Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Transition US has teamed up with Post Carbon Institute (PCI) to provide easy and free access of our Transition Streets Handbook (a curated guidebook empowering neighbors with proven actions to conserve energy & water, reduce waste & save money) to winter 2019 Think Resilience course participants.
In place of the banal tautology of 19th century utilitarianism we need a deep study of the relationship between economic activity and mental health because this marketing assault, this religion of consumerism, has many aspects that do not appear to be doing us any good.
I’d like to have devoted more time to this issue, and perhaps to have reflected further on population issues more generally but with this fairly brief response only to a few of Dr O’Sullivan’s specific points I propose to wrap things up on the population front from the Small Farm Future end.
A bioregion is the integrated system of all human activities within a given area with all of the larger ecosystems on which they depend. It has a shared cultural identity expressed through love of place, shared values and worldview, and commonly understood modes of exchange.
The climate crisis is looming large and threatens to go beyond our capabilities. In addition, COP24 at Katowice has decided on a rulebook that in parts both lacks in substance and is unjust. The resolutions agreed are not enough to prevent disaster, by a long shot.
We each in our way must do what we can, even in the absence of faith, to make our future tenable. We can’t expect others to take care of us. We can’t expect solutions. But we can treat others with respect and dignity…the way we all want to be treated.
No one is saying that all modern creations are bad, of course, and you can like whatever you like. I’m simply saying that the actual customs that our forebears kept for hundreds or thousands of years disappeared quickly and recently during the Great Forgetting of modern times, replaced by less wholesome and healthy customs manufactured by people with agendas.
– GND explained by David Roberts
– Possible without a revolution?
– Launched today (2008) by Rob Hopkins
Unidentified drones shut down London’s Gatwick Airport for three days last week in the midst of the busy holiday travel season. Drones are examples of how miniaturization and cost reductions of existing technologies can lead to havoc when there is no thought or testing concerning the implications for public safety.
Maybe what I’m about to say is a mistake, considering this is meant to be a fundraising appeal. But one of the constants of our organization since it was founded 15 years ago is the value of honesty. So I’m going to tell it like I see it: we, humanity, are in deep, deep trouble.
What Corbett discovered for herself on her train trip is known as “craftivism,” a term popularized by North Carolina activist Betsy Greer. With Greer’s blessing, Corbett spun it into her unique “gentle protest” approach, and a decade later has turned that epiphany into a high-impact career, the international Craftivist Collective and a whole lot of creative social change.
The capitalist system, driven at its core by the maximization of profit, regardless of social and ecological costs, is incompatible with a just and sustainable future. Ecosocialism offers a radical alternative that puts social and ecological well-being first.
