Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Suppose our unsustainable economy wasn’t in the early stages of complete collapse, and that we weren’t running out of the cheap energy on which our society totally depends, and that we hadn’t so screwed up our environment that we’d precipitated runaway climate change. Everything would be fine, right?
– Review: “The Blood of the Earth” by John Michael Greer
– Movie review: “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (something sustaining in a cynical time)
– New book: “Finding Our Way Forward”
– Revolution – new TV series on NBC about life after the grid goes down
The painting represents the tensions between agrarian and urban society that has occurred over and over in civilizations throughout history, as we pulse up into civilizations that later fail. Bruegel’s good plowman, sensible sailors, shepherd, and fishermen in the painting above are symbolic of a culture that harnesses earth, wind, and sun to live within the restraints of nature, in contrast to foolish, ambitious Icarus. Early scholars associated Icarus with urban technologies of “kingdoms doomed to fall.” What symbolic culture will represent us as empire wanes?
While I recover from a nasty case of food poisoning, I thought in honor of the SCOTUS decision, it would be worth re-running this piece from 2009. For all that this is not the national health care system the US needs, it is, in the end, a small step in the right direction.
– David Suzuki
– George Monbiot
– Vandana Shiva
– Climate & Capitalism
Since the end of 2011, when police shut down most encampments, the Occupy movement’s future has been uncertain. Without the long-term occupations that gave the movement its name, where would participants meet and make their presence felt? Would the movement be able to sustain itself without these rallying points? Would it release policy demands or try to bring down a big bank?
How connected to your local place do you feel? Do you know where the nearest flow of water is? —I don’t mean down the drain!…Each one of us lives in a watershed and in the future we are likely to need to rely on our local bio-regions (that’s another way of talking about a watershed) and communities much more for the resources we need, and for the social, cultural and community bonds needed to sustain our wellbeing.
A generous memoir full of intriguing cases of healing by a doctor who discovers slow medicine. Sustenance for the caretaker. Make that a life raft. I was sorry when I got to the end.
We humans owe much of our success to our ability to recognize patterns and extrapolate trends to anticipate a future state…Yet this fine tool can be over-used, and I see a lot of what I call ruthless extrapolation. In almost every case, extrapolation works until it doesn’t. When the fundamental rules of the game change, watch out!
Evolution equipped us to deal with threats from dependably loathsome enemies and fearsome creatures, but not with the opaque and cumulative long-term consequences of our own technological and demographic success. As cartoonist Walt Kelly once put it, “We’ve met the enemy, and he is us.”
This jequitiba tree in Brazil moves hundreds of gallons of water up into its canopy every day. It does so without pumps, without electricity, and without recourse to the concrete reservoirs and sewage treatment plants on which most modern cities depend.
The jequitiba is a joyous marvel to behold, of course — but it would also be an practical inspiration to the world’s designers and city builders, faced with imminent energy descent, if only we were minded to notice.
A century of studies in ecology, and in many other fields from molecules to stars, shows that systems don’t level off for long. They pulse. Apparently the pattern that maximizes power on each scale in the long run is a pulsed consumption of mature structures that resets succession to repeat again. There are many mechanisms, such as epidemic insects eating a forest, regular fires in grasslands, locusts in the desert, volcanic eruptions in geologic succession, oscillating chemical reactions, and exploding stars in the cosmos. Systems that develop pulsing mechanisms prevail.
