Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Regenerative agriculture and land use encompass the traditional and indigenous best practices of organic farming, animal husbandry and environmental conservation. Regeneration puts a central focus on improving soil health and fertility (recarbonizing the soil), increasing biodiversity, and qualitatively enhancing forest health, animal welfare, food nutrition and rural (especially small farmer) prosperity.
Industry and government claims that Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will boost prices for heavy Canadian crude have no basis in reality, says one of the nation’s top energy analysts. In a brief yet damning report David Hughes, a former federal government energy researcher, concluded that tripling the pipeline’s capacity won’t deliver an extra $73 billion in revenue over two decades as claimed by Kinder Morgan.
It is clear that the power to lobby continues to expand and to infiltrate all levels of government. Funds devoted to lobbying by fossil fuel companies are increasing rapidly at the provincial level. On many levels, democracy is weakening and inequality is rising, while environmental disaster looms. What kinds of changes could help to restore an effective social passion for the common good?
Here’s a talk that Rob Hopkins gave in May 2017 at the Triodos Bank AGM in Bristol, UK, on Transition and his hopes for the future.
The problem with the Eurozone is that it is a monetary union that does not have the necessary requisites of a fiscal union and political union that would set up the rules and mechanisms to allow the central authorities to move capital from surplus to deficit regions.
It would be difficult to get through life without the capacity to consider various options and to decide what to do. The lack of any decision criteria has caused many a donkey caught between two bales of hay to starve to death.
Transportation accounts for nearly a third of the country’s carbon emissions, of which 84 percent is attributed to cars and commercial trucks, the EPA reports. So, as Moyer sees it, it’s obvious that climate change and infrastructure should be tackled in tandem.
The Commons is maturing politically, its methods and principles becoming more visible and its participants winning municipal elections in a variety of European cities. How did this happen, and what happens next? First, a look at our present political context, and then some observations on the birth and trajectory of this new wave of commons politics.
The jury is still out on my 2017 gardening season, but I can definitely attest to the fact that vegetables will grow in round hay bales. This looks like my best gardening year ever, using raised “lasagna” or “keyhole garden” beds, cardboard/mulch/hay for potatoes, and the 4 X 6 round hay bales.
Over the last few months I have been working with my co-director of the Simplicity Institute, Simon Ussher, collecting together provocative and inspiring quotes and excerpts from our favourite thinkers and writers, related to the themes of simple living, frugal abundance, money and wealth, crisis, mindfulness, nature mysticism and sacred activism.
With his novel Retrotopia, John Michael Greer seeks to challenge the perceptions most people have of technology. His aim is partly to spur awareness about what “technology” actually is, since we’re so used to seeing it equated with electronic gizmos that we tend to have a limited sense of it.
A lot has been written these last several days about the meaning, motivation and consequence of Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord; much more will be. The decision is unfortunate at many levels–not, however, at all levels.
