Featured

The Black Isle Permaculture and Art Centre – Direct Democracy, Tattie Bed and Social Justice

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By focusing solely on the ‘creating a better world’ part, and refusing, as a movement, to give a narrative of the systemic, structural reasons that led to this situation of near-collapse, I think the permaculture movement is undermining its potential. What I am criticising is the representation, by the permaculture movement and mainstream media, of individual attitudes as the solution.

Unlocking the Next Economy

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Unlocking the Next Economy is about creating access to the physical assets of historical organisations to support local economic change. Stir To Action’s year-long pilot will explore how these physical assets can be an important part of Community Economic Development (CED), and how un- and underused churches could specifically be a part of this process.

This Beer Kills Pipelines

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For Marie-Eve, there is something very powerful about a lateral approach like this beer project. “It’s not a project that talks about climate change”, she told me. “It’s about water. And fun. It’s about having a beer for a cause, and it reaches into wider networks. One old man I met (and he was not sensitive to environmental issues) said “they can’t touch my beer!”, which for me was a great sign that we were doing it right”.

Climate Change, Hope, and Revolution: Notes for Dark and Gloomy Times

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When – as with climate change – we are dealing with something scary, unprecedented, wicked, and huge – something which causes a lot of anxiety, depression, and despair [a word whose etymology, in French and in Spanish, seems to derive from the lack of hope) – hope seems integral to our future.

The History and Future of the Solidarity Economy

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In this episode, we spoke with Cheyenna Weber, co-founder of SolidarityNYC and a lead organizer of the Cooperative Economics Alliance of NYC, or CEANYC. We talked with Weber about her work with SolidarityNYC and CEANYC and how these organizations support a growing solidarity economy in New York City and beyond.

Food Can Make Michigan Great Again

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In my book looking back at the time I managed the Toronto Food Policy Council, I identified gratitude as the major virtue of a food leader, and love for your little corner of the world, and a desire to make it better, as the ideal motivation for food activism.

What’s Luck Got to Do with It?

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The eight richest billionaires now command as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population. Analyzing the roots of such disparity has become a focus of economists; doing something about it, a focus of social justice activists. In his new book Success and Luck, behavioral economist Robert Frank asks, on the more granular level, why do some succeed in life while others do not?

Rollerblading the Halls of Power

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The task of Project Drawdown was not to create new data but to look at the hundred most promising solutions to climate change and rank them, based on cost, readiness, impact and scalability. The results were just published April 18 by Penguin as Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. It is already the number one bestseller and at this writing is sold out on Amazon.

Meeting Paris Pledges would Prevent at least 1C of Global Warming

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Analysis by Carbon Brief finds that if the US reneges on its Paris pledge and takes no action to reduce emissions, it could result in around 0.2C to 0.3C additional warming, whereas a delay in implementation of four or eight years would have minimal impact. Carbon Brief explains how these temperature estimates are made and explores the impacts of Paris, with and without US participation.

Trump Says “Go!”: Part 3

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Live long enough in Capital City and you can’t help but gain a feel for what Alice must have felt as she tumbled down the rabbit hole. Had Lewis Carroll been born a century and a half later and needed a city to use as the inspiration for his Wonderland Washington, in the Trump era, might just have filled the bill.