A Farmer’s Alphabet
This is the complete farmer’s alphabet published over 2013 and reposted in 2018 today as a piece complete in itself for your enjoyment.
Featured
Oyez, Oyez, the Environmental Courts are Now in Session (Part 1)
The days of constructive political debate and compromise in the legislative and executive branches of government are gone, leaving the courts as the primary venues in which the causes and consequences of global climate change are being debated, and stable solutions sought.
Pilgrimage Open to All: Bring your own Beliefs
There are other clear commonalities between pilgrimage and farming, grounded in the idea that the land itself is holy and that our interaction with, and care of the land, is of great significance. Farmers understand the value of the natural capital found within the fields – its soil, sources of water and other resources are crucial to the health of the land and the endeavour of farming.
Fossil Fuels are the Problem, Say Fossil Fuel Companies Being Sued
This appears to be the core of the oil companies’ strategy. First, believe everything the IPCC says. Second, the IPCC says the real problem is prosperity, economic growth! Therefore, blame the ones burning the oil — all we did was dig the stuff up.
Culture Shift: Redirecting Humanity’s Path to a Flourishing Future
What do all these ideas have in common—a tax on carbon, big investments in renewable energy, a livable minimum wage, and freely accessible healthcare? The answer is that we need all of them, but even taken together they’re utterly insufficient to redirect humanity away from impending catastrophe and toward a truly flourishing future.
The Big Story: Can We Change Civilization by Changing Its Origin Story?
The “oil curse” refers to a long-studied phenomenon in which states that adopt petroleum as a significant foundation of their economy tend toward dictatorship. Of the top ten oil producing countries in the world, nine are oligarchies.
Our Economy is a Degenerative System
Our ecological footprint exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate. A number of useful indicators and frameworks have been developed to measure the ecological impact that humanity and its dominant economic system with its patterns of production, consumption and waste-disposal are having on the planet and its ecosystems.
Time to Eliminate Your Wall Street Tax?
So why do school districts, municipalities, counties and states (we’ll just refer to them as “communities” from this point on) use these big Wall Street financiers to fund their projects? It is because the costs of these projects usually exceed the ability of small local community banks to finance them.
How Cooperation Richmond is Empowering Marginalized Communities to Build an Equitable Economy
But in the shadow of the looming refinery, and within the spaces between boarded up storefronts and abandoned lots, something is stirring in Richmond. Residents, organizers, and activists have come together to create an incubation hub for community revitalization and resilience.
Love And Loss In The Anthropocene
Our insistence upon having everything has ironically set us upon a journey toward an era of great loss. Some of what we will have to relinquish is painfully clear already, as we see cities and small nations burn and/or wash away, as we find ourselves increasingly donning masks so as not to die of the very air we must breathe, as we find cesium 137 in our fish, RoundUp in our grains, microplastics in our waters. These are the obvious costs.
Agricultural Innovation with John-Paul Maxfield
Soil is incredibly complex. Just as with the human microbiome project, there is so much we have yet to discover. If we want to fix climate change, the answer is literally right beneath our feet. Da Vinci had it right when he said we understand the movements of the heavens better than we understand what is happening underfoot. We understand the soil at an intuitive level but not at a practical level.
How to Build a Progressive Movement in a Polarized Country
Progressives need to breathe deeply and make our peace with the reality. Division expresses an economic arrangement, and it’s not something we can fix through urging more civil discourse. Even though we’ll want to use our conflict resolution skills in order to cope, we can also expect more drama at the extreme ends of our polarizations, and more ugliness and violence.
