Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I attended the Agriculture 2.0 Silicon Valley conference co-hosted by New Seed Advisors, U.S. Venture Partners and Spin Farming…The agenda was much larger and diverse than in New York, and given the level of interest I expect more events are being planned. The following are some notes and thoughts that reflect the highlights of the day for me.
As a historian, Carolyn Baker has a keen eye for current events that are indicators of the collapse we’re seeing all around us. But she’s also a psychologist concerned about how we personally navigate the turbulence and find meaning within it. The author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, she describes the old story that isn’t working anymore (humans are separate from nature), and the new story we must live by for real sustainability.
An outline with notes for The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins, the foundational text of the Transition Movement.
The first step in crafting a new narrative for journalists is to reject technological fundamentalism and deal with a harsh reality: In the future we will have to make due with far less energy, which means less high-technology and a need for more creative ways of coping. Journalists have to tell stories about what that kind of creativity looks like. They have to reject the gee-whizzery of much of the contemporary science and technology reporting and emphasize the activities of those with a deeper ecological worldview.
It is hardly possible to read the news these days without tripping over another story about scrappy city folk turning wasted space into lush gardens that produce astonishing amounts of nutritious food—vegetables, honey, eggs, goat cheese—you name it. Every day, greater numbers of ordinary people appear to be answering Sharon Astyk’s call for an army of new farmers to return to the land, wherever they can find it.
In other words, this is no passing novelty.
When we started this endeavor, about two years ago, I could barely distinguish between a hammer and a zucchini. And that tells you all you need to know about my construction skills as well as my gardening skills. As I’ve pointed out many times before, if I can do this, I can hardly imagine somebody who can’t. But you’d better get cracking. The time to plant a garden is not when you’re hungry.
The passage of health care reform legislation in the House of Representatives last weekend was met with such a crescendo of hyperbole and vitriol on both sides of the political aisle that even William Shatner thought, "Jeez, tone down the theatrics.” … If Koch and others are feeding fear to protect the profits of health insurers, just imagine the kind of fomenting we’ll see when the stakes are even higher—when the energy and climate crises come front and center in the national debate.
Three years ago, honeybees started disappearing in the United States and other countries. Hives that had been thriving were suddenly found to be devoid of bees. The epidemic of catastrophic bee losses is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This last winter was the worst yet for beekeepers.
What does a post-industrial relationship with the land look like? There are emerging clues.
What is unschooling? What do we do on a daily basis? How does my daughter learn if she isn’t taught or isn’t forced to do homework? Is it legal? These are only a few of the questions we get about unschooling.
I’m calling it the “stake your acre” challenge. And the sum of it is this – I want everyone who can to find an acre of land and tend it. There are so many profound pressures on the land and people around us – our places need us to take more responsibility for them, for keeping them safe, clean, humane, wild.
DARK OPTIMISM How do we handle Peak Oil AND climate change? Shaun Chamberlin from UK Transition Towns, energy writer Kurt Cobb, plus Richard Heinberg on renewable hope, with Lester Brown.
