The World at 1°C ― January ‘17
2016 was a dark year for anyone paying attention to the gathering storm of climate change and social breakdown, and the change of calendar year does not mean a change of direction.
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The CSIRO’s Case for ‘Green Growth’ is Flawed
In late 2015 the CSIRO released its Australian National Outlook (ANO) Report (‘the Report’) which outlined 20 future scenarios for Australia, exploring various global and national sustainability challenges…our new paper argues that even the Report’s most ambitious “green growth” scenario is incompatible with long-term sustainability and global justice.
An Economy of Meaning, or Bust
It’s not often that a scientist gets to use the words love, creativity, and wisdom in a paper, especially when writing about economics. Perhaps that’s because economics, the dismal science, is obsessed with dismal systems — make that abysmal systems, relative to need.
Clean energy: The Challenge of Achieving a ‘Just Transition’ for Workers
But while measures to curb emissions and reduce the impacts of rising temperatures will be good for the many, the few who work in industries affected by climate policies risk losing their livelihoods as the economy leans increasingly upon renewable energy.
The First 100 Days – Alternatives to Kakistocracy -Government by the Worst
If the first 17 days of the new administration foreshadow the next four years in the context of anticipated climate change, we will need to tap deeply into our own inner resilience, and most especially, we’ll need each other.
On Jessica Ernst, and the Vagaries of Justice in Canada
The recent Supreme Court ruling on Jessica Ernst in her case against the Alberta Energy Regulator demonstrates once again that Canada’s myopic legal system can easily lose sight of justice.
Addendum and Credo
I take the point Joe Clarkson made – at root, this blog is supposed to be about farming. The trouble is, the shape of farming is driven by politics (we’ll know that agrarian populism has succeeded when and if it’s the other way around…) so inevitably writing about farming involves writing about politics.
Richard Heinberg on ‘America First’
From a Transition perspective, a shortening of trade distances has to be a good thing, right? Bringing manufacturing back closer to where people live, thereby reducing carbon emissions, enabling more money to cycle within the national economy rather than globally? So far, so Transition… And yet.
Defund DAPL Spreads Across Indian Country as Tribes Divest
Like the call and response in Lakota ceremonial prayer songs, tribes are answering the Standing Rock’s Sioux plea for all of Indian Country to move its money out of banks that have invested in the Dakota Access pipeline and help further destabilize the pipeline’s already shaky financing.
Surviving the Future: Review
Few books on economics and politics would foreground arguments for “a strong culture,” claim that “laughter creates insight and solidarity,” and advise that you should always “start with a party.”
All Change or No Change? Culture, Power and Activism in an Unquiet World, Part 2
It’s important to say at the outset that this is not about one story being in any simple way better than the other, let alone one being right and the other wrong. The point is that, by being able to contrast the two, we get a fuller understanding of the present moment than either could offer on its own.
Further Up and Further In
Speaking for myself (not Cindy), my urge and motivation for moving to the farm 17 years back, and the desire to document it, had more to do with wishing to relearn what it was like to be a resident. Or, as Wes Jackson would phrase it, to be native to this place.
