Year: 2011

Economics: pre- and post- Copernican

by

Asking an economist to evaluate the work of Nicole Foss is a bit like asking a Baptist Minister to evaluate the work of a secular, agnostic theologian or philosopher of religion, for we are dealing with two competing belief systems and Foss (along with Richard Heinberg, John Michael Greer, Juliet Schor, Wendell Berry, and to some extent Bill McKibben, along with countless others) is, among other things, challenging the economists unquestioned belief in a very specific view of the world, as well as numerous elements of faith.
[Foss is speaking in Madison and Milwaukee this coming week.]

The 12 most hopeful trends to build on in 2012

by

1. Americans rediscover their political self-respect.
2. Economic myths get debunked.
3. Divisions among people are coming down.
4. Alternatives are blossoming.
5. Popular pressure halted the Keystone KL Pipeline — for the moment.
6. Climate responses move forward despite federal inaction. …

Strange bedfellows – Dec 31

by

– Ralph Nader’s grand alliance (he finds hope in Ron Paul)
– Glenn Greenwald: Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies
– Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Kucinich & Chomsky: “End The Left-Right Delusion, Corporatism Is The TRUE Enemy” (video)

The world it is a-changing – Dec 30

by

– Which (Mid East) tyrant will fall next?
– Juan Cole: 2011 Revolutions and the End of Republican Monarchy in the Arab world
– Guardian: US military retains global reach, but role as world leader is gradually ending
– Immanuel Wallerstein: The United States versus Everybody
– Noam Chomsky: The Decline Of America (but no competitiors in sight)

In with the new: part III of “As economic growth fails, how do we live?”

by

In this third and final article in this series, we will discuss seven new ways of living which we can adopt as economic growth fails. They are not revolutionary (revolutions never achieve their utopian visions because of something called “human nature”). Rather, they may allow us to “muddle through” the best we can right now with what we already know how to do. We will do these things because they will work — and we certainly need to stop doing things that don’t work, and find new ways that will work.

2012 predictions: the more things change…

by

All of us will keep on keeping on, hopefully filled with the recognition that what we do really, really matters. This will hard to keep up sometimes and downright obvious others. We’ll keep doing, even in the tough times because the future matters to us.

On Wendell Berry: As farms go, so go the cities

by

Those who love Wendell Berry, from homesteaders and Greenhorns (that’s new farmers to you and me) to community gardeners, find inspiration in the plainspoken moral indignation of this latter-day Jeffersonian who won’t be budged from his conviction that the real America is farms and rural towns, not big cities and suburbs.