Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The witch of Hebron, herself a prostitute, is a beautiful, charming, intelligent caricature, overly-idealized by Kunstler who argues that in a post-collapse world, the rights of women and minorities, so dramatically achieved in the twentieth century, will become virtually extinct in a “world made by hand”.
What we’re really talking about is a permaculture redesign, or reassessment of our whole lives. We’re allotting a year to do it – we have several times now done year long projects – once by not buying anything but food and fuel for a whole year, another with the Riot for Austerity, trying to get our resource use down to 10% of the American average, and both were enormously useful and revelatory.
The last thing “Dr. Doom” Bob Hamlin expected was citizens offering to help his county Emergency Management Department. But when Deborah Stinson from Port Townsend’s Local 20/20 came to Bob’s office after Hurricane Katrina, they formed a partnership. Citizens are organizing and educating neighborhoods to be more self-reliant in emergencies. And they’re at the table with emergency responders in planning for disasters.
-Urban farming yields small climate gains
-Case study: The Year of Urban Agriculture in Seattle
-How to grow food in strange places – by the experts
Political debates and party platforms rarely talk about public transportation, but it’s one of the most basic and important things governments can do to make life better, both in the USA and in any country where officials are cutting back such services.
In the past hundred years, we have created lifestyles, communities, food systems, water systems, transportation systems, and health systems that are entirely reliant on cheap and plentiful oil and that assume a favorable and stable climate.
If I want something, I won’t forbid it. I’ll just do it eyes wide open. Food and judgment don’t mix—they turn the stomach. I will be kind to myself and others as we stumble towards an ethical relationship with food.
It is time to fuse the analysis and hard work of the environmental community with the vision and commitment of the justice community, into a whole new form of governance that not only challenges the current model of unlimited growth and economic globalization but promotes an alternative that will allow us and the Earth to survive. It means the recovery of an old concept called the Commons.
By all means understand and utilise all the power inherent in your messaging, but be explicit about the values you are trying to promote, and explain why.
“What you doin’?” asked the three-year-old who lives next door.
I was standing on my front porch wielding a paintbrush.
“Finishing my shelves.” I showed him my brush.
“But I don’t smell anything,” his mother said as they went by.
“Hah!” I thought, exactly the point.
The good news is that natural- and social-science experts agree we have lots of solution paths for adaptation or mitigation to avoid catastrophe. The climate choir needs to turn technical data into social information that allows these solution messages to become “me too!” What we need is a bottom-to-top rethink of how we address climate change, starting in a town near you.
Deconstructing Dinner has long been exploring the many ways through which farmers, businesses, organizations and communities are accessing food using new and innovative models. On today’s broadcast we hear more of those examples shared as part of the March 2010 panel – Produce to the People, hosted by the San Francisco based CUESA.
