Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
These cooking devices rely only on power from the sun and are built entirely with materials indigenous to Bolivia. It is the kind of solution that embodies many of the elements necessary to really get to work solving climate change—local, small-scale, incorporating indigenous knowledge and materials, and with simple, easy-to-use technology.
Chip Haynes, longtime online peak oil writer, has taken the unusual step of creating a beginner’s guide, broken down into 101 chapters of between 400 and 500 words. With at least one cheesy gag in each chapter.
“There are enough people talking about growing food, but not enough growers.” Suddenly, my mostly sedentary Brooklyn life was filled with kale planting, chicken feeding, delivering produce to restaurants via bicycle, and picking up buckets of coffee grounds from local cafes for composting.
Here, there and everywhere, I plant little edible gardens. You might find one in a pot at the front door, trailing into a walk way, acting as ground cover, or exploding out of a patch of former lawn. I seem to have a driving, primal voice pushing me on to replace ornamentals with beautiful and yet nourishing stand ins.
We have even made excrement disappear in real life. Flush it and forget it.
Darrin Nordahl, the author of Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture, has chronicled the growing movement to put edible plants in public spaces–like Vermont’s vegetable garden on its State House lawn. Also, Ray Shadis, a consultant to the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, will respond to the question: “Can the state of Vermont regulate Vermont Yankee without falling foul of federal preemption law?”
I live because we live—in reciprocity. Me, you, the farmers, the politicians, the merchants, the animals, the vegetables, the minerals, the trees and oceans, the Earth. These are my pals. These are my suppliers.
John and I take a trip out to visit Woody and Zoe at nearby Cuckoo Farm to see their gorgeous straw bale house, which has been plastered to meet health and safety regulations, and which now looks like an ancient thatched cottage. Over cups of tea I hear about anaerobic digesters and how simple a system they are.
– Roving Herds of Grazing Climate Helpers
– The backlash begins against the world landgrab
– Ezra Klein on Industrial Ag: Asking the Wrong Questions
– Greenhorns: the network that’s breathing new life into US farming
– How Peru’s wells are being sucked dry by British love of asparagus
– Forget Oil, Worry About Phosphorus
To some people, planting a tree is the epitome of the environmental cliche. Planting a tree seems so simple, so easy, so… low-technology.
Chickens are the happening thing in the city — as evidenced by the fact that the our chicken coop tour was highlighted by the Los Angeles Times (none of our Transition events have ever made it past the editors of this giant paper before). There aren’t too many people who have chickens here, but there is LOTS of interest.
We are in a food revolution. The next generation sees the world differently. The older people alive today wanted to control the world. The new generation wants to work with it.
