Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I mourn because the solution is right in front of us, yet we run from it. We fail to recognize our salvation for what it is, believing it to be dystopia instead of utopia. Are we waiting for the last human on the planet to start the crusade?
Upon the first global recession influenced by the peaking of oil extraction and record high prices, the question for “peak oilers” arises: does peak oil and energy decline mean great profits for modernizing industry, or is peak oil the beginning of huge changes in lifestyle toward sustainability after societal collapse? Those were the two main concerns at play at the fifth annual meeting of the U.S. chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO-USA), in Denver, Oct. 11-13.
-SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling (and some other stuff)?
-Edward Burtynsky’s Oil
-Is Michelle Obama about to take on Big Food?
-Carolyn Steel on How Food Shapes Our Cities
If you have some land, even an acre, you have the means for making at least part of your income and in the process gain a more secure life. Surely that is what it means to “have a job.” Our society hasn’t endorsed that notion yet, but I think that we are evolving toward that kind of economy.
-Pulling CO2 from the Air: Promising Idea, Big Price Tag
-U.S. headed for massive decline in carbon emissions
-Catch Me If You Can: Does the IEA’s Carbon Capture Plan Make Any Sense?
-Giants in Cattle Industry Agree to Help Fight Deforestation
-Organizing The Biggest Day Of Action The World Has Ever Seen
-Tulare couple grows a garden by the foot
-Rooftop farming
-Richard Wiswall on the business of organic farming
-On World Food Day: Crunching the Numbers
-Aquacalypse Now
-Culinary Ecotourists Turn Wilderness Foraging into Dinner
-A Timely Reminder of the Real Limits to Growth
-Liberal Education, Stewardship, and the Cosmopolitan Temptation
-Decline of a tribe: and then there were five
-Last Call at Descartes’ Bar and Grill
-The Vindication of a Public Scholar
-Permaculture Principles: Nature’s Design for our Living World
-Dan Douglas’ European vision for our capital city
-Investigating The Potential For The Expansion Of Urban Agriculture In The City Of Edinburgh
In October 2009, Deconstructing Dinner descended upon the Halifax Farmers’ Market. Founded in 1750, it is the oldest continuously running farmers’ market in North America. The first market vendors were Acadian – the original European immigrants to the land.
-Scrumping for apples
-Grass-fed beef: One steer’s organic journey from ranch to dinner
-In Search of Wildlife-friendly Biofuels: Are Native Prairie Plants the Answer?
-6 Facts About Native Bees
-Cuba Pins Hopes On New Farms Run for Profit
-The Other Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis in Global Land Use
Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.
When I started participating in peak oil and climate change discussions in 2003, let’s just say that the whole thing was much more of a boy’s club than it is now (and in some measure it still is). And one of the laments I most often heard was “we men would be glad to change our lives, but our wives won’t let us – they still want all the trappings of affluence.” Or “No woman will date a man who just wants to farm and grow food.” Whenever I heard these claims, I would laugh and think about how much some women I knew were struggling to get their husbands to give up their creature comforts.
