Year: 2011

The tarpaper shack principle

by

Plenty of proposals for dealing with the end of the age of cheap oil assume tacitly that energy and resources will be available for massive new projects. Since shortages of energy and resources are precisely what’s at issue just now, this is at least open to question. A less speculative approach might start with those technologies that can be made on a less lavish basis — say, the resources available in a 1930s Hooverville, of the sort many of us may be inhabiting before too long. The Archdruid suggests one example.

Needing to know what we need

by

A market economy is designed to meet needs so that resources are efficiently used and utility is maximised, but how do we know what we need? In a world where some societies suffer from consumption-related “status anxiety” while in others people die from starvation it is difficult to find empirical justification for the theoretical position that markets ensure allocative efficiency. The environmental crisis adds an extra dimension to this question: as a closed system the earth has finite resources and a limited capacity to absorb the waste products of industrial society.

Innovation of the week: Cultivating health, community and solidarity

by

GardenAfrica, a non-profit organization in southern Africa that helps families and communities establish organic gardens in small private plots, schools, hospitals and other public areas, prefers that its work be described as solidarity rather than charity. “Charity is all too often about externally imposed solutions, solidarity is a partnership of equals,” says its website.

Biodiversity: peak nature?

by

As it has grown in numbers and technological might, the human race has become a force of geophysical proportion, on par with the asteroid that struck the Yucatan during the Cretaceous era, dethroning Tyrannosaurus rex. Extinction is final. Yet no species is immortal. Extinction has been part of evolution since life emerged on Earth.

Building collaborative lifestyles

by

A recent study found that a quarter of people have no one to turn to in times of crisis, and another quarter have only one person. The growing effort to build a collaborative culture can help change that — particularly the new technology available for neighborhoods, technology that allows people to share with each other.

Homo Economicus versus person-in-community

by

The problem with Homo economicus (the abstract picture of a human being on which economic theory is based) is that she is an atomistic individual connected to other people and things only by external relations. John Cobb and I (For the Common Good) proposed instead the concept of “person-in-community” whose very identity is constituted by internal relations to others in the community. I can only define myself by reference to these relations in community. Who am I?

Transition cities: Mission impossible?

by

People have said it to me directly over the years, in person and in email.  It’s impossible.  How can you even think about Transition in Los Angeles?  It’s too big. Within Transition circles we counsel each other to “start where you are.”  Well, where I am is in the middle of Los Angeles, the eleventh largest metropolitan area in the world, 10 to 12 million people.  This is my home town.  This is where we started.

2011 predictions: a savage place

by

2011 lays the ground for potential conflicts and battles that will be played out unless we get much wiser much faster. The emerging attention to our collective crisis will give some of the movement a jolt of new energy, time and investment in 2011. This will be the positive consequence of all the tough stuff we’re facing.