Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The “vehicular cycling” approach promoted by John Forester can be a great help to all of us who have to ride on busy streets dominated by cars. Yet I think there are good reasons why this approach has always had limited appeal. In this second installment of a two-part essay I compare the vehicular cycling approach to what is arguably a much stronger social force – the Slow Bicycling movement.
This column, like others in the Canaries in the Coal Mine series, is intended to raise early warnings of dangers that might be lurking beyond the immediate attention of clean energy advocates and climate defenders. Today’s cautionary tale is about the 2018 midterm elections and what they could mean for federal clean energy and climate policies and programs.
According to most observers, the speculative bubble-of-the-year award for 2017—had there been one—would have gone to Bitcoin, the value of which soared from under $800 in January of last year to almost $20,000 by mid-December.
Riyadh-based Al Rajhi Capital dug into the financials of a long list of U.S. shale companies, and found that “despite rising prices most firms under our study are still in losses with no signs of improvement.”
The Forestry Commission estimates that 47% of England’s woodlands are unmanaged. If you like to think of woods as wild places and flinch at the idea of a tree being felled, then you might consider this a good thing. But woodlands, at least in this country, need management.
It is no accident that as a civilisation the sophistication of our adversarial capacities far exceeds the sophistication of our cooperative capacities. Our historical path and current situation have made it this way, but the balance is changing. There are two main generative processes underlying biological and cultural evolution and more broadly the evolution of any population of interacting adaptive agents.
The urban agriculture programme in Antanarivo aims at tackling food insecurity through the creation micro gardens in low income neighbourhoods.
Generally, populism and its personification in figures such as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage has been presented in mainstream circles as a dangerous political turn, a threat to the established order of things, and not without good reason. But for those who’d like to replace the present global neoliberal economy with a more local, more equitable and more land-based or agrarian society there are overlaps with populism that raise a few questions…
Maybe faith in God and faith in my elders are two sides of the same coin. Both ways of deflecting responsibility and deferring to others. And maybe the loss of faith in both God and the wisdom of age are part of the newly minted “quarter-life crisis” — growing up, finding yourself, and claiming your role in the world.
Headquartered at the Werkshack in uptown, Oakland, GDS Cloth Goods is the design and production studio by Geana Sieburger. A vibrant environment filled with makers of all types, it allows Geana to do her often solitary work in the company of a creative community and independent makers who share her principals and motivations.
The climate data for 2017 is now in. In this article, Carbon Brief explains why last year proved to be so remarkable across the oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature of the planet.
Because energy fuels both human development and environmental damage, policies that encourage energy demand reduction can run counter to policies for alleviating poverty, and the other way around. Achieving both objectives can only happen if energy use is spread more equally across societies.
