Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Concerned citizens who seek to reduce their individual impact on climate change are often misguided in their choices. Transportation? Household energy use? Food? Where can the individual make the greatest impact? Our panel of experts pokes holes in current myths and reveals how we can truly create change.
The people of Hawaii have lived an incredible story of cultural assimilation. Numerous external influences on the island have driven a process of creation and destruction, resulting in innovative musical styles. Now, Hawaii faces difficult challenges with food security and genetically modified seeds as it survives the dying values of a corporate culture. Can we learn from the adaptability of the Hawaiian people to facilitate a process of cultural change in Western society?
Will the world’s leaders dare to think beyond the growth paradigm that lies at the root of our environmental crises? Will they be bold enough to constrain the overconsumption of natural resources or even acknowledge the problem of stagnating oil supplies? Sadly, history provides little grounds for confidence. What is more likely is that the conference will simply warm the climate further through an exchange of hot air disguised as genuine commitment.
Over the last few months, the effects of peak oil — and the broader predicament of industrial civilization — have become steadily more visible; over the same time period, claims that peak oil and the predicament of industrial civilization don’t matter, and everything is just fine, have become steadily more shrill. Counterintuitive though this relation of stimulus to response may seem to be, it’s anything but accidental, and may foretell a significant cultural shift in the offing. Despite a lack of psychic antennae, the Archdruid explains.
No developments evince joy in people. No one celebrates when green fields are torn up, trees are felled, creatures are driven out of their homes, and the little boxes chew up the green hills and shut out the view. No one likes it when Lego land encroaches on the familiar neighbourhoods, brings traffic and supermarkets and alienation in its wake. Although people do go and live in these places, nevertheless.
– Fred Magdoff: Harmony and Ecological Civilization
– Commencement Address: You’re Not Special
– Population and Biodiversity: The Parable of Isle Royale
– Ehrlich et al: Securing natural capital and expanding equity to rescale civilization
The bicycle is a perfect example of the permaculture principle that everything should have multiple functions. And as permaculture is one of the key cornerstones of the Transition movement, I think this qualifies bikes as a brilliant thing for a Transition Initiative to get involved in. Let me elaborate.
We ran our latest Transition Thrive in the Green Backyard which is an urban garden, meeting space and inspiration for the Peterborough in Transition (or PinT) project. Mandy Dean and I had the unusual but very welcome opportunity to work with the PinT group for two days. Our intention was to facilitate them to fulfil their wildest dreams, while keeping their feet firmly on the ground; to take their next steps in Transition. And to sprinkle some inspiration dust and enjoy our time together.
A few years ago it seemed quixotic to declare city streets as commons belonging to all of us. Cars were the undisputed Kings of the Road. But things are now changing in many places around the U.S. with the rise of Green Lanes — bicycles lanes physically separated from rushing traffic, which makes people feel more safe and secure pedaling around town. Pedestrians and motorists also benefit from this transportation transformation, as bicyclists no longer ride on the sidewalk or take up lanes meant for motor vehicles.
The Localization Reader: Adapting to the Coming Downshift, by Raymond De Young and Thomas Princen, aims at the work and struggle ahead for those who realize that the modern world is arrantly unsustainable. The book is scholarly yet accessible, practical and action oriented. It faces the nitty-gritty issues raised by natural resource depletion, and, overall, the sundry predicaments posed by ecological overshoot that the current social system cannot recognize, let alone address.
Since the birth of the modern peak oil movement in the last years of the 20th century, a great deal of discussion and debate has focused on how to prevent peak oil and its consequences from bringing about the end of the industrial age. That approach has yet to yield much in the way of practical results; as our civilization moves deeper into overshoot, it may be time to consider an alternative approach — and, yes, the Archdruid has one to suggest.
The Age of Limits conference held at the end of May offered some new insights on how religion, as an organized institution, could play a key role in helping mitigate the collapse that the conferences speakers think has already hit many parts of the world, including much of the U.S.
Though at this event, neither religion nor collapse were what they used to be.
