How a Cooperative Approach to Property Management can Build Collective Power
By Saki Bailey, Shareable
The Community Land Trust (CLT) is an established and successful model for the creation of democratically governed permanently affordable housing, and most urgently in the face of the crisis, a tool to prevent the displacement of historic communities. T
Fracking 2.0 Was a Financial Disaster, Will Fracking 3.0 Be Different?
By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog
And the solution to fracking's profits problem — according to the likes of ExxonMobil — is Microsoft. Apparently cloud technology has been the missing ingredient in the Permian.
Navigating Hope Through Crisis – Disaster and a Politics of Possibility
By Raven Cretney, Resilience.org
We can, and should, theorise the broader politics of disaster. However, everyday stories of post-disaster action and resistance shed light on the small-scale, experimental grassroots interventions that bring forward hope in the midst of crisis.
Crazy Town: A New Podcast from Post Carbon Institute
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
If you recognize controversies and hypocrisies like these, then you know what it’s like to live in Crazy Town. Laugh along with Asher, Rob, and Jason (mostly so you don’t cry) as they explore the back alleys, figure out how to navigate sanely, and even find an escape route every once in awhile.
How to Grow a Local Food Web
By Wayne Roberts, Medium
In today’s world, we can choose what I’ll call the neo-local choice. For the first time in history, it really is a choice. It’s not imposed by old technologies that offered no alternatives but the food at hand.
How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is Being Built
By Zoya Teirstein, Grist
Drummer realized the Green New Deal was the “best tangible, concrete expression of the kind of economics and politics that we were fighting for and trying to develop.”
In an Era of Brutal Cuts, One Ordinary Place has the Imagination to Fight Back
By Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian blog
And for those desperate to preserve a spark of hope in a political system that feels so hopeless, let me suggest this: watch Preston.
Well-being: A Latin American Response to the Socio-Ecological Crisis
By Hans-Jürgen Burchardt, Alternautas
Instead of proposing new “sustainable” or green-washed development frameworks, it seems necessary to propose new alternatives to the concept of development itself.
What Happens When Communities Say No to Solar and Wind?
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Whether Green New Dealers or carbon taxers no allowance seems to be made for opposition to the projects needed to get the US off the fossil fuel standard. The parties to the conflicts are not just climate defenders and deniers.
Trans-continental Hustle, Or An Admittedly Anecdotal Review of Adam Tooze’s Crashed
By Michelle Galimba, Small Farm Future
Although Crashed primarily traces the financial crisis in the US and Europe during the period 2006-2018, Tooze brackets his tale of Euro-American financial implosions by sketching the “financial balance of terror” between China and the US and delineating how dangerous this ‘balance’ is.
Ghosting the Planet
By Mary Robinson, Maeve Higgins, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Mothers of Invention
This week’s episode is co-hosted by Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one of the lead policy writers of the Green New Deal. She joins Mary & Maeve in the studio to discuss public opinion on climate change in the United States, where it’s crucial that citizens and politicians take a role in environmental action.
The Memory Keeper
By Brian Miller, South Roane Agrarian
The role of memory keeper is as old as our race, but its status in these times is precarious. Our ongoing political project of individual liberty, supported by our technological self-absorption, has freed us from the connections of those who came before.
To Reduce Fire Risk and Meet Climate Targets, Over 300 Scientists Call for Stronger Land clearing laws
By Martine Maron, Andrea Griffin, April Reside, Bill Laurance, Don Driscoll, Euan Ritchie, Steve Turton, The Conversation
Australia’s high rates of forest loss and weakening land clearing laws are increasing bushfire risk, and undermining our ability to meet national targets aimed at curbing climate change.
The Real Energy Return of Crude Oil: Smaller than you Would have Imagined
By Luciano Celi, Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
Presently although the EROI decline is quite clear the Net Energy is still well above 90%. The society feels pretty safe. The problem is that we are walking along a cliff and it is increasingly urgent to make an energy transition, before finally ending up in the abyss.
