Year: 2012

Historic preservation vs. clean energy

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Now, living with a family in my own house-castle, the only limitation to delving into energy efficiency is our budget (and of course, the kid’s willingness to turn off the lights. Except that our Edwardian townhouse also happens to be located in an official historic district. That’s good news for aesthetics and for property values. But it turns out that historic districts are bad news for clean energy.

The benefits of a lower energy civilization

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The seventies counterculture generation embraced voluntary simplicity and its low levels of resource use because it enabled not only a lighter ecological footprint but also the chance to escape the stifling straitjacket of bourgeois institutions. Decades later the whole world faces a future of involuntary simplicity, or decroissance (degrowth), as its advocates call it in Europe. Invevitable degrowth? Really? How did that happen?

America: The Price of Supremacy

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A complex and self-justifying mythology has grown up around the process by which, during and after the Second World War, the United States made the transition from regional power to global empire. That sort of thing is common enough that it probably belongs on the short list of imperial obsessions—Rome had its imperial myth, as did Spain, Britain, and just about any other empire you care to think of—but the American version of it deserves close attention, because it obscures factors that need to be understood as the American empire hurtles down the curve of its decline.

David Holmgren: The reverse of globalization

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Interview with David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture. Holmgren traces the path of permaculture from its roots in the 1970s to its potential, in the future, to reshape how humans interact with the planet. He explains how its premise—working with nature rather than against it—will help us adapt to and survive in a resource-scarce world.

The Trouble with Money

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Recently I was asked by a high school teacher if I had any ideas about why students today seem so apathetic when it comes to engaging with the world around them. I waggishly responded, “Probably because they’re smart.”

In my opinion, we’re asking our young adults to step into a story that doesn’t make any sense.

Connecting with community through storytelling

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Ever since the beginning of man’s oral history, our cultures have taught lessons, stored memories, and guided group values through stories. Stories are a safety valve, and the linchpin of civilization, according to Bradbury…I’ve recently encountered stories with an Alaskan theme of opposing sides–environmentalist vs. resource extractor–told at three different scales of global, national, and local scales. These stories serve as excellent reflections on how we relate as people within nature and what we need to relocate in terms of connecting with nature and with our community. I will share them below in my own crude attempts at storytelling.

Five renewable sources of energy for farmers in developing countries

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According to the United Nations, access to reliable and sufficient sources of energy will be critical to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing poverty and hunger by 2015. Many of the world’s poorest people are rural farmers with no connections to power grids or large-scale energy sources. Most of their day-to-day energy currently comes from the burning of wood and charcoal, practices that contribute to air pollution, deforestation, and the loss of precious time and energy collecting firewood.

Today, Nourishing the Planet introduces five sources of renewable energy that are meeting the demands of poor farmers and allowing them to improve their harvests and their lives.

Clothesline art, laundry activism, cash savings

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As tempting as it is to take a break from your life to join the activities at an Occupy Wall Street encampment, this isn’t necessarily possible for everyone. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get to enjoy the opportunity to make a statement, flout mainstream culture, and help influence others toward the good. In fact all you need to achieve all three is to hang your tidy whities on the line. That’s right, later this week — Thursday, April 19 — is National Hanging Out Day, an annual day of laundry activism to help raise awareness about just how much energy (predominately fueled by coal) goes in to our home appliances, notably, our clothes dryers.