Act: Inspiration

Japanese agricultural heritage systems recognized

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Today there is widespread awareness of the food challenges posed by a growing global population and exacerbated by ecological problems resulting from the industrialization of the world’s food system and the changing climate. But academics and policymakers are increasingly finding hope in local knowledge, looking to ingenious agricultural systems that reflect a profound relationship with nature and have played a role in the evolution of humankind.

Energy and peace: the dangers of our slow energy transition

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Resource scarcity and climate change should be driving forward our transition to the energy systems of the future. Though this transition has started in important ways in several locations, change is not being undertaken at either the scale or speed required.

WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) on the chopping block

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Over the years I’ve written a great deal about SNAP/Food Stamps and other hunger alleviation programs, but I’ve never written anything specifically about WIC, which I have tended to lump in with other food programs. I’ve been thinking, however, a lot about WIC lately, because it has come on the budget chopping block in the US – along with other food security programs including the CSFP which serves low income seniors and the emergency food program that provides commodities to emergency food pantries.

Why do humans congregate in big cities?

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One of life’s mysteries for me is why country people have inevitably migrated to the cities in every civilization that I have studied. In the United States, where there has been little of the kind of violent upheavals that send third world countries into instability, the reasons for migration to cities seem especially specious to me.

The power of protest tactics: ‘Just Do It’

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Non-violent direct action is not the most glamorous occupation in the world. Unpaid overtime, long hours, maligned by a biased mainstream media, widely misunderstood by the middle classes and opposed by a heavy state apparatus, who could be blamed for thinking environmental activism to be a mugs game. But when the audience at a London preview of “Just Do It: A Tale of Modern Day Outlaws” was asked if they had been inspired to take up direct action after watching the film, many hands waved in the air.

Being the anchor (Pausing for reflection on the Transition Conference)

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One thing I learned from plants, I said to Dan as we headed home to Suffolk and resumed our discussion about roadside herbs, is that whatever you experience in the company of the plant that is the medicine. What makes the medicine is the looking back on that experience afterwards, the dialogue you hold about it and the story you then tell the world. So after the whirlwind three days in Liverpool what is that story?

The power – and limits – of social movements

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We will be organizing in a period of contraction, not expansion. There will be less of a lot of things we have come to take for granted (energy and natural resources) and more of other things we’ve been hiding under the rug for a long time (toxic residue and environmental disruption).

That less/more reality in the physical world will no doubt have an effect on our political/economic/social worlds. It may well be that the liberal tolerance that has been hard-won by subordinated groups will evaporate rather quickly with intensified competition to acquire energy resources and avoid toxic disruptions. A willingness to share power and wealth during times of abundance doesn’t automatically endure in times of scarcity. Scapegoating, a time-honored tactic, is especially useful during hard times.

Some reflections on the 2011 Transition Network conference

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We had a great few days at Hope University in Liverpool. This will not be an attempt at a complete document of that event, you will find the most comprehensive record over at the Transition Network’s conference feed. What I am going to share, with links to some of the key pieces of media from that feed, is some of the notes of my reflections at the end of the conference. As the event drew to a close, I went around and asked people for their brief reflections on what they saw as the character unique to this conference in comparison to others. Three words came up again and again, deepening, focus and maturity.

Towards a post-growth society

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Today, the reigning policy orientation holds that the path to greater well-being is to grow and expand the economy. Productivity, profits, the stock market, and consumption: all must go continually up. This growth imperative trumps all else. It is widely believed that growth is always worth the price that must be paid for it—even when it undermines families, jobs, communities, the environment, and our sense of place and continuity.

Summer reading list promotes democratic thinking

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In Follett’s book, you see the hard lives of the Welsh coal miners, the English servants and the Russian peasants. And you see the rulers declaring war, losing millions of lives — usually poor people’s lives. And, of course, as in Victorian novels, the poor people often seem to have more character than the rich.

… It’s not enough to bemoan the decline of democracy or complain about the accumulation of wealth at the top — we need to act. What we learn in Follett’s book is what many of us have learned from experience: There’s nothing so exhilarating or fulfilling as joining with others to fight for what you believe in.