Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
James Kagwe, who runs a waste management collective called ‘Waste to Best’ in Naivasha Town in Kenya’s Rift Valley. His path has taken him from flower growing to street clean-ups, waste collection and waste management.
Many people, including myself, fear that the great acceleration (1, 2) of our consumption and destruction of resources such as land, biodiversity, soil, minerals, and fossil energy sources, could lead us into a catastrophe.
Comparing greenhouse gases with each other using GWP* preserves the link between emissions and warming or cooling of the atmosphere. Therefore, GWP* is better suited than GWP100 to assessing whether the world is on track to limit warming to well below 2C.
We may benefit if we simultaneously hold two extremes of action; both the huge, universal movements for ecology and justice and the daily, personal actions that help slightly and make us better examples to others.
Several major economies, including the U.S. and Canada, rely heavily on fossil fuel production and exports. But the surging market penetration of renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency improvements, and climate emission policies are certain to substantially reduce the global demand for fossil fuels.
Although creating an alternative culture requires effort, some effort is also put in maintaining the dominant culture. So the question is where to put the effort.
Our very nature is far more caring, loving, and empathic than we have been educated to believe. While being empathic may have initially extended primarily to our family and tribe, our ability to empathize has continued to expand to include the whole of humanity, other species and life as a whole.
We receive a lot of visitors to Winged Elm Farm. Most are thoughtful and respectful of our time, appreciative of what we have to offer. We enjoy the showing and explaining of our routines. For many, it is their first outing to any sort of farm. With that in mind, I offer this curmudgeonly guide to the dos and don’ts of a visit.
The central premise of this informative, stimulating and flawed book is that the European Union made a terrible mistake by launching the euro without simultaneously taking political action to balance trade within the Eurozone.
The wild food still exists all around us, though, all over our fields, and our hedgerows create a vertical salad bar filled with food for the taking. Some of these are wilder versions of familiar vegetables, like wild parsnip or sea beet, while others have no domesticated equivalent, like fat hen or jack-by-the-hedge.
Since the fall, indigenous women of the Secwepemc Nation—calling themselves the Tiny House Warriors—have been constructing tiny houses that they plan to strategically place in the pathway of the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if the battles being fought to maintain federal energy and environment policies and programs are clouding the nation’s collective understanding of what the war being waged against the Trump administration is really about?
