Act: Inspiration

Mali in the frontline of climate change

by

As the 17th Conference of the Parties wraps up in Durban, South Africa, the scientific consensus on climate change risks has never been clearer…yet, world leaders appear to be unable, or unwilling, to lay the groundwork for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While climate change “sceptics”, often close to powerful vested interests, distort the science and delay change in developed countries, fast-growing developing countries are also making any serious global agreement to reduce emissions difficult to achieve. An undesirable coalition of “big-emitters” appears to be gambling with the Earth’s climate….Meanwhile, for a growing number of countries, climate change is no longer a distant prospect.

Food and agriculture – December 9

by

-The New Agtivist: Edith Floyd is making a Detroit urban farm, empty lot by empty lot
-A citizen activist forces New Mexico’s dairies to clean up their act
-Citywatch: Food’s a trip, Actually a Baker’s Dozen of Trips
-Amish Farms to Hippie Co-Ops Fight FDA Inquiry
-Industrial-Sized Rooftop Farm Planned for Berlin
-Small farmers crave horse power

Everyone is a victim of inequality

by

A book from England called “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” helps explain what Occupy is about.

The book describes the effects of inequality that have been measured by years of research. The authors gathered all the research and came up with some surprises. What is particularly surprising is that it’s not just the poor who suffer from inequality — we’re all victims.

Declaration of the indigenous peoples of the world to COP17

by

We, the Indigenous Peoples of the world, united in the face of the climate crisis and the lack of political will of the States, especially the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, demand the immediate adoption of legally binding agreements with shared but differentiated responsibilities, to halt global warming and to define alternative models of development in harmony with Mother Earth.

Durban Dollars: Tck Tck Tck Money

by

For the rural Maya, the community being considered was not merely a single group of humans denoted by geography and culture, but rather the ecological community of all life forms, and generations still to come. What sane economic system would even consider forgetting these, a Mayan might ask. An economist might call what the Mayans are acquiring social, cultural, and ecological capital. To these people, and many others in the intentionally pre-industrial world, they are just good sense.

Biofuels and biomass – December 8

by

-Biomass is the next biofuel ‘land grab’ on tropical forests, warn campaigners
-Climate Committee: Biomass has “no role” in electricity production without CCS
-CLIMATE CHANGE: Biofuels Are Not the Solution
-Navy’s Big Biofuel Bet: 450,000 Gallons at 4 Times the Price of Oil
-Aviation could switch to low-carbon fuel ‘sooner than thought’

From the farm to the occupation

by

This land will live again. It will live in America’s countryside, in her mountains and rivers, as well as in her cities. To me, that’s what the Occupy movement is all about—finding ways for all living things to thrive. And for those of us in the grassfed farming community, that’s what we’re all about too, even if we don’t all agree with protests.

A course to keep you from crashing

by

Economists never told us the story of financial inequity. It took the Occupy movement to do that. And many economists still continue to tell us reassuring fairy tales about how economic growth must and will return.

So, who are you going to trust? Start with Chris Martenson, one of the lay financial analysts who did predict the banking collapse in fall 2008.

Who Are The 99%? Occupy Research aims to find out

by

Since the start of Occupy Wall Street, a recurring question in the media and among the Occupiers has been: precisely who among the 99% is taking to streets around the world to protest economic inequality? The simple answer–that it’s a wide array of citizens from different backgrounds who are disenfranchised from the political and economic systems that benefit a very small elite–isn’t particularly useful for a burgeoning social movement. Many journalists and academics have attempted to paint a more definitive picture of the Occupiers, scouring tweets and hashtags, aggregating data from their armchairs. But this approach is in opposition to Occupy’s intentionally horizontal organizational structure, which prizes consensus among large groups of Occupiers and aims to let no voice go unrepresented.

What is worth investing in?

by

This year … huge sums of money have been invested in keeping banks afloat, and much of the cost is being borne by people who can least afford it.

Meanwhile, a UN report published last week describes a quarter of the planet’s land as ‘highly degraded’ and flagged up loss of soil quality as the area for greatest concern. Today, for many of us, the loss and degradation of soil does not – yet – feature strongly on our agendas or lists of concerns.

What I would like to suggest here, though, is that soil is much more worthy of our investments, of our concern and care, than banks.

Review: The Wealth of Nature by John Michael Greer

by

Having written extensively on occultism and the esoteric, and himself an adept in ritual magic, John Michael Greer is an eager student of the unexplained. Yet he’s also a sharp observer of the unexamined assumptions that people make about the physical world around them, and how these assumptions have helped land the world in its present crisis. One common presupposition is that nature is independent of the world of human economics, and thus can be treated as a disposable resource. An environmentalist and a devout follower of the druid path, Greer knows better, and he’s written several books seeking to dispel this mistaken dismissal of nature.