What do we really need?
So, it is not the case that the market’s functioning is a reflection on who we are and how we choose to behave, how we meet our needs. We do not need to be homo economicus for the market to thrive.
Featured
Review: Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Bringing the “inanimate brute matter” (in Isaac Newton’s phrase) ‘back to life’ may plunge us into unknown legislative and imaginative territory. But it feels like an essential reconceptualisation, to resurrect our rivers through old and new ideas, bubbling up through the cracks.
The Launch of Transition Town Warri
Last month, I had the honor and privilege of being invited to participate in the launch of Transition Town Warri. While the explicit purpose of my trip to Nigeria was simply to co-facilitate an introductory Transition Launch Training, as I’ve done many times before, it ended up being much more than that.
Breaking the industrial food system
The assumptions that sit behind this are that: consumption drives growth; that cheaper food is good for growth; that markets are the best way to provide cheaper food; that changing diets is not the job of government; and that food safety nets are not needed—or need only to be minimal.
Unwild Wales – this settled country
I have much time for Wendell Berry’s writings and reflections; but so much of what they take for granted as environmental backdrop simply does not apply here in Wales. What does apply is a narrative that recognizes first of all a long history of being settled…
From Micro-Forests to Macro-Impact
More than 223 micro-forests led by and primarily benefiting resource poor households with small landholdings adjacent to their home, where families can easily work together, have already been established, with a goal of creating another 400 by 2030.
Syrian communities form grassroots emergency networks as coastal wildfires overwhelm state response
As official efforts faltered, amid aging equipment and crumbling infrastructure, Syrian civil society moved quickly to support the afflicted farmers, forming emergency networks that sent hundreds of volunteers into the fire zones to deliver supplies and support where government services could not reach.
From the Steppes to the Desert: Beyond “Green” Megaprojects
Recalling the sea, the desert, and the steppe, we recognize the traces of their vastness and depth in our hearts and consciousness. This vastness and depth is what we need to remember: that the wealth and well-being we long for are not in the race for infinite growth, but in the sufficiency of the inhabited present.
The Influence of Psychopaths: Why Humanity Is Better Than We Think
In this week’s Frankly, Nate reflects on intraspecies predation (ours) and the impact psychopathic actors have on the mean and median of human behavior – in the past all the way up to our modern society.
In Common
And so now I’m home again, back to the farm, back to the book publication, back to a million things to do, back to trying to grow some produce and grow some politics that’s not far-left or far-right but equal to the present moment by dispensing with those figments of modernism and doing my bit to articulate more vital political traditions like Romanticism and distributism.
Beyond the Brink: Imagining the Possible in a World Unraveling
Join us for the free, online event: Beyond the Brink on November 13. Considering the unsettling present we all find ourselves in, we’ll ask Rob Hopkins, and Jacqui Patterson to help us do what feels impossible: imagine a brighter future.
Fracking wastewater now endangers both drinking water and the wells that regurgitate the wastewater
There’s an old saying that I won’t spell out completely, but which most readers will certainly have heard at least once in their lives, to wit: “Don’t sh– where you eat.”
