Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The Occupy Wall Street movement arose in response to the economic crisis of capitalism, and the way in which the costs of this were imposed on the 99 percent rather than the 1 percent. But “the highest expression of the capitalist threat,” as Naomi Klein has said, is its destruction of the planetary environment. So it is imperative that we critique that as well. (Also – video of a talk by Fred Magdoff)
– ASPO-USA Conference Report: Thursday Afternoon Notes
– The six natural resources most drained by our 7 billion people
– Peak Oil – Herausforderung für Sachsen: Bündnis90/Die Grünen präsentieren Studie des Postfossil-Instituts im Landtag
A breakthrough for the commons came in 2009 when Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics. The first woman awarded this honor, the Indiana University political scientist not only made history but also helped debunk widespread notions that the commons inevitably leads to tragedy. In 50 years of research from Nepal to Kenya to Switzerland to Los Angeles, she has shown that commonly held resources will not be destroyed by overuse if there is a system in place to manage how they are shared.
In Reinventing Collapse, Dmitry Orlov compared the US to where his native Soviet Union was in the mid-1980s–near the edge of imperial collapse. He used to expect five stages of gradual collapse; he explains why the Euro crisis now leads him to believe that industrial civilization will fall apart very rapidly.
Do you want to take your money out of Dow Jones-listed corporations and put it into locally owned start-ups? Sorry–that’s against the law unless you’re a millionaire. Federal rules designed to protect small investors keep us from putting our money where our values are–but new sources of crowdfunding are finding some ways to get around them.
The current industrial model of US agriculture is economically, energetically, and ecologically doomed. Any hope for a livable future requires that we accelerate the creation of resilient, ecologically-viable ‘shadow structure’ replacements for industrial US agriculture in the diminishing time available to us. We already possess the tools, knowledge, and organizational structures to begin such projects at the family and community level. Here are some things I’m excited about.
In a year when chaos is beginning to feel like the norm, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s out of the blue announcement calling a referendum on the latest Euro bailout plan caught even the most jaded observers by surprise. Although it looks as if the idea has now been abandoned, the likelihood of a still more serious financial crisis has surely moved a step closer…
“La Ruche Qui Dit Oui” (“The hive that says yes!” or LRDQ) is a business model and web platform that enables anyone to set up a fair trade organic food distribution and supply network – and make a sustainable social business out of it at the same time.
Many Baby Boomers have been recently saying how glad they are to be at the end of their lives and careers rather than at the beginning. Who could possibly muster hope in the face of the declining job market, an assault on the middle class, environmental degradation, financial ruination, dismemberment of public services and the high cost of education?
And yet, after hearing Van Jones speak Wednesday night at Kalamazoo College, I wished I were 20 again.
Born of water, wool, soap and human hands — felt is the most immediate textile that can be created from the back of a sheep. The directness of the process, and utility of the finished product has found its way deep into the heart and soul of our kindred featured artisan, Katherine Jolda, a woman whose creative life has manifested fundamentally crucial garments for the 150 mile wardrobe. She has been deemed “a brilliant inventor, natural philosopher, and felt athlete” by those who have both observed and worn her work.
There’s a lot to be said about the general strike yesterday in Oakland—in which thousands of people shut down banks and the fifth-largest port in the country—but here’s what I found especially striking about the strike: extreme message discipline. We usually think of message discipline in relation to political campaigns and the conscious attempt to mechanically repeat talking points. But here I found another kind of message discipline—of a more organic variety—in which people spoke about the same issue not out of a pre-designed plan but because their shared experiences were remarkably similar.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Nuclear troubles
These days Permaculture principles and ethos are present in my life like weeds in a raised bed, always popping up, full of unexpected insights and good ideas.
