Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Global warming has likely already caused changes in the world’s climate by delaying monsoon seasons, causing less summer precipitation and creating longer breaks between rainy periods. One group of women in southern India is turning to traditional farming practices for immediate and sustainable answers to address these water problems.
Resiliency demands something quite different than specialization and diligent professionalism. Resiliency calls for an equally amazing and profound rise in competence on the part of citizens, consumers, eccentrics, dissenters, minorities…
You learn extraordinary things living among the poor. The first thing you learn [from people] in poverty is that there is an enormous creativity. You cannot be an idiot if you want to survive.
Africa is being measured for its land profitability potential. So are other regions in the political South. This process is part of the new structural agri-food adjustment programmes that are already in place in the developing South. It includes agri-investor friendly new industrial policies, the disinvestment by and withdrawal of government equity in profitable public sector enterprises, financial sector ‘reform’ that ushers in private banking and asset management.
Radio and television host and author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight Thom Hartmann talks about ways we can all help combat global warming. Speaking from the grounds of Wisconsin’s 2010 Fight Bob Fest, Hartmann insists that Americans need to change the way we live if we are going to save the planet, and the first step has to be getting active in the political process.
It was heartbreaking to be at Camden Council last night. Because of the government-imposed cuts libraries, playgroups, breakfast clubs and after school care are being swept away in a borough that has always prided itself on its public services, especially for the young. Protests outside the council turned into chaotic and ugly scenes and the police prevented demonstrators entering the building on public order grounds. A few made it in and loudly berated councillors for cutting services. Council had to be adjourned at one point.
Somehow we’re going to have to talk to each other as if everyone can hear what we are saying. If we want to break down those ancient barriers that keep us apart and create the culture we say we want we are going to have to find a way to tell those stories in Transition.
Southwestern Michigan caught winter’s blast last week. It’s not nice to lose power in the coldest month of the year, especially when you’re sick of snow, ice, heavy coats and that frozen bleakness that makes you feel as though winter will never end. It’s been 35 years since I’ve had to live through a long power outage but this one gave me an opportunity to consider some new meaning in the value of energy and its effect on life both at home and in my community.
The Lyttelton community in New Zealand was at the epicentre of the recent earthquake that has devastated much of Christchurch. At this time, we have been blessed that just two in our community have died as a result of the earthquake. Rocks have been falling from the hills. Our people are OK, but the adrenalin is pumping – it feels like what it must be like to be in a war zone.
I sat down with Richard Heinberg in late December via Skype to learn about his forthcoming book, The End of Growth, and to hear more about what he thinks lies ahead as energy declines accelerate and the world economy sinks further into recession.
I had been mulling over precisely how to frame this piece for a while, when I read Erik Lindberg’s “This Is a Peak Oil Story.” which admirably gets at the essential point that I’ve been wanting to make – that our collective crisis comes to all of us at different times and different ways than we imagined, and that exemptions are only rarely granted.
There is another way to reduce energy consumption for space heating that does not have any of these disadvantages: lowering the thermostat and putting on more clothes.
