Food & agriculture – May 3
-The New Geopolitics of Food (excerpt)
-Monsanto-tied scientist abruptly quits key USDA research post
-What is a SeedBomb?
-Why Is Damning New Evidence About Monsanto’s Most Widely Used Herbicide Being Silenced?
Act: Inspiration
Radical homemaking: It’s not a competition
I write and research to learn more about something I feel is important, not because Bob and I are experts at implementing all the concepts. We published Radical Homemakers as a result of being on that path, not because we have mastered the lifestyle.
All Hail the PUBLIC Library
This is not the time to take the word “public” out of the public library. It is time to put it in capitals.
Peak Moment 194: Portland’s neighborhood tool sharing libraries
Need a tool for a few days? Don’t have it? Neighbor doesn’t have it? Borrow it from your neighborhood tool library! No tool library? Check out Portland, where several neighborhoods have started successful tool libraries just in the last few years. Organizers Tom Thompson, Karen Tarnow and Stephen Couche discuss how they got started, stories of community generosity, and the enthusiastic response of all who stop by. In these neighborhoods, there’s no reason not to grab the tools you need and do that project!
Food & agriculture – May 2
– Eric Schlosser: Why Being a Foodie Isn’t ‘Elitist’
– Fava beans: Roasting pods simplifies preparation
– Are mushrooms the new plastic (video)
– Eliot Coleman: Organic agriculture: deeply rooted in science and ecology
– Radical plots: The politics of gardening
Happiness, simplicity and apocalypse – May 1
– Happiness theory at center stage in Soros economic conference
– The ‘I’m-happy-I’m-green’ consensus won’t placate our lust for novelty
– Simplicity Institute report shows that less can be more
– Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse
– Venezuela Comes Sixth in Gallup “Wellbeing” Survey
I, Consumer?
Where have all the people gone? Not to mention the citizenry, human beings, neighbors, inhabitants, individuals, men, women, adults, children, workers, employees, employers? Suddenly, everywhere, gone, all of them. Their places taken by consumers.
Control, and other illusions
Civilisation is a story. It is a story about where we have come from and where we are going. There are many ways to tell that story, but one version has been very much the dominant one in the West for the past couple of centuries. We know this story: it’s the one about modern, urban industrial culture’s ineffable superiority over all others; the one about human evolution leading inevitably to this point. It’s the one about winning the war against nature, being the only species which thinks and loves and dreams; it’s the one about machines and circuitry and ingenuity and progress. And it’s true, in some ways, at least as far as it goes. But it may not be going much further.
Michael Shuman at the City Club of Cleveland
Recorded 11/16/10 at the City Club of Cleveland, this video features a special City Club program with Michael Shuman entitled “Revitalizing the Northeast Ohio Economy through Local Food”.
Innovation of the Week: Creating farms that produce food and energy
Around 3 billion people, or half of the world’s population, rely on unsustainable biomass based energy sources, including wood, and around 1.6 billion people still lack access to electricity. With an Integrated Food Energy System (IFES), FAO believes that people will have access to sustainable and reliable energy.
Our economy must change – 2 May
-Cleveland artisans craft their own economic force
-Vauxhall boss warns over UK carmaking future
-Sweatshops are still supplying high street brands
-THE 25% SHIFT The Benefits of Food Localization for Northeast Ohio & How to Realize Them (report)
Tennessee Valley Authority: “We have never experienced such a major weather event in our history”
One thing is clear from all of the extreme weather slamming the United States: We are ill-prepared for human-caused climate change, whose primary near-term impact on most Americans will be from the ever-worsening weather extremes.
