Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– Alice Waters: Slow food nation
– One thing to do about food: A forum
(Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Wendell
Berry, Winona LaDuke, Dr. Vandana Shiva…)
– Stewards of wine land (sustainable vinyards)
– California seeks to clear hemp of a bad name
– Black farms, black markets
– Local food in small towns (interviews)
– In praise of zealous nuts
– Permaculture – permanent agriculture
– NPR: eating local, thinking global
– My low-carbon diet
– “Sustainable well-being” – theme of
2007 AAAS conference
For readers interested in what can be done on a local level, please consider taking the following suggestions and recommendations to your local government leaders. (Report and recommendations from a member of the Portland Peak Oil Task Force.)
– Lappé: a right to food?
– Biofuels may strain U.N. goal to end hunger
– I was a student dumpster-diver
– The shocking truth about bread
A friend once suggested to me that the three worst things we could be doing for the environment are, in order of destructiveness, 1) drive cars, 2) eat meat, and 3) eat vegetables. I’d consider listing the car third.
When we finally take the off ramp (from oil-fueled agriculture) / Organic farmers up against the Wal-Mart / Will the world starve in the 21st century? / Namibia: fuel hike starts to bite farmers
As the age of oil ends, a society that clings to the social and economic institutions and practices of the early twenty-first century will go the way of North Korea. The lesson to be learned from these two Communist states is change or die. [Former Washington Post columnist von Hoffman jumps on the peak oil bandwagon.]
ared Diamond calls it “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” Bill Mollison says that it can “destroy whole landscapes.” Are they describing nuclear energy? Suburbia? Coal mining? No. They are talking about agriculture.
We are … biotechnologists, as well as chemical engineers and have successful processes going today… Our carefully considered view, for which we will be happy to provide abundant evidence is that severe barriers remain to ethanol from lignocellulose. The barriers look as daunting as they did 30 years ago.
(The latest salvo in the Khosla-TOD debate about biofuels.)
Overweight ‘top world’s hungry’ / Living ourselves to death / Eat, memory: family heirloom (Masumoto in NYT) / Meat eaters without the guilt / Texas 2006 ag losses worst single-year total ever / Rice prices may double by 2008
Amazonian Dark Earth, or terra preta do indio, has mystified science for the last hundred years. Three times richer in nitrogen and phosphorous, and twenty times the carbon of normal soils, terra preta is the legacy of ancient Amazonians who predate Western civilization…Claims for biochar’s capacity to capture carbon sound almost audacious.
In the coming years we may be faced with [hoarding] in many markets. The most devastating and far-reaching effects could come in the energy markets. Will the just-in-time religion which swept the world in the 1990s survive such a dynamic?
