Michael Brownlee

The Local Food Shift: Getting There

Across the nation, a robust and inspiring local food movement is gaining momentum but faces critical challenges of overwhelming demand, limited production capacity, lack of infrastructure, and limited access to capital. Meanwhile, as the unsustainability of the industrialized corporate food system becomes increasingly evident, a global food crisis threatens to land on our own shores. Our …

The Local Food Shift: On The Ground

Across the nation, a robust and inspiring local food movement is gaining momentum but faces critical challenges of overwhelming demand, limited production capacity, lack of infrastructure, and limited access to capital. Meanwhile, as the unsustainability of the industrialized corporate food system becomes increasingly evident, a global food crisis threatens to land on our own shores. Our …

The Local Food Shift: Peak Food

Across the nation, a robust and inspiring local food movement is gaining momentum but faces critical challenges of overwhelming demand, limited production capacity, lack of infrastructure, and limited access to capital. Meanwhile, as the unsustainability of the industrialized corporate food system becomes increasingly evident, a global food crisis threatens to land on our own shores. Our …

The Local Food Shift Meets Occupy Boulder

...This turns out to be one of the key aspects of relocalization, new forms of local investment that “catalyze the transition from a commerce of extraction and consumption to a commerce of preservation and restoration.” This means, especially, investing in local farming, and in the enterprises that are needed to support a healthy food and farming system. Woody Tasch is teaching us about …

The local food revolution

Anyone living in the Boulder area could scarcely have escaped noticing some of the obvious first signs of this revolution: Farmers’ markets are popping up around the county, along with roadside farmstands. More restaurants are sourcing their ingredients from local farmers and ranchers. Municipalities have been compelled to change laws to accommodate the rapidly rising citizen demand to raise …

The evolution of Transition in the U.S.

Transition is not a movement for bringing about change. Change is coming, with us or without us, whether we want it or not — profound change. Transition is a movement for preparing our communities for the changes that are coming. And our preparation is likely to crumble unless we are able to connect with and cultivate the aliveness, the wholeness, the healing, and the sacredness that underlies …

Bill McKibben on "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough Planet" (video)

As part of his current book tour, author and climate activist Bill McKibben spoke at the First United Methodist Church in Boulder, CO on April 27, co-sponsored by Boulder Book Store and Transition Colorado. The video of his presentation is below, following the introduction that was given by Michael Brownlee, co-founder of Transition Colorado.

The Local Food and Farming Revolution

...Most of us know in our bones that a sea change is coming in agriculture. But the biggest driver of that change is not going to come from the issues that I’ve mentioned so far. The biggest driver is going to be the increasing cost and decreasing availability of fossil fuels, especially oil. Because agriculture is so dependent on oil, the entire system is extremely vulnerable to oil …

Transition: Meeting the Challenge of Energy Descent

...Where we are now is at the beginning of a transition from an industrial growth culture to a culture of descent. This transition will be characterized by much cultural chaos, and then we will be declining or descending to a far more sustainable low-energy culture. Regarding this, David Holmgren says, "We have trouble visualizing decline as positive, but this simply reflects the dominance of …

Are GMO sugar beets in Boulder County part of the world according to Monsanto? (with updated comment)

It’s quite a spectacle to behold. Here in Boulder County--Colorado home of the nation’s first carbon tax and the first city to offer property-based financing for solar installations and energy retrofits--we’re watching our County Commissioners wrestle with a proposal from six local farmers seeking official approval to grow Roundup-Ready GMO sugar beets on county-owned open space land.