Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A committee of MPs said last week that the government should “stop announcing short-term policies and moving existing budgets around and instead fully fund a national retrofit programme” of home insulation.
The case for ruralism over urbanism as I see it is simply that the dynamics of climate, energy, water, soil and political economy are going to propel multitudes of people to the world’s farmable regions sooner or later.
I don’t expect oil production from the Middle East OPEC countries to significantly exceed the production rates of 2018/2019 in the future irrespective of what the U.S. wants them to produce.
But in our reality in 2022, with far too much carbon dioxide already flowing through the atmosphere and the climate crisis worsening every year, knowingly emitting more greenhouse gases for another two decades is a shockingly cavalier dance with destruction.
Yet, for a politician to advocate increased economic growth, given the evidence, they have to be ignorant, wicked or stupid.
In economics there is a proposition known as Dornbusch’s Law that states: Crises take longer to arrive than you can imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine.
Cottage Economy is not, however, just a nineteenth-century DIY manual. It is also a fiercely polemical defence of smallholding as a way of life.
After decades as a climate and clean energy activist, I can’t help but feel that we’ve been here before. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Like so much of life, the economy is very fragile. It can seem almightily powerful to most of us, most of the time. But that is not really the case.
In the second chapter of her book, author Dani Baker examines how vertical space in forest gardens can organically overlap to keep multiple layers of plants growing beautifully.
The Future is Degrowth is arguably one of the most complete works on the concept of degrowth, clearly and thoroughly discussing the need to think beyond economic growth and why and how degrowth is an alternative.
If we’re going to succeed at problems like adapting to climate change, protecting clean water supplies, and preserving biodiversity, we all need to think differently, work collaboratively, and commit to learning as we go.
