Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– Urban planting: Turning blight into bounty in the inner city (EB’s Olga Bonfiglio in “US Catholic” magazine)
– Chris Martenson interviews Rob Hopkins: “Making The Red Pill Taste Good”
– Hard-core environmentalist who practices the permaculture he preaches
– Portland as a “Resilient Community”
– Green Hands, green heart (EB contributor Clifford Dean Scholz)
Bill McKibben’s latest book is a well-chosen and arranged collection of climate-related writings by the likes of James Hansen, Al Gore and George Monbiot, which McKibben edits and introduces. Significantly, the book contains writings by Inhofe and his ilk as well, the better to understand “the lines of attack climate deniers have used over and over,” in McKibben’s words,
A Thought Experiment: Due to a combination of crises – maybe a volcano explosion, the penetration of Ug99 into the main of the world wheat crop, drought in many of the world’s grain growing regions, zombie invasion etc… (it doesn’t really matter), the Global North experiences a catastrophic failure of its staple crops. All of a sudden grain supplies drop like a stone, and there are virtually none to be had in the market. No bread, no rice, no soybeans or corn – none of those products are available in the markets.
Economic growth is a glittering prize that it takes a big step to stand apart from. To be the first person in any given situation to question it as an assumption is to risk being seen in the same way the Magic Band were at Heathrow Airport in 1968. While the reflections and discussion in the limited question time at the end of the evening showed that many people in the audience shared these concerns, sat on the panel I felt increasingly like Beefheart’s “pilgrim from the 25th century”. Yet it is vital that we continue not to just question this shared assumption, but that we propose imaginative yet entirely workable alternatives, ones that actually tick more of the desired boxes than what is currently being proposed does.
– NYT: Vegetable Gardens Are Booming in a Fallow Economy
– Frances Moore Lappé: The Food Movement: Its Power and Possibilities
– Peak Phosphate
– Eric Schlosser: It’s Not Just About Food
If backyard homesteaders are getting it wrong with their backyard meat production efforts, is the solution more outsourcing to the “experts?” Or is it community-based re-skilling to get it right more of the time as we work toward greater food security and sovereignty? A response to James McWilliams article “The Locavore Movement’s Mistake: Deregulating Animal Slaughter” posted on September 13, 2011 at The Atlantic Monthly.
All the ways being proposed to increase jobs right now are the same old methods that do not face the real cause of the dilemma. The awful truth is that we have created an economy that can’t afford people to do the work and so every year there are fewer meaningful jobs and more pretend jobs. Pretend jobs require pretend money. We are capitalizing costs on money interest not on human interest.
Wind power isn’t only about industrial scale turbines. Restoring wind powered mills, like Callington Mill in Oatlands, Tasmania, offers a way to increase tourism, local food and local economies while creating jobs and building resilience. A win-win-win!
Culture Kitchen is a San Francisco start-up on a unique mission to connect local experts at ethnic home cooking with food lovers who are interested in the people and the stories behind the food.
How can we adapt mentally, and socially to Peak Oil, climate change and an economic bust at the same time? 3 interviews with solutions: interviews: “Peak Oil Shrink” Kathy McMahon from Vermont on unexpected lessons from Hurricane Irene. Urban homesteader Jules Dervaes – food self-sufficiency on a city lot. Richard Heinberg on coping with the End of Growth – will fertilizer shortages mean “Peak Food”? What are Common Security Clubs and “Resilience Circles”?
-Produce Hoisted From Rooftop Vertical Farm to Kitchen
-Vegetable Gardens Are Booming in a Fallow Economy
-An Apple Tree Grows in Suburbia
-The Harvest: new film reveals scourge of child labour in US farming
-Monsanto Denies Superinsect Science
I see that in the comments to my post August Glut, Russ observed a “phenomenon” (how I love that word when I want to sound important) that we noticed too. Our first string beans just never did grow quite like usual and although the foliage looked as healthy as normal, much fewer beans set on. Had to be the weather, as Russ says, very wet and coolish early on, but since the vines were quite robust and there seemed to be only a few leaf hoppers and other infernal creatures of the bean jungle, we were mystified and Carol almost frantic.
