Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We already have many climate protests now in Belgium. What we especially need now are some good debates and analyses about what direction the climate movement in Belgium (and other countries) should take.
In terms of money and the flow of capital through complex securities, millisecond computer trades, and financial institutions that are Too Big To Fail, trillions means mind-numbing. In terms of microbes and life in the soil, trillions means teeming.
Here are a few stories about adaptation, to give a feel for actions that flow out of this type of hope — a hope that includes a hard-won acceptance of the very real possibility of impending collapse.
“We doubled production and got $9.5 billion less in royalties,” said Hughes. “We are not getting anything for the resource, and its production is having a huge impact on our GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.” “Obviously we have to ramp production down, and we have to ramp down personal oil consumption.”
Our obsession with economic growth is making our task much more difficult than it needs to be. It’s like we’ve chosen to fight this battle facing uphill, with one hand tied behind our back.
We’re up against the huge power of the fossil fuel industry; the extraordinary ideological opposition to the federal government doing anything important; money going into disinformation campaigns that people readily bought into. And it’s still going on.
All was calm when I predicted in February 2018 at oil-price.net that mid-June 2018″ would see an upsurge in oil price volatility. Four months later, on June 26 2018, a volatility spike in West Texas Intermediate crude oil spot price marked the beginning of the turbulent phase in the oil markets that we are now experiencing.
A recent report from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) confirms that the current food system isn’t sustainable neither for the environment nor for our health. Organic agriculture, conservation farming and agro-ecology are key technologies for a transition to a sustainable food system, which also has to shun artificial nitrogen fertilizers.
With the dawn of industrialization, democracy in work went into reverse. What’s important here is that most people know little or nothing of this history or cannot conceive of it in terms of loss of liberty. They simply accept the arrangements in their jobs as somehow ordained in a nominally democratic society, as how work must necessarily be organized.
I just finished reading David Wallace-Wells’ book,”The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.” When asked whether focusing on predictions of doom is productive or just numbing, Wallace-Wells responded: complacency poses a greater risk to our species than panic. A little panic can be a good thing, especially if you have become complacent.
Traveling to Europe in the summer of 2016 to research my book, I discovered flourishing new osprey populations. Artificial nest sites – supports built mostly in trees to stabilize existing nests and encourage new ones – were plentiful and packed with young ospreys ready to fledge.
Squashes and pumpkins are great because they’re easy to grow, are a low input/ high output crop with very low maintenance and watering, and most importantly because they provide a good winter survival food.
