Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A rocket mass heater combines a rocket stove with a large quantity of thermal mass. A rocket stove is a J-shaped combustion chamber in which small diameter wood is burned at very high temperatures and achieves near complete combustion.
It didn’t take long before I realized that the social component of being a smallholder was more important to understand their situation than various economic theories, and that the way they farmed often was quite rational if one considered their total situation and not looked at farming as an isolated commercial enterprise.
Ultimately, the question is two-fold: 1) What are we trying to make more resilient? Luxury shopping malls or local hospitals? And 2) How we go about it? Building networks of neighborhood parks that serve a dual role as flood control or giant underground concrete storage tanks that offer no benefits except every 5-50 years when there’s a flood?
LNG will make money for the big five fracking companies (Ovintiv, ARC, Tourmaline, Canadian Natural Resources and Petronas) and the largely foreign owners of the LNG terminals, but will create more economic and environmental problems for British Columbians than it promises to solve.
The stakes for our collective future could not be higher, yet many decision-makers are doubling down on destructive policies.
In this Frankly, Nate reads a poem he wrote 20 years ago this month “The Lament of the Bigfoot”, which highlights the disproportionate role humans have on the ecosystems they inhabit and reflects on how his attitudes have both changed and stayed the same 20 years on.
Orthopraxis is correct action. It is doing things that are deemed good, either by a faith system or by practical application, achieving the most good in effect. The root of praxis and practical is the same. Praxis is practice. It is discipline. It is embodied act. It is work. Orthopraxis is doing the right work.
Farming is a science but it is also an art. There is no one book, one philosophy, one six-week course which can teach that.
While many aspects of city design, participatory municipal governance, or ecological engineering may still be waiting for an integrated urban form, the green corridors, urban forests, and neighborhood communes that have sprung up in the past decade propose concrete, field-tested, and scientifically scrutinized directions for Mumford’s “vaster task” of reviewing our conventional truths about urbanization, prosperity, and civilization.
The water from our well is fresh and invigorating to drink. It does not have the chemical taste of mains tap water nor its ‘flatness’. Also, we are fortunate that we live in a region of high ground, and the surrounding soil has not been subject to modern farming (chemical treatment) for many decades.
Creating a trigger event and a moment of the whirlwind — a period in which social movements capture the political spotlight in a country in a major way and shift the terms of public debate — is a rare and important accomplishment.
In this episode, Nate is joined by eco-depth psychologist Bill Plotkin to explore the profound themes of human development, the urgent need for ecological awakening, and the importance of art and nature in navigating the crises of modern society.
