Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Leave it to the Dutch, who throw away only 3 percent of their municipal waste into landfills, to come up with a socially appealing innovation that does even more to reduce waste: the neighborhood Repair Cafe! As described in today’s NYT, volunteers with a talent for fixing things come together several times a month to repair anyone’s broken household items for free.
Visualize gasoline-powered civilization arising as if by some maniacally accelerated evolutionary process. It all began so recently, in the mid-nineteenth century, and spread across the globe in mere decades. Automobiles mutated and competed for dominance on vast networks of roads built to accommodate them. Shopping malls and parking garages sprang up to attract and hold them. And powering it all was an ever-widening but mostly invisible river of gasoline–the poisonous blood of 700 million dinosaur-like machines that now dot landscapes around the world.
The deep, transformative changes sketched in the first half of this manifesto provide a path to America the Possible. But that path is only brought to life when we can combine this vision with the conviction that we will pull together to build the necessary political muscle for real change.
Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time. Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or so since World War I, and smaller engagements have erupted every few years; a flare-up or two in 2012, then, would be part of the normal scheme of things. Instead, what we are now seeing is a whole cluster of oil-related clashes stretching across the globe, involving a dozen or so countries, with more popping up all the time. Consider these flash-points as signals that we are entering an era of intensified conflict over energy.
I decided to learn how to garden because I became concerned about a future of declining natural resources that will undoubtedly make life different, especially since we depend on oil for almost everything in our lives. Indeed, Sharon Astyk’s call for 100 million farmers and 200 million cooks (I already cook) is sound advice and essential preparation for survival in this new and uncertain world. Today, I would start this venture with a lesson on barn cleaning. (This is a sneak peek into an upcoming book about my experiences on the farm.)
Political economist, activist and writer Gar Alperovitz and Post Carbon Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg discuss ‘Equality and Inequality in a Shrinking Economy–Strategies and Consequences’.
This is a recording of video chat recorded May 22, 2012.
Gleaning for good by harvesting unwanted produce from local farms, community gardens, or neighbors’ backyards and distributing this excess bounty to the food insecure is an increasingly popular — and necessary — humanitarian effort for the hungry during tough financial times, as Shareable recently reported.
Across the country, volunteer pickers join forces to collect literally tons of fruits and vegetables that then find their way to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries, as well as senior centers, low-income homes, and school lunch programs.
I don’t want to call chickweed the worst weed in the garden because I think it is trying to teach us a lesson about sustainable farming. But in its selected field of operation, the rich organic garden, chickweed is almost indestructible. Oh, you can blot it out with a thick layer of mulch for a whole year. But look out when the mulch decays away. The chickweed comes roaring back.
Do you want to live more efficiently and reap the benefits of a closer community? Cooperative living is a great strategy for getting and staying out of debt while building community, resilience and security in a tenuous economy. But it requires a change in attitudes, and a return to more communal ways of living.
Last weeks’ post attempted, with the help of the ancient Greek philosopher Polybius, to trace out the trajectory that democracies—and in particular the United States—tend to follow across time. The pattern that Polybius outlined, and that American politics has cycled through three times so far in the course of its history, begins with most of the nation’s political power concentrated in a single person, and follows the diffusion of power to the point that the entire political system settles into a gridlock only a massive crisis can break.
– Forbes: Peak Oil: Net Exports Aren’t Everything
– Portland mayorial candidate reads Kunstler, thinks peak oil is real
– Illustrating the new book “Peeking at Peak Oil”
– Niko Paech: Wir müssen weniger konsumieren
Broken promises and naive expectations — that’s how many people at the McPlanet Conference held recently in Berlin clearly felt about the last two decades of environmental policies as the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth summit approaches — with the UN intending to organise another conference in Rio to mark the event.
