Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I started out with considerable sympathy towards carbon farming and regenerative agriculture, but with a degree of scepticism about some of the loftier claims made on its behalf by regenerative agriculture proponents (henceforth RAPs). And in fact that’s pretty much where I’ve ended up too, but with a somewhat clearer sense of where my grounds for scepticism lie.
This is an abbreviated version of the multimedia “Ecopolis” theatre show performed in the spring of 2016 by author Jeff Biggers and the Awful Purdies musical group in the historic Old Capitol in Iowa City. “Ecopolis” has also been adapted and performed in Chicago, in various cities in Iowa including Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Cedar Falls, and in Carbondale, Illinois.
It was in an article about Eric that I first came across the term ‘pre-traumatic stress disorder’, a topic we’ll explore more in a future podcast. How does that impact the imagination, I wondered? So, when I chatted to Eric, I started by asking him to tell us a bit about that journey he went on, of injecting very real human emotion into a field that usually limits itself to facts, figures and data.
For the last 4,000 years the commonest human occupation has been small-scale agriculture. Although it has been a few generations since that was the case in the United States, the image of the small family farm is still a powerful icon of our cultural identity.
Robert Wuthnow’s new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is the best book I’ve read on the rural-urban divide in the United States in years. It may, in fact, be the best book I’ve ever read on the topic, and I’ve read a lot of them.
The warming the world has already experienced could be enough to melt more than a third of the world’s glaciers outside Antarctica and Greenland – regardless of current efforts to reduce emissions. That is the stark conclusion of a new study, which analyses the lag between global temperature rise and the retreat of glaciers.
The world is becoming increasingly urban and cities face a constant struggle with the complex environmental, social, economic, and political challenges of the 21st century. Many international organizations have argued that cities will need to become more resilient to these challenges. However, it is not particularly clear what that really means.
Basic income would not eliminate the tired old choice between capitalism and socialism, right and left, but as O’Brien puts it, it would create a more ‘humane framework’ in which to make our political decisions. All in all it’s an exciting idea, and this book is well worth reading if you’re even mildly curious to learn more about its potential.
We need an ambition that relates to people’s daily experiences, not the growth of abstract numbers. This is the vision of a ‘wellbeing economy’: an economy that promotes wellbeing for people and planet. It’s an economy that meets the needs of all within planetary boundaries. It is fair, sufficient and ecologically sustainable.
So in response to the Koch brothers’ attempt to sway their flocks, Wilson and others affiliated with black churches in Virginia have channeled their outrage into a new calling: climate advocacy. For Wilson, environmentalism has become a biblical mission.
I have always believed that wherever climate and conditions favor it, local food production on small farms, in backyards, community gardens, and empty urban lots will become an increasingly important source of fresh food. And if one uses season extension or poly covered tunnels and drip irrigation we can expand the growing area to much wider climate conditions.
So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But let’s honor the Irish with our curiosity. Let’s make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish — and that are starving and uprooting people today.
