Solutions & sustainability – Aug 25

August 25, 2008

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The interview: Rosie Boycott

Geraldine Bedell, The Observer
Rosie Boycott has a habit of reinventing herself roughly once a decade. She was a leading feminist in the 1970s, wrote a revealing memoir in the 1980s and edited a glossy magazine and a New Labour-leaning newspaper in the 1990s. Her various incarnations have always been remarkably in tune with the temper of the times

… We sit and talk in the conservatory overlooking magnificent herbaceous borders, among the basil plants that her husband, Charlie Howard QC, will later turn into pesto for our lunch. Localism and the countryside, we are always being told, will be important themes for Cameron’s Tories. And here’s Rosie Boycott, living in the country, growing her own vegetables, picking her basil five minutes before it’s on the plate, selling her eggs at nearby markets and writing a book, (Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes) extolling the joys of running a smallholding. Coincidence, or what?

Now we learn that on 13 September Boycott will start work with Boris as the mayor’s ‘food tsar’ (technically, she will be Chair of London Food). She is fanatical about this, believing that food is far more important than fuel and has the potential to do a whole range of things, from kick-starting environmental activism to solving social problems. She claims she can’t say much about the job yet, but she doesn’t really want to talk about anything else and keeps saying things like: ‘I plan to green every single space in London I can, every roof I can, creating vegetable gardens, filling empty spaces.’

… For what it’s worth, I think this is an example of why Rosie Boycott is such a brilliant campaigner. She makes lots of points, irrespective of whether some of them, in some respects, contradict others. Those of us who sit round worrying about the subtle implications of arguing x at the same time as y will probably never change anything. Boycott comes storming at you, and the effect is that you’re knocked sideways by her belief and the cumulative force of her arguments.

… She promises, though, that her current overriding passion, her food and environment campaign, will be her last. ‘This one is not going to go away in my lifetime. On the other hand, I do think we’re at a tipping point, like when I started Spare Rib in the early Seventies. Then we were pushing at a totally open door. No one you went to could stand in your way. I feel the same now about the environment and gardening. We have lost connection with the land and growing, and that has made people feel impotent.

‘My generation has had it easy. My entire life has been created by cheap oil and that has given us an extraordinary amount of choice. But all this convenience only seems to have made us more neurotic and isolated. There is a feeling that we have become less resilient. The mood is now swinging back in the opposite direction. People are recognising that food is the great binder.’
(24 August 2008)
Much of the article is devoted to Boycott’s personal life and her apparent turnaround on feminist issues. -BA


Growing Green in Detroit

Olga Bonfiglio, Christian Science Monitor
“Food is essential to daily life,” says Ashley Atkinson, director of urban agriculture for the Greening of Detroit, which started in 1989 as a reforesting program for the city’s neighborhoods, boulevards, and parks.

Today, with 25 percent of the land in the city vacant due to the removal of many residential and commercial buildings, Ms. Atkinson has been instrumental in developing gardening and youth education programs to help stabilize and redevelop neighborhoods.

“We have a good model,” she says. “People are coming across the country to see what Detroit is doing.”

The success of Detroit’s urban gardens is more than just food production, however. It’s about connecting people and restoring their confidence so that they can rebuild their neighborhoods.
(22 August 2008)


Ten Steps For Individuals from Post Carbon

Julian Darley, Post Carbon Institute
As part of our “Kiss Your Gas Goodbye” event in Sebastopol, CA on August 2, 2008, Post Carbon Institute has presented a 10 Step framework for individuals to transition to a post carbon world. The resources provided below are in some cases specific to the Sebastopol region. However, we will be updating this framework with more and more resources over time. We welcome your feedback.

1. Understand
2. Plan
3. Reduce
4. Share
5. Participate
6. Reskill
7. Reinvest
8. Generate
9. Grow
10. Monitor

1. UNDERSTAND

Understand the issues. Understand your impact. In order to properly respond to the crises we face resulting from our dependence on fossil fuels, it’s key to understand:

  • The ways in which we rely on coal, oil, and natural gas-everything from our modes of transportation, our food, the plastics from which so many of our products are made, and the distance from which most of the goods come.

  • The impacts of fossil fuels on the environment-primarily climate change but also deforestation, strip mining, water use, and pollution.
  • Peak oil and the decline of other fossil fuels.
  • Your role. This includes examining your carbon footprint and your personal dependence on oil and natural gas, in particular.

Resources: …

2. REDUCE

Plan to reduce your impact and increase your self-resilience. It can be daunting, time consuming, and downright frustrating to know where to begin, let alone substantially change the way we live, travel, and work. But it’s key, once you’ve begun to assess and understand they ways in which you depend on fossil fuels, to make a plan that balances actions that are achievable and ones that have a meaningful impact. ….
(2 August 2008)


An Inside Look at an Emergency Survival Kit
(video and audio)
Peak Moment via Global Public Media
Image RemovedIf an emergency forced you to evacuate your home, would you be prepared? Matt Stein, author of When Technology Fails, shows what to pack in your 72-hour emergency survival kit – and why. Check out the first aid kits, sleeping bag and space blanket, LED flashlight, hand-crank disaster radio, portable stove and cook set, freeze-dried food, multi-tool, compass, water holder, and essential water treatment items; plus sewing, repair, and health items. The packing list is on his website www.whentechfails.com
(10 August 2008)


Maasai ‘can fight climate change’

BBC Online
Africa should make more use of the skills of its nomadic peoples to help combat the challenges of climate change, the aid agency Oxfam says.

Pastoral communities such as the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania could pass on survival skills, says a new report.

The Maasai have learnt over generations how to farm in deserts and scrublands.

Instead of being respected, though, the pastoralists have been marginalised politically, their way of life deemed out-dated and irrelevant, Oxfam says.
(18 August 2008)


Extreme Carbon Negativity: 280 ppm by 2050

Ryan D. Hottle, Global Cllimate Solutionis
… The past several months have given witness to an incredible burgeoning of studies, action plans, and public announcements which commonly suggest the gravity of the situation we are in is a hell of a lot worse than we originally imagined. The upshot of this conclusion is that the proposed solutions to climate change are going to have to be of a much higher caliber than those of the past have been.

To the groundswell of bold thinking around solutions to climate change I would like to dedicate the very first blog posting at our new website (www.GlobalClimateSolutions.org) to the unveiling of the “Earth Rebirth Model” for Solving Climate Change. The Earth Rebirth Model (ERM) proposes a systems approach based on permaculture principles to mitigating and adapting to climate change as well as dealing with the interconnected threats of peak oil, food and water scarcity, economic depression, and ecological destruction.

As the name suggests, the ultimate goal of ERM is to simultaneously solve the climate change crisis while creating a more sustainable, equitable, beautiful, and, ultimately, more meaningful planet for present and future generations to come.

Here let me briefly introduce the reader to ERM by considering four critical aspects of the model. Though these four pieces of the solution certainly are not all the solutions ERM considers, these are four solutions which I believe are absolutely critical to getting right right away:

First, is placing a price on carbon. …

The second is producing clean, renewable energy with net-zero or net-negative CO2 emissions. …

Third is “Relocalizing” our communities and economies.

Fourth is integration. …
(24 August 2008)


Tags: Building Community, Culture & Behavior, Food