Act: Inspiration

“Peasant Farming Can Cool Down the Earth”

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As Chavannes Jean-Baptiste points out in the interview that follows, climate justice and the proliferation of false solutions to the climate crisis, such as “Climate Smart agriculture,” carbon markets, and REDD, are a primary concern for La Via Campesina. La Via promotes food sovereignty, Chavannes says, not only to resolve the food crisis, but also the climate crisis.

If you want more local food, stop criminalizing family farmers

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This government crackdown on family farmers is absurd given the current sordid state of our food/farm system and the urgent need to relocalize agriculture for the sake of our health, as well as that of the planet. Study after study has shown that the most dangerous food is usually that which has endured the most processing and traveled the furthest.

Occupy sustainability: the 1% is blocking the transition to a renewable energy economy

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A sustainable world that works for the 99% is possible, if we can respond to climate change, economic injustice and resource depletion at the same time. The transition to a renewable energy economy can be a valuable frame for that discussion. Just as the financial elites brought about the economic crisis, they are blocking the renewable energy transition to reap more profit from their fossil fuel investments. Because of fuel depletion as well as climate change, further delay may prevent a successful transition. Social justice and sustainability advocates can blow the whistle on the 1% for this issue too, and collaborate to speed up the transition locally.

Winter in Maine

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MARCH 21, 2008. The calender says spring is here, twelve hours of sunlight, seed catalogues, almost empty woodshed. Outside, Mother Nature will have none of it…

FAST FORWARD TO DECEMBER 22, 2011. We’ve just had our warmest November on record. The woods and fields are brown and unfrozen….

Twitter will set you free to Occupy

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Mason’s new book, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: the New Global Revolutions, surveys activist actions and encampments from Tahrir to Syntagma Square in Athens to Zuccotti Park and finds that each one was driven by a group of overeducated and underemployed young people jacked into technology like no revolutionaries since The Matrix.

As Fukushima cleanup begins, long-term impacts are weighed

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The Japanese government is launching a large-scale cleanup of the fields, forests, and villages contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. But some experts caution that an overly aggressive remediation program could create a host of other environmental problems.

A Home for Occupy

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The Occupy movement represents not only a stand against the tyranny of finance capitalism, but also a revival of the role of the commons for a vital civic life. People are once again coming together face-to-face and shoulder-to-shoulder to confront their common challenges and craft new ways to meet them. They are exploring what kind of life they can share with which to create a free, just, sustainable society.

A reading list for Mr. Monti

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I’ve spent the last couple of weeks immersed in a pile of texts on what actuaries, physicists, and mathematicians have to say about the relationship between the economy and energy. [My homework is a talk I’m giving in Philly at the end of the month at a seminar about architecture and energy.] I haven’t finished the talk yet but I thought, as an exercise, that I’d share with you (and Mr Monti) the ten best writers of my reading list.

Restoring Fortuna to the lexicon of the rich

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Fortuna was the Roman goddess of chance and thus entreaties to her were an attempt to insure good luck in any venture….Acknowledging Fortuna means acknowledging that luck is partly responsible for my station in life. It means I’m obliged to help my fellow citizens who’ve been hurt by nothing other than misfortune. And, it means that I’ll be entitled to help if misfortune lays me so low that I cannot get back up without some assistance.