Act: Inspiration

What enables people to survive great hardship?

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I was recently re-reading Mary Pipher’s excellent book from a decade ago The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community. The book is in large part stories of refugees and a guide to helping them navigate their new world – encouraging members of the community to act as “cultural brokers” and guides to the newest and most vulnerable Americans…As I was re-reading it, I also noted her list of the attributes for successful endurance and adaptation to a new culture – a list that seems both applicable to those (some of us) who might have to leave their native place and become refugees literally or metaphorically (whether we leave our country or our neighborhood, climate change is likely to drive many of us from our current homes.) It also applies to those of us who may find ourselves living in place – but in a world that is radically different and new to us, and at times frightening.

A return to Sovereign Money?

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published a working paper arguing for the removal of private bank’s privilege of creating the national money supply.  The so called ‘full’ or ‘100%’ –reserve reform has a long history – but, with the Icelandic parliament actively investigating the proposal and little sign of current reforms rebooting the economy, might its time have come?

Wet feet, cold baths and lukewarm soup – resilience in Lancaster?

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There’s something about resilience that makes me think of cold baths, wet feet and the distant prospect of lukewarm vegetable soup.  And the word, defined first in the dictionary as "the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation," only adds to the depression.

Slow train to Hebden Bridge

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This month is all about time. I have been running up against a major deadline with the new edition of the Transition Free Press and haven’t had a minute spare to write any posts. Ironic then that this week’s report should be an introduction to Playing for Time -a collaborative handbook about Transition and the Arts, authored by Lucy Neal. Last year we set off to Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire to visit the house where the main part of the book will be created.

Bring Transition Town-style Sharing to your Community

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Inspired by the idea of building resilience around local, grassroots economies in response to peak oil and climate change, the transition movement has evolved into a global network of cities, towns, and neighborhoods that self-organize around the principles not only of reducing CO2 emissions but doing it by fostering happy, healthy, and creative communities.

Starting down: seven deadly sins

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For those of us who live in countries where we use many fossil fuels, we have been shielded from the consequences of living badly. But that age is ending. Now that the Mayan Baktun 13 calendar has passed, we begin the era of the Gaian calendar. We “will eventually have to reduce either our populations or our living standards (emergy use) by 80 to 90 percent” (Odum & Odum, 2001, p. 170)

How markets grow: Learning from Manhattan’s lost food hub

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The sun has barely risen, but the horses and delivery wagons forming a steady stream from Dey to Canal Streets since nightfall have to share the road again. Rats scurry back into the maze of wooden sheds with their vegetable scraps as an early-to-rise New Yorker walks briskly down Washington Street, market bag in hand. He wants to be sure to get the day’s choicest fish, to be glimpsed jumping in their tanks. Not far behind him is a housewife, coming to the market for some young turkeys, chickens, and ducks. She places these in the basket her servant carries alongside her, next to the butter which has a separate tin cover. Soon the market is in full swing, with vendors prominently shouting out the fresh spinach and kale from New Jersey, bundles of rhubarb and asparagus from Long Island, and baskets of strawberries from the Carolinas.

Idle No More rises to defend ancestral lands—and the planet

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I don’t claim to know exactly what’s going on with #IdleNoMore, the surging movement of indigenous activists that started late last year in Canada and is now spreading across the continent—much of the action, from hunger strikes to road and rail blockades, is in scattered and remote places, and even as people around the world plan for solidarity actions on Friday, the press has done a poor job of bringing it into focus.

CO2 Concentration in “Panic and Repent” scenarios

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In Friday’s post, I argued that the likely pattern of human response to climate change would be characterized by very limited action until manifestly serious consequences were clear by looking out the window; then, and only then would serious action ensue. In other words, the pattern would be one of panic and repentance.