Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
There’s really no shortage of ways that people can pool resources. But there’s a huge difference in the goals between for-profit sharing economy companies like Uber and Airbnb and nonprofit groups like tool libraries, time banks, and makerspaces. Juliet Schor, professor at the sociology department at Boston College, explores this tension between for-profit and nonprofit sharing groups.
Ach, I’m a peasant populist at heart, and peasants have a canny sense of when a commons is a good idea and when it isn’t. Anyway, I’m not going to summarise exactly what Raworth says about commons, I’m just going to offer you the following six postulates about them prompted by my reading of her book.
The most important benefit of the equality effect may be that it leads us to behave in ways that are less environmentally damaging. The evidence for this is only emerging now. We can track the effect across a range of indicators by looking at the 25 richest countries in the world, which have varying levels of inequality.
The Resilience Dialogues program provides resources and expertise to help communities build individualized plans for resilience in the face of climate change
Mayors across the country have vowed to deliver on the goals of the Paris climate accord in defiance of President Trump’s decision to back out. But how can they, realistically, when the national government is questioning climate science and promoting coal, fracking, and pipelines? Simply put: Make energy public.
We’re aware that we can’t look to anyone but ourselves to start generating forms of political activity that both overcome the unwelcome return of nationalism, and that genuinely increase the prospects for just, ecologically sound and equitable ways of organising our societies. These will necessarily be aimed at the end of capitalism and the nation-state, and towards democratically organized societies held in common.
A Growing Culture believes “that farmers should be at the forefront of agriculture,” aiming to reshape the food and agriculture system starting with farmers. Through projects for farmer-to-farmer exchange, collective learning, and farmer-led research, A Growing Culture wants to advance innovation and farmer autonomy to create a more just and sustainable food system, and one inclusive of smallholder farmers.
A better understanding of the pathways to positive change will help show, even more, what urban food policy can do to change the food system and where it can have the most impact.
If you were to find yourself huddled with a small group of people in a post-crash, post-internet world, hoping to recreate some of the comforts of civilization, you’d do well to have saved a printed copy of Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization: A History.
Climate cooling activities increase water storage to support green plant growth, and draw carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis to form deep, rich soils under forests, marshes, and grasslands. The result is known as Drawdown, carbon banking, or when coupled with agriculture, carbon farming.
What does this downgrading of likely carbon emissions mean for climate change modelers, climate activists, policy makers, and concerned citizens? According to Ritchie, the implication is clearly not as simple as “don’t worry, fossil fuel depletion will solve climate change for us.”
Dr. Hall undertook a very difficult challenge: write an approachable and layman friendly introduction to energy and energy return on investment (EROI) and how they shape our world, bodies, ecosystems, and civilization. That he managed to pack this into a very readable 174 pages is quite the editorial feat!
