Act: Inspiration

Settling

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If we are to work on a community level, we’re going to have to use the old community and neighborhood organizing strategies, rather than a series of showings of End of Suburbia or How to Boil a Frog (don’t get me wrong, I really think very highly of these movies). That is, that we are going to have to be able to enlist people at very low levels of commonality, rather than at high levels of education about the future of the world if we’re to get enough bodies on the ground to do what is needed. And that these communities need to be built, well, yesterday.

Sharing Stories at Post Carbon Institute

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We’d like to hear more about what you’re doing. As you may know, our Senior Fellow, Richard Heinberg, is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost educators on the perils of a global oil economy. Right now, Richard is starting his next book about how individuals and communities can build resilience in the face of uncertainty and rapid change caused by economic collapse, peak oil, climate change, and other crises. In short, this book is about you. So, you see, Richard wants to hear your stories; the stories of what individuals, families and communities are doing to transition to a post-carbon world.

Watching Myths Unwind

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I want to step back from our gargantuan dilemmas of 2009 and reflect on the East German intelligentsia I interviewed in 1990-1992 at the time of the unification of Germany…these East Germans faced the destruction of their national myth, which held that socialism was the true victor over Nazism and that capitalism’s demise was inevitable. In America unquestioned belief in growth has inspired us throughout our history, yet it is going the way of the East German’s mythology.

Our House Frog Liked Beethoven

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When the hummingbirds run out of sugar water in their feeder right outside our kitchen, one of them flies up to the window and gently bumps it. Doesn’t run into it as if by accident, but hovers right at the pane and deliberately bumps it. The hummer seems to be saying: “The feeder is empty, you dolts. Get with it.” And they never bump the window unless the feeder is empty. They know. How do they know?

Transition culture, social tolerance and moral courage: Why permaculture activists must work for human rights and social justice

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Human beings are capable of living egalitarian lives without fossil fuels. Many hunter-gatherer societies testify to the fact it is possible, though not inevitable. Human nature includes both cooperative/altruistic and competitive/“us versus them” tendencies. Our empathetic and cooperative tendencies must be consciously cultivated in everyday life if we are to create a non-violent, democratic future without fossil fuels.

Confronting the Challenges of Community, Part One

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There exists today, a trinity of situations that confronts those of us who live in Western culture: global climate change, the peak and eventual end of non-renewable sources of fossil fuels (oil and gas), and economic meltdown.  These issues are old news for much of the world.  We in the wealthier nations are going to join the global community in attempting to find ways to survive and live amidst enormously trying circumstances.

The Department of Redundancy, Redundancy Department

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Today I’m starting another Adapting-In-Place Class, beginning with the basics of evaluating whether you have a future where you are, what your other choices are, and then triaging your situation, but I’ve already written a good bit about those things, so I want to a basic and essential element of triage – establishing redundant systems.