Food for a Small Planet
By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul
In the process of changing our habits we change the way business does business. The majority of the consumption of resources is done by the world’s most developed economies.
A Green New Deal Must Not Be Tied to Economic Growth
By Giorgos Kallis, TruthOut
The lower the level of energy use, and the smaller the economy, the easier it is to decarbonize, and the fewer impacts that will be caused along the way. There is no reason for someone concerned with climate and the environment to advocate economic growth.
Green New Deal Must Transform Our Food System to Save Our Climate
By Kari Hamerschlag, Lisa Archer, Food Tank
With the Green New Deal, social movements and our representatives in Congress have the chance to transition away from our harmful and polluting industrial agriculture model to a system that is healthy, just, and works for everyone.
Spanish Cities Make the Case for How Cooperatives Can Address Urban Ills
By Nithin Coca, Shareable
Whether it is growing congestion due to ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, rising housing costs due to Airbnb, or increasing agitation from gig workers being forced to work longer hours for less pay, cities are at the forefront of the battle to control the exploitative platform economy.
Peak Oil Review: 11 March 2019
By Tom Whipple, Peak-Oil.org
The struggle between declining economic growth and falling oil supplies continued to affect oil prices last week. The failure of a significant portion of Venezuela’s electricity grid has already been a significant blow to the country’s roughly 1 million b/d of oil production, and the situation seems likely to get worse.
SHOCK, HORROR: Poll Finds Strong Majority Support for Declaring a Climate Emergency
By David Spratt, Climate Code Red
In five countries — Australia, the USA, Canada, the UK and Switzerland — an impressive 382 local government authorities covering more than 33 million people have recognised or declared a climate emergency. And now polling conducted in Melbourne shows that a sizeable majority in that city support declaring a climate emergency.
Uber, Lyft and oil frackers: Tech mirages, not real businesses
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
The main problems with tech mirages: 1) They destroy or undermine existing businesses, weakening them to the point where they collapse and then those tech mirages collapse themselves leaving society without the service supplied by the businesses they destroyed and/or 2) they distract from what we really need to do to adapt to the twin crises of climate change and resource depletion.
Old movies part 2: To Have and Have Not
By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry blog
A few weeks ago I wrote about black-and-white movies like Stagecoach, and how they often dealt with our modern, 21st-century problems in a way that modern media does not. Someone might ask: So What? If a movie made nine decades ago had a timely message, how does that affect my problems now? The question motivated me to write about the stories we tell each other about *class*.
The Writing on the Wall
By Jeremy Leggett, Jeremy Leggett blog
The Norwegian government has just mandated its sovereign wealth fund, the biggest such wealth fund, to divest from pure oil and gas explorers. This is a significant landmark in the global battle to abate global heating.
‘Balance for Better’ does Little to Address Issues Facing Women
By Rosie Urbanovich, Red Pepper
International Women’s Day had radical roots: at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of women came together to protest dismal working conditions, long hours, and poverty pay.
Nearly all Tornadoes are Survivable, so Why are People still Dying?
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
This isn’t just a weather disaster; it’s a failure of society. Lee County’s per capita income is $22,794, 19 percent live below the poverty line, and 17 percent of houses are mobile homes, nearly three times the national average. Unsafe shelter makes residents much more vulnerable to tornadoes.
How to Turn Dirt Into Soil
By Anne Biklé, David R. Montgomery, YES! magazine
Regenerating soil to change the piece of the planet where you live is possible at multiple scales. It might be a city yard like ours, rooftop garden, community garden, or working farm. Add up these efforts, and we can restore fertility to degraded soils, end hunger, and pull some carbon from the sky.
Saving Japan’s Seed Heritage from “Free Trade”
By Anja Lyngbaek, Local Futures
It’s time for us to wake up and practice direct democracy – to join with others to stop further corporatization and regain control over our commons, our communities, our cultures and our economies. Because if we don't, who will? Masahiko Yamada and the new citizens’ movement in Japan have come up with a few tricks we can learn from.
