Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
While a great many commons seek to develop alternatives to conventional businesses – and even to bypass markets altogether – the struggle to democratize capital should not be lost in the shuffle. Popular ownership of capital assets and business enterprises is still a great strategy for building the commons and advancing the public good. Fortunately, there’s a growing enthusiasm