Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The word Decidim translated from Catalan means we decide, and it’s the name of Barcelona’s digital infrastructure for participatory democracy. One part functional database and one part political statement, organizers say Decidim is key to a broad digital transformation that is taking place in Barcelona — its institutions, markets, and economy.
Peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous people and rural workers gathered together once again in Geneva from 15 – 19 May, 2017, to claim their rights and to have them recognised in the human rights law framework through a United Nations declaration. The right to land, to seeds, to food sovereignty, to markets, to fair working conditions and to public policy participation were all at stake as the fourth session of the UN Open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEIWG) addressed the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas.
Because we have burned so much oil and gas and coal, we have put huge clouds of CO2 and methane in the air; because the structure of those molecules traps heat the planet has warmed; because the planet has warmed we can get heavier rainfalls, stronger winds, drier forests and fields. It’s not mysterious, not in any way. It’s not a run of bad luck. It’s not Donald Trump (though he’s obviously not helping). It’s not hellfire sent to punish us. It’s physics.
To discuss the ramifications from these storms on the oil markets, geoscientist and oil explorer Jeffrey Brown returns to the podcast. He calculates that Harvey alone will have long-lasting effects such as lingering supply shortages, but his greater focus is attuned to the growing validation of his Export Land Model, which calculates the rate at which oil-producing nations cease to become net exporters as their domestic consumption increases.
For decades, proving the link between human greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on extreme weather events was thought to be near impossible. Now, scientific advancements in extreme weather event attribution are turning this assumption on its head. At the same time, courts around the world are increasingly being asked to consider questions of liability arising from a relationship between the loss and damage caused by an extreme weather event and climate change.
No major civilization has EVER practiced carrying capacity as a basis for political and economic self-governance; carrying capacity has only succeeded in small communities. Of course, we know this from the modern Ostrom view of the commons; but Ostrom never put her finger on the pulse of carrying capacity as the *self-organizing principle between a species and its environment*.
But how did we get from the Palaeolithic foraging of my last post to the very apogee of mixed agrarianism shown in the picture? I’m glad you asked. To answer it, I need to go to way back when and return to my main historical thread by looking at some of the tensions within…
It’s wonderful to have all the information and the long advance warning of tropical storms. We’ve had plenty of time to prepare. And lots of practice. We’ve had lots of time, too, to prepare for the coming tempest of resource deplection and global warming. A few individuals and communities have done some preparation, which they won’t regret. But our government and financial leaders are throwing a hurricane party.
Asking if renewable energy can replace fossil energy implies that the only possible civilization is our civilization as it is nowadays, including SUVs parked on every driveway and vacation trips to Hawaii by plane for everyone. But keeping these incredibly expensive wastes of energy will obviously be impossible in the future, even imagining that we were able to stay with fossil fuels for another century or even more.
Unless you are an environmental geographer or a regular reader of The World at 1°C, chances are you apply the term “natural disaster” to events such as Hurricane Harvey, the landslides in Sierra Leone which claimed 1000 lives, or any of the other countless climatic shocks felt over the last month. The fact is that nothing could be more unnatural…
All over the globe — from Ghent, Belgium to Gothenburg, Sweden — people have been launching amazing sharing projects. These include bike kitchens, coworking spaces, community gardens, and so much more. On this side of the pond, we recently profiled the range of sharing initiatives in Ithaca, New York. Now, another city in the U.S. that’s transforming into a great Sharing City is Denver.
Abandoned offshore oil and gas wells in the North Sea may be a source of significant methane emissions finds a new study, which claims to be the first to measure the amount of methane leaking from offshore wells. According to the study published recently in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, about one third of the region’s wells could be releasing between 3 and 17 thousand tonnes of methane into the North Sea each year. “