New Warnings on Plastic’s Health Risks as Fracking Industry Promotes New ‘Plastics Belt’ Build-Out
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
A new report traces the life cycle of plastic from the moment an oil and gas well is drilled to the time plastic trash breaks down in the environment, finding “distinct risks to human health” at every stage.
Better Work Together: Reflections from a Nascent Movement
By Francesca Pick, P2P Blog
There is a movement on the rise that it is leveraging the power of community, networks, and participation to work on systemic challenges.
Bologna, the City with a ‘Civic Imagination Office’
By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog
In Bologna, a new approach to engagement and civic action is emerging, rooted in the imagination. One driver for this shift is the realisation we are living in what Michele calls “a distrust era”, where people don’t trust public administrations, NGOs, or private businesses.
To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System
By Austin Frerick, American Conservative
If current trends continue, rural America will soon be owned by a handful of families and corporations who will run their empires remotely with driverless tractors and poorly paid staff.
Welcome to Crazy Town
By Rob Dietz, Resilience.org
Once you’ve started feeling the heaviness of humanity’s collision course with the climate and other life-support systems of our planet, how do you handle it?
Designing Climate Solutions – a Big-Picture View that Doesn’t Skimp on Details
By Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance
Let us pause for a moment of thanks to the policy wonks, who work within the limitations of whatever is currently politically permissible and take important steps forward in their branches of bureaucracy. Let us also give thanks to those who cannot work within those limitations, and who are determined to transform what is and is not politically permissible.
全局观
By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org
当今，人类面临着许多问题。气候变化、经济不平等加剧、生物多样性瓦解、政局两级分化，以及全球债务泡沫等，都只是我们担忧的一小部分问题。这其中任何一项趋势的持续都会让我们的文明难以为继。而这些问题的蔓延表明我们正在走向某种历史性的发展断点。
How Bad is Global Inequality, Really?
By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog
All of this makes it clear who the real beneficiaries of globalization have been. And suddenly it seems a bit absurd to be touting as “progress” the pennies that have trickled down to the poorest when the overwhelming majority of new income since 1980 has been captured at the top.
Local Communities Taking on Big Oil
By Emily Hammermeister, Planet Forward
These communities—South Deering, Pilsen, and Little Village—all keep fighting back. The support of groups like the Sierra Club and Pilsen Alliance, standing in solidarity with them, makes them even stronger. As Cheryl Johnson said to me, it is important to “follow what you believe is wrong to try and make it right.” And that’s just what these communities are doing.
Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat
By Mary Annaïse Heglar, System Change not Climate Change
I’m with you when you say that climate change is the most important issue facing humankind. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s the most important one ever. But, when I hear folks say—and I have heard it—that the environmental movement is the first in history to stare down an existential threat, I have to get off the train.
Food from the Radical Center: Excerpt
By Gary Paul Nabhan, Resilience.org
While the subject of this story is what we may call biocultural, eco-culinary, or reciprocal restoration, it is quite often enabled through a social process that has been called either community-based restoration, collaborative conservation, or cooperative collaboration.
The Worst Reason to Oppose the Green New Deal
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
I would even venture that climate change is becoming one of the topics most talked about—or like religion and politics not to be talked about—around dinner tables. I credit the rising tide of youth activism for this rather sudden reversal of fortune.
When the Water Runs Out
By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul
We must hold ourselves accountable for our actions before it is too late to prevent catastrophic collapse. When the water runs out we have no one to blame but ourselves.
After Mass Mobilizations, what Direction for the Belgian Climate Movement?
By Rafa Grinfeld, Uneven Earth
We already have many climate protests now in Belgium. What we especially need now are some good debates and analyses about what direction the climate movement in Belgium (and other countries) should take.
Real Billions and Real Trillions
By Woody Tasch, Slow Money
In terms of money and the flow of capital through complex securities, millisecond computer trades, and financial institutions that are Too Big To Fail, trillions means mind-numbing. In terms of microbes and life in the soil, trillions means teeming.