Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
One of the biggest challenges for Transition groups is to learn the skills of how to work effectively as a group in terms of having efficient meetings that are inclusive, enjoyable, and get a lot accomplished. Learning to work together effectively may be one of the most important things we do to prepare for peak oil, climate change, and economic instability.
1. Foster community and cultivate networks.
2. Work at multiple levels of scale.
3. Make space for self-organization.
4. Seize breakthrough opportunities when they arise.
5. Facilitate — but give up the illusion that you can direct — change.
6. Assume that change is going to take time.
7. Be prepared to be surprised.
The major part of creating an economy based on ecological complexity, and the heart of what I mean by an ecology of home, consists of embracing these seasonal rhythms, and the landscape and native ecology they create, rather than relying on massive inputs of energy and complex technologies to impose an artificial order on the landscape and to wall ourselves off from the wild green world.
Relocalization also brings ecological advantages. Local production for local consumption often has the potential to restore, at least partially, the integrity of local human-dominated ecosystems.
Nobody knows how to define “permaculture.” Everyone thinks they should be doing it. Lisa Fernandes starts the process of deconstructing one of the most common definitions for a system that thousands are touting as a response to peak oil and climate change.
– Green Urbanism: Learning from the world
– Tearing down urban freeways to make room for a new bicycle economy
– Urban Bikeway Design Guide
We are all Japan. The earth’s axis shifted 6.5 inches and each day is now 1.8 microseconds shorter. On an energetic level — acknowledged only by the wisdom of “alternative” medicine — we all felt that. Our psyches know. It was a quake felt round the world, literally.
In recent months, people have filled the streets in the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, and many parts of the United States. Their targets are local: autocratic leaders, corrupt politicians, and dismal economies. They’re not performing acts of global solidarity. Nor has there been an outbreak of some protest virus. These demonstrations are responding to specific conditions. Tunisia isn’t Bahrain. Croatia isn’t Burkina Faso. Madison, Wisconsin isn’t Frankfort, Kentucky. Let me rashly and prematurely propose a name for our era: the Age of Activism.
For me, responding meaningfully to what we face comes through community based action, and the crucial, critical role that communities have to play needs far greater recognition.
Coming, as I do, from an alcoholic family, I have a tendency to watch any unfolding disaster with a single idea in the back of my mind: “I knew it.” This is even true of a disaster like the one in Japan, where the causes are seemingly so unpredictable.
In uncertain economic times, people are going to be less interested in something that’s intellectually interesting or idealistic, and they’re going to be much more interested in something that will help them to keep going and feed themselves and take care of their family…
– Official: Japan’s Nuclear Situation Nearing Severity of Chernobyl
– Nuclear industry in turmoil after Japan quake
– Disruptions of Power and Water Threaten Japan’s Economy
