Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– Copenhagen plans bike superhighways
– The “Transition Town” Movement’s Initial Genius
– Green Property: The Power of Community Spirit
– Code Green Community (TEDxYouth in Tampa)
– Heroes of the web changing the world
– Life Expectancy in China Rising Slowly, Despite Economic Surge
– Private Insurance Induced Stress Disorder (PIISD)
– Grateful People Are Happier, Healthier Long After the Leftovers Are Gobbled Up
– Cecile Andrews: Social ties are good for your health
I know that no matter what economic or political regime prevails, my Russian village kin will survive, provided they hold on to their land and provided climate change doesn’t kill off all the flora and fauna around them. I believe that the Russian, conditioned by centuries of serfdom, the GULAG and the entire Soviet experience, is a very hardy beast, in spite of alcoholism, drug abuse and moral decay. Also, as a child of the industrial ghetto, I entirely agree that the underclass is better-prepared.
The waterwheel was seen as the most important power source in the world, from the Middle Ages to the end of the nineteenth century. When smaller streams became saturated, medieval engineers turned their attention to larger rivers, eventually leading to the development of the hydropower dams that still exists today. Lesser known are the intermediate steps toward that technology: boat mills, bridge mills and hanging mills.
Horses and carriages clop past my Dublin office every day, and while they are mostly for tourists, a few country folk still drive them around our land. They are almost unknown across much of the Western World these days; even here they are rare enough that children point and wave when a horse goes by. A hundred years ago they might have shrugged at the ubiquitous presence of horses and run shrieking towards an automobile, and it’s possible their great-grandchildren might do the same a century from now.
The leap from seeing the water tower as a background object, a simple industrial structure, to imagining its possibilities gets at the question of transformation, of seeing with new eyes. We have the resources, the technologies, the skills, and the vision to create a greener world, so why haven’t we succeeded? What is missing in our applied knowledge? How can we shift our thinking so that moments like this will occur as a matter of course?
Birk has just the right message to the bike community: Don’t get defensive, hold your ground and push ahead, because in the end even your opponents will come to appreciate the progress you make. … “We’re driving a cultural shift where you trade off motor vehicle space for bike lanes. This is deep, fundamental change. It’s not like just adding a bike lane and Boom, you’re done.”
Just as locally sourced organic food benefits the local community in myriad ways, compared to produce trucked in from elsewhere, so do locally grown native trees. Each time we plant an appropriate native, we are helping mend and strengthen the biotic community, of which our human community is a part.
Had great fun over the weekend plastering my shower with this amazing stuff called Tadelakt. Tadelakt is a traditional Moroccan plaster, a lime-based, polished waterproof plastering technique. Originally used for waterproofing cisterns, and then used for public bathing houses, Tadelakt had almost disappeared from use before being rediscovered and there is currently a revival in its use.
In spring semester 2011 the Institute for Sustainability and Post-carbon Education at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts will offer an online course titled, “Building Sustainable Health Systems: The Essential Role of Public Health.” The premises of this course are that 1) the structure and content of public health, medicine and nursing will be deeply transformed as society reaches the limits to growth and 2) public health is critical to all socioeconomic localization and community building.
These two problems could solve each other. the infamous mileage of SUVs and Hummers only results from the empty space in the back; fill it up with passengers and it becomes a very green choice. Local officials could buy them cheaply, or rent them to use to ferry passengers in lieu of bus lines.
What accounts for the success of a few large-scale change movements (ending slavery, improving the status of women, reducing tobacco addiction and drunk driving) and the failure of almost all others?
