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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
HopeDance tackles peak oil, sustainability on California’s Central Coast
HopeDance (Central Coast, California)
Included in this issue:
I’ve Accepted Peak Oil: Now What?
by Katie Liljedahl
Financial Permaculture: Where Permaculture and the Financial World Meet
by Greg Landua
Pizza Fusion of San Luis Obispo: A Greener SLO, One Pie at a Time
by Hilary Grant
Transition California Online
by Bob Banner
Is Peak Oil still relevant? More than ever
by Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Institute
The Transition Town Movement: Embracing Reality and Resilience
by Carolyn Baker
Economic Theories Bite the Dust
by Richard Heinberg
The Present of Presence
by Daniel Pinchbeck
Taming Our Tiny Ant Friends
by Patricia Dines
Ecoliteracy and The Transition School
by Tyler Hartford
Swansong for the Lawn
by Larry Santoyo
(January/February 2009)
Environmental S.W.A.T. Team at New York Times
Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review
On Thursday, The New York Times will launch a new, crack environmental reporting unit that will pull in eight specialized reporters from the Science, National, Metro, Foreign, and Business desks in a bid for richer, more prominent coverage.
… [The editor of the new reporting unit] is Erica Goode, a former behavior and psychology reporter turned Health editor who has been at the Times since 1998
… “I’m going to have a group of seven reporters who are totally focused on this and they each bring their own area expertise to the table,” Goode said in an interview. “And we have the advantage of being small enough that we can develop a really collaborative team.” In addition, she will work with liaisons at every desk, first and foremost being the “energy cluster” in Business Day, which, along with the recently launched Green Inc. blog, is overseen by editor Justin Gillis.
One of the primary goals is to get more interesting, “big-thought” environment articles onto the front page, according to assistant managing editor Glenn Kramon, to whom Goode will report. That means more investigative work, he added, and sifting through reporting and storytelling approaches that resonate with readers. “My goal is to make ‘em angry enough to do something,” Kramon said.
The approach is well adapted to the current necessities of covering the environment, which has grown and unfolded into a broader and more complicated story than many would have expected even a few years ago. Much of that is thanks to the intense coverage of global warming—and to the journalists who have slowly but surely revealed its threads in science, technology, business, politics, health, travel, fashion, and more.
As gas prices soared last summer and the cost of powering homes and cars became a central issue in the presidential campaign, journalists seemed to clue into the fact that the climate story is really an energy story at heart. What most do not realize—and what makes the Times’s arrangement so progressive—is that behind energy lies human behavior and whether or not we efficiently manage all our natural resources, from power, to food, to habitat, and beyond. Times reporter Andrew Revkin, a member of the environment team, has written about this extensively on his blog, Dot Earth. In a recent interview, Revkin explained to CJR why he thinks it’s not climate that is the “story of our time,” but rather sustainability in a world moving toward nine billion inhabitants.
(13 January 2009)
Transition California Online
Bob Banner, HopeDance
Transition California (http://transitioncalifornia.ning.com), the new social networking ning site is up and running. With over 300 people on it, the networking is growing every day, exponentially!
… I was introduced to the ning platform by Les Squires and decided to help get Transition CA off the ground. Les helped me immensely. He’s a dedicated computer geek who helps build community via the various technologies at hand with new gadgets appearing every day! He baby-sat me all the way. And for some reason, I got it much quicker than wiserearth. Perhaps because I could see the type; the letters were clearer and larger and there was much more white space. And Transition is a topic dear to my heart that fits very well with what I’ve been working on for all these years. I was also intrigued to discover who would join and what they had to offer and what they were already doing. To be on the ground floor of a growing movement is very exciting!
Les encouraged me to get acquainted with the tools. He showed me how to start a group, create my profile, change my profile, start discussions and upload videos. Also how to invite people and how to create Events.
I am excited not only to welcome the new people but to find out what skills they have and to see what they have already been doing in their communities. After two months, I am so inspired and impressed. I invite you to go there (http://transitioncalifornia.ning.com) and browse and see the phenomenal talent and passion and enthusiasm to make a better world in all vital areas of our lives. Teachers, writers, filmmakers, carpenters, water folks, green builders, communicators, presenters, artists, government folks, permaculturists, students, bicycle enthusiasts, cooks, gardeners, explorers, mediators, facilitators and many more… all part of this movement to transition from oil addiction to local resilience.
We find out what members’ pressing questions are, and what person may connect with another on a various project in the same city, for example. Yes, it is unfortunate we need technology to locate our neighbors already doing cool stuff that often we don’t know about. There have been so many stories about connecting with people down the street because of an email or a website. Before internet technology, we were more social. Technology is now connecting us again. Ironic, but it’s what we have to work with.
(January/February 2009)
See the site at Transition California.
