Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When patterns are expressed in a succinct form — as in “Ritualize Togetherness” and “Practice Gentle Reciprocity” — the phrase sounds like a principle. But patterns and principles are not the same. Each points to a different way of understanding the world and bringing about social change.
It’s often said that the economic system is rigged. The truth, however, is that the system is working exactly as it was designed to. Those in power, whether they hold public office or whether they sit in the boardroom of a multi-billion dollar international corporation, have taken great lengths to set up a system of rules that benefit them and maintain the status quo.
More than 40 per cent of the oil and gas wells in the province are not pumping hydrocarbons or generating revenue. Many are leaking methane, CO2, radon or hydrogen sulphide into the air, ground or water table.
The cost of cleaning up the sites and decommissioning the wells can range from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands, depending on their age and type.
The Green New Deal requires a LOT of money, amounts that now look politically impossible. Why is money so scarce? Why is there never enough to meet our needs?
As Trevino highlights, the struggle to transform industrial grain is no small battle. If All Purpose Flour is a symptom of a sociopolitical logic determined to concentrate power and quash difference, then fixing the problem starts with reasserting the distinctive ecological and social fabric of diverse communities.
Telling young Asian leaders that they’re basically on their own when it comes to defending against climate change because old people are not going to worry about this as much is not the message you should be sending.
Now is the time when the generations need to feed off each other’s strengths.
Stories play a powerful role in transmitting personal and collective experiences. They allow us to “feel” climate change in ways that can move us emotionally and open our imagination to new possibilities. They raise our awareness not only to what is happening in the world, but to how it may be experienced by others, both now and in the future.
In Argentina, Vaca Muerta is treated as the country’s chance at salvation, with fracking seen as doing everything at once — creating jobs, reducing the debt burden, plugging the energy deficit and turning Argentina into a major player on the global oil and gas stage.
What’s now needed to create an electable left populism is longer-term community-building of another kind, promoting locally shared spaces and resources, environmental care and economic autonomy that tries to build bridges among whoever’s locally in place. That strategy is also the one that’s needed to build a sustainable small farm future. So for me it’s clear at least where to focus political energy.
There’s no substitute for a mattock and a couple of good shovels, which leverage human effort into great effects with a negligible environmental impact. I love the wood stove, the solar shower, the solar oven, the laundry rack, the ceiling fans and most especially, my new solar dehydrator.
The work on progress indicators is all well and good, especially in challenging the political priority given to GDP. However, over the years I have grown more sceptical of the possibility of measuring, accurately and fully, the state of nations and the wellbeing of their people.
The Bank of North Dakota has fostered a tradition of public sector banking since it was founded in 1919 – the same year incidentally that Neville Chamberlain launched the Birmingham Municipal Savings Bank, which – before it was subsumed into the TSB – and subsequent loss of mutual status, had more than sixty branches around the city.
