Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
He and the people in his church are part of the new “food hub” wave, although he didn’t call it that. He just wants to encourage the people in his church to start asserting their food independence. But instead of going the usual route of venturing forth and trying to teach the people how to grow food, Mike decided to ask the parishioners themselves how to go about it.
I must own up to something at the start of this: I have a bias. I have an agenda. I am not impartial. I see things through a complicated lens of culture, class, and gender. I am a mature male of African, Native American and European heritage, a son of the Americas. I decided at an early age that all of that, despite what was happening in the outside world, would be at peace with me.
[The author is a writer, educator, activist, poet – and a Transition trainer.]
I haven’t journeyed down to OccupyLA myself. In part that’s because it is quite a distance from me, and I have kids’ schedules to uphold. But deep down, those are simply excuses; really, my heart’s not in it. I see the Occupy movement as an outbursting of emotion, expressing that the existing System is horribly broken, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree. But the protests, now shifting to from Wall Street to upscale neighborhoods, are a gigantic “blame game” which cannot possibly fix anything real.
What would a People’s Takeover require of us? Below I share some reflections on a summer of research into the bigger picture. And a few further questions!
Nicole Foss is senior editor of The Automatic Earth web site, and an international speaker integrating topics of peak oil, economics and personal preparation. In 2001, Foss moved her family from England to rural Ontario, in order to prepare her family for peak oil and economic uncertainty. Local Future nonprofit has published to YouTube the entire 40-minute presentation by Foss on her considerations for personal preparation, in advance of her keynote presentation at the International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change: Vision, Action, Leadership.
Increasingly, those of us who were ready to move with President Obama four years ago are deciding to leave normal channels and find new forms of action. Here’s an example: by year’s end the president has said he will make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry crude oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.
The nation’s top climate scientists sent the administration a letter indicating that such a development would be disastrous for the climate. … But every indication from this administration suggests that it is prepared to grant the necessary permission for a project that has the enthusiastic backing of the Chamber of Commerce, and in which the Koch Brothers have a “direct and substantial interest.”
The world is doomed to repeat four-year cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don’t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin warned a Climate One audience in San Francisco on October 3. The solution, what he calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the “Energy Internet,” a nervous system linking millions of small renewable energy producers.
– Phosphorus cycle: A broken biogeochemical cycle (article in “Nature”)
– Food for thought – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
– Walmart and the Good Food Movement
When gas fracking and other “unconventional” energy resources are discussed in the media the focus is usually on the technology used to produced the energy, or the impact this might have on the environment. In fact, the significant feature of the exploitation of unconventional energy resources is that our present energy situation is so precarious that companies and governments consider these valid energy sources; public interest demands that this aspect of the problem be examined.
As the “Occupy” movement expands from the “Occupy Wall Street” protest in New York City throughout the United States, we look at its historical significance. “This is an incredibly significant moment in U.S. history,” says Dorian Warren of Columbia University. “It might be a turning point, because this is the first time we’ve seen an emergence of a populist movement on the left since the 1930s.” We also speak to Firedoglake blogger Kevin Gosztola, who has been reporting from the occupations in Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
… all crashes are relative. My acquaintances back in the USA tell me that they struggle every day in this economy of high unemployment and fuel prices; I believe them, but I also mention that our unemployment is much higher, and we pay the litre-and-euro equivalent of $8.00 a gallon. Today’s Irish, meanwhile, remain wealthy compared to the Irish of 20 years ago, who might, in turn, have been in the wealthiest half of the world. Yet people lived hearty lives in all these times and places, even when most of them had less money than the underclass of the modern West. Americans’ suffering comes not just from a lack of money, but from a lack of training.
Daniel Yergin has succeeded as a historian of energy, but failed as envisioner of a tolerable future.
