stability (the Holocene), and, during
recent decades, have adopted the neoliberal economic vision of
growth and progress, as well as the globalization of the economy.
The background assumption has been that our current way of life
can be maintained and improved.
If we are, in fact, unable to stitch this tapestry back together,
what should we do? Perhaps the hardest part of any process
that entails making significant changes and establishing new
behaviors is the beginning.
Finding the agency and means to navigate the
unraveling of environmental and social systems,
and to prevent their collapse, requires a recognition of some of the obstacles keeping us from
intervening in meaningful ways. Four main
categories of these obstacles are:
1. Biophysical realities and the various
constraints they impose;
2. Cognitive bias and related glitches in
individual and collective behavior;
3. Entrenched socioeconomic systems and
belief systems; and
4. Diminished cap