William (Bill) Powers is an author, speaker and teacher whose essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in the New York Times and the Atlantic and on National Public Radio. Powers has also spent several decades exploring the American culture of speed and its alternatives in some fifty countries around the world. He is the author of five books that probe issues of sustainability and the need for a new, bio-centric paradigm, and lives in a Transition Town in Bolivia where principles of a "sweet, slow life" are being put into practice.

In this interview for the Planet Local Voices series, Powers questions the colonial categories of language and thought behind conventional 'development' models that are pushing globalization and urbanization onto the whole world. Powers argues that the antidote to the seeming invincibility of this destructive mainstream direction is by coming home to our senses, re-embedding ourselves in the fabric of Nature and life, and re-building interdependent communities and local economies.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.