Reducing urban water use
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt once noted that “civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water”.
Society
Review: “The Witch of Hebron” by James Kunstler
Having grown tired of the competitiveness of peak oil writers pushing their various grim visions as the most likely to unfold, I am happy to go with this New Age takeover of the geeks’ techno collapsing world simply because it is the more empowering vision.
An interstate bicycling system
A system of bicycle routes to connect the nation? It’s happening. If implemented as planned, the U.S. Bicycle Route System will become the largest official cycling network on the planet, encompassing more than 50,000 miles of routes.
What I learned on the Cascadia trail
People have asked me about my impressions of my trip and there is one word I want to communicate: Local. The stops were so varied, the needs so diverse, the problems so different, it is difficult to generalize, but I’ll try anyway.
O’Sterity: old virtues in the new Ireland
Living on an island makes Ireland more vulnerable to a depression, fuel shortage, or food crisis, and yet the Irish seem more prepared to endure it. Agrarian self-sufficiency ran too deep, too recently to be fully abandoned. Many people here grow gardens, and until recently it was common for schools and hospitals to have a garden outside to feed the students and patients. Cities and towns are compact to the point of claustrophobia, so arable land is never far away. Public transportation is widespread and carries no stigma of poverty. Perhaps most importantly, everyone seems willing to help even distant relatives — and if they live on the island, they are never far away.
The Preponderance of the Small
Halloween may be over, but monstrous robosigners and zombie banks still stalk the midnight streets of the American psyche, and the decision of the US government to begin financing its debt via the printing press moves us into a dangerous new phase of history. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that big problems must have big solutions, but if the rising spiral of crisis no longer leaves room for solutions at all, the Archdruid suggests, it may be time for a counterintuitive approach.
Peak Fantasy
I’m going to begin by admitting to a questionable wish that, I believe, others may nevertheless also share: I wish for the coming of Peak Oil. The sooner, the better. Let’s get on with it. Enough of all this practice: when will it be game-time?
I ride my bike…. – Nov 4
-Sellwood Bridge the latest project for bicycling advocate
-Peter Hendy interview
-European Cities Get the Bike Bug
Loneliness and the fate of America
Americans have difficulty even recognizing loneliness, let alone accepting it as a problem. It’s just not in our world view. We think we’re depressed and that consuming a pill will cure us, but in fact, we may just need more time with people.
Leadership, resilience, and ‘Lord Franklin’
When I first developed this story, as part of a presentation to Culture Northwest a few years ago, I went on to make a comparison between the 20th century corporation, which still believes that it can control its environment, and the coming organisation, which understands that it needs to tread lightly on the world, to test its external environment for changes, and to respond by adapting accordingly.
A Tale From Portugal, and one from home
I have been astonished to learn as I visited more than 100 transition initiatives over the past 6 months, that nearly all of us are off comers, and with this somewhat dubious title actually seem to breathe fresh life into the communities we have chosen to live in, perhaps for this very reason, delving deeply into the roots of our cherished new homes, and bringing them up for fresh examination in a way that those well established in an area have perhaps become so accustomed to that the value is no longer recognised.
Transportation: Transportation in the Post-Carbon World
Successful post-carbon transitions will benefit from understanding the dynamics of transport revolutions. We define a transport revolution as being substantial change in a society’s transport activity–moving people or freight, or both–that occurs in less than twenty five years.
