Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This is what that voice whispered to me, as once it whispered to Rilke: you must change your life. I came here because I can’t justify my complicity any more. I feel a personal duty to live as simply and with as little impact on the rest of nature as I possibly can.
The issue here is about science and uncertainty. So first, What is ‘science’? It is a process for how we find, measure and then evaluate the real world in order to identify how it works. The problem is, particularly for contentious debates in the media and politics, that we seldom hear about the degree of confidence attached to scientific findings, or the uncertainties that surround them.
This is where for me the ELC ticks a lot of boxes. By raising money from investors, it’s able to lease or sell leasehold smallholdings at more affordable prices, thus obviating the aforementioned need for the would-be farmer otherwise to choose the circumstances of their birth, enter a loveless marriage of convenience, or toil miserably to turn an income when they should be turning a furrow.
Shaun Hill is the founder and CEO of Hill Farmstead in Vermont, who are, for me, one of the most imaginative breweries in the world. Based on the farm that has been home to his family for over 230 years, Hill Farmstead’s mission statement is “to hand craft succinct, elegant beers of distinction and to revive and diversify the farmscape of the Hill Farmstead in Greensboro”.
Is energy a mere commodity, or is it a common good? Why is this relevant in the first place? Here we look at why energy is part of our commons, from the sources to the product itself.
Istanbul, like many other cities, is under heavy pressure from urban development projects. In the face of this threat, the DÜRTÜK collective supports small scale farmers in and around Istanbul by organising reliable demand for the produce from urban gardens, and by building a supportive community around them.
“How can we reconcile our desire to save the planet from the worst effects of climate change with our dependence on the systems that cause it? How can we demand that industry and governments reduce their pollution, when ultimately we are the ones buying the polluting products and contributing to the emissions that harm our shared biosphere?”
Design schools all over the world are failing their students by ignoring the most important challenges they will face as they live through a time of unprecedented disruption and ecological collapse. Let me state plainly — we need a Design School for Planetary Collapse.
Administrative incompetence and an unwillingness to operate within established practices may not be impeachable offenses. I can guarantee it is likely to turn out to be political suicide. For climate defenders and supporters of a more moderate national agenda, that may not be such a bad outcome.
Most useful to good food campaigners, McDonald’s book positions food security within the context of “human security” — a new way of framing the issues that boosts the chances of food getting the green light as a priority.
There are plenty of troubling things about the Anthropocene. But to my mind, one of its most troubling dimensions is the sheer number of people it fails to trouble.
The ideas of the economists are important because they frame the way we understand the world, sometimes distracting us from understanding and living in the world in other ways. The economists claim that they describe the world as it is, rather than describing it as it should be, but there is an entire value system implicit in economics.
