Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
So what might the commons actually achieve for you if you live in a city? How might you experience the joys of commoning? Check out Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons, a fantastic new book that describes more than 100 case studies and model policies for urban commoning. Researched and published by Shareable, the book is an impressive survey of citizen-led innovations now underway in more than 80 cities in 35 countries.
Today a Nebraska commission handed TransCanada the final permit it needed to build its long-contested Keystone XL pipeline, a decision which did not consider the company’s previous safety violations. The decision to approve the international pipeline comes despite a major oil spill just a few days earlier from the company’s Keystone l line in South Dakota.
Julie Kunen, PhD, oversees conservation activities in 15 countries, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, as the Vice President of the Americas program for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). With a decades-long career in conservation, academia, and development, she is committed to uniting the worlds of food, sustainability, and conservation.
On the last day of the United Nations climate summit in Bonn, Germany, we get a wrap-up on negotiations. This year is the first COP since President Trump vowed to pull the United States out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal, a process which takes four years.
While capitalism and consumerism dominate the culture of the United States of America and the Western world, community currencies are creating a buzz elsewhere. The radical need for alternative economies and community currencies is becoming more commonplace among societies across the globalized world dealing with the crisis of mass poverty and inequality. In part one of our three part series shining a light on some of these alternatives, we look at the Athens Integral Cooperative.
A leak along the existing leg of TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline has spilled at least 200,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota as of Friday, prompting the company to shut down much of the system. It is officially the largest spill in the pipeline’s history, surpassing a leak last year that sent 16,800 gallons of oil spilling onto South Dakota grasslands.
Bill Parke of Blackview Farm, a pasture-based livestock farm that uses rotational grazing and Holistic Management practices, was nice enough to sit down with me and talk for a bit about the farming life.
COP23, the second “conference of the parties” since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2015, promised to be a somewhat technical affair as countries continued to negotiate the finer details of how the agreement will work from 2020 onwards.
The annual holiday celebrations have arrived and it seems a good time to think about what we are really celebrating. It seems the historic and religious significance of these holidays have been overshadowed by consumerism. Thanksgiving and Christmas have become celebrations of consumption filled with opportunities to eat, drink, and make merry with food and gifts.
Shoshi Parks wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Shoshi is a freelance travel and environment writer and Ph.D. in anthropology. She’s based in San Francisco, where she can be found snuggling dogs and advocating for water security and food justice.
The global energy system is in a state of flux. Renewables are experiencing rapid deployment and steep pricefalls. A growing portion of global energy is provided by electricity. There’s a slow, but apparently inexorable move away from coal in China. And there’s a surge in natural gas and oil production in the US.
In a world that’s been increasingly paved over and privatized, it can be hard to find open places and spaces to gather. As Lucy Gomez-Feliciano of Logan Square Neighborhood Association says, many grassroots collectives have to operate as a “road show” – occupying whatever living room, church basement, library or community center they can find– or heading outside to organize.
