Our Vision, Our Work

Mission
Advancing a new planetary vision

Mission
Advancing a new planetary vision

Tellus Institute strives to advance a planetary civilization rooted in justice, well-being, and sustainability. Our work addresses key dimensions of a transformative global praxis—understanding, vision, and action—by fostering scholarship, developing scenarios, and mobilizing networks for change. At this perilous juncture in human affairs, Tellus now more than ever joins engaged thinkers and thinking activists the world over in shaping a global transition, the great challenge of our time.
History at a Turning Point
Our journey to planetary civilization

History at a Turning Point
Our journey to planetary civilization

The world has entered the Planetary Phase of Civilization, a new epoch of accelerated change and heightened risk. Long threads of interdependence—economic, cultural, technological, political, and environmental—are binding the planet’s people and biosphere into a single community of fate. Some form of globalized civilization will take shape in the coming decades, but its ultimate character remains uncertain and contested. The path of world development depends on how we respond collectively to emergent crises and opportunities.
Dangerous Pathways
The perils of conventional development

Dangerous Pathways
The perils of conventional development

The conventional development paradigm assumes twenty-first century challenges can be adequately addressed through piecemeal market and policy adjustments. But a system that privileges profit over need, growth over resilience, and state-centrism over global governance would be ill-equipped for coping with looming non-conventional perils. Quite plausibly, Conventional Worlds scenarios could veer rather abruptly toward some form of Barbarization scenario, a descent into anarchic chaos, perhaps, or global repression.
Transforming Our World
Emergence of a global community

Transforming Our World
Emergence of a global community

The risk of evolutionary drift and catastrophic decline is all too real, but not inevitable. We still have time and world enough to shape a Great Transition, a civilization where the health of the environment, the breadth of human solidarity, and the quality of lives become the legitimate measures of development. Turning toward such a future depends on our collective capacity as global citizens to gain new insights, embrace new values, and take common actions.

Featured Publications

Journey to Earthland:

Paul Raskin

In our interdependent and dangerous century, an organic planetary civilization has become both a possibility and a necessity

The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization

Why a planetary civilization of enriched lives, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability is possible

The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead

Great Transition:

Big History and Great Transition

What we learn from taking a long-term view

Solidarity with Animals

The role of our relationship to animals in a Great Transition

Which Future Are We Living In?

Reflections on the path of history 2002-2022

The Population Debate Revisited

The question of overpopulation in the contemporary context

Conservation at the Crossroads:
Battle Lines and Ways Forward

Contending approaches and the search for a GT strategy

Technology and the Future

The implications of cutting-edge technologies for global transformation

Can Human Solidarity Globalize?

An inquiry into the prospects for human affiliation and empathy expanding beyond existing states and particular identities

The Pedagogy of Transition:
Educating for the Future We Want

An exploration of how to align educational systems with new imperatives in the long term, while delivering innovate curricula and teaching within existing systems in the near term

Interrogating the Anthropocene:
Truth and Fallacy

Human activity has jolted the Earth into a hostile new state. If we care about building a decent future, how should we think about “the Anthropocene”?

Universal Basic Income:
Has the Time Come?

Should society provide every citizen with a basic income, no strings attached? Proponents and critics of a universal basic income debate whether it should be a central element of strategies for transformation

Planetize the Movement!

In our fraught time, we need coordinated action for deep social and ecological change more than ever. How can we build a unified global movement? Who will change the world?

Toward a Great Ethics Transition:
The Earth Charter at Twenty

A Great Transition must rise on core ethical values attuned to an interdependent world facing a common destiny. What are the elements of this foundation, and how do we build it?

The author of Doughnut Economics describes what mainstream economics gets wrong and how another economics can nurture both people and planet

Dollars to Doughnuts:
The Shape of
a New Economy

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Great Transition Visions

Learn about global scenarios

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Great Transition Ideas

A six minute exposition

Great Transition Ideas