Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
With an aggressive campaign focused on advertising, lobbying, and political contributions, America’s coal industry has succeeded in beating back a challenge from environmentalists and clean-energy advocates. The dirty truth is that Big Coal is more powerful today than ever.
There was a difficult choice of entertainment for me on Thursday night. We had a meeting about the cuts here in town organised by the the Socialist Workers Party while Channel 4 was advertising a professional butchery job on the green movement. I think I made the right choice: I spent Thursday evening watching John Schlesinger’s 1967 film version of the Hardy classic Far From the Madding Crowd.
The oft-discussed 10,000 mile Caesar Salad, used to illustrate the degree to which our food system is drenched in fossil fuels, really is only a piker when it comes to the spaces that food can make you cover.
Money, like other aspects of life, has become controlled by distant organisations who, as the recent economic turmoil has demonstrated, do not necessarily have our best interests at heart. As the New Economics Foundation put it, our economies have become like ‘leaky buckets’, money that should be staying and circulating locally being sucked out to distant corporations and shareholders. This all adds to our vulnerability in times of increasing uncertainty, rather than reducing it.
– An Update on All Things Transitioney and French
– Round-up of What’s Happening out in the World of Transition (Brazil, US … )
– Dinero contra energía fósil: La batalla por el control del mundo (online Spanish translations)
– Bem-Vindo ao Pico do Petróleo (new Brazil peak oil website)
Having grown tired of the competitiveness of peak oil writers pushing their various grim visions as the most likely to unfold, I am happy to go with this New Age takeover of the geeks’ techno collapsing world simply because it is the more empowering vision.
People who have caught on to the magnitude of the changes humanity faces in coming years typically describe their process of reaction as “preparation.” That is an adequate word, but incomplete, because it implies only a future focus. Preparation always looks forward, even when it takes appropriate action in the present. The danger in that is it can lead to a life that is forever deferred, waiting for a signal from some external source that it’s time to actually have what you have prepared yourself for.
A system of bicycle routes to connect the nation? It’s happening. If implemented as planned, the U.S. Bicycle Route System will become the largest official cycling network on the planet, encompassing more than 50,000 miles of routes.
This time Janaia’s in the hot seat! In this interview by Jim Fritz on Port Townsend Television, she tackles corporate control and a dysfunctional system that profits from increasing unhealthiness and consuming the planet. She points to Peak Moment guests as models for the average family to gain genuine security. They’re withdrawing from the money system, growing food, and joining neighbors to prepare for emergencies.
-Brenda Palms Barber, The Promised Land (audio interview)
-Fowl energy: Chicken poo lights Gloucestershire town
-Bio-Agriculture – a Solution to Climate Change
Promoting the idea of local food production and the rollout of urban agriculture, whether in the form of market gardens, allotments or back gardening, will clearly struggle if no land is made available to make it possible. Many settlements, even if they are built to a high density, will have both land within them that could be used, and also land around them. Ensuring secure access to this land will be vital.
With large swaths of forest destroyed by wartime defoliants, and even larger areas lost to post-war logging, Vietnam has set an ambitious goal for regenerating its woodlands. But proponents of reintroducing native tree species face resistance from a timber industry that favors fast-growing exotics like acacia.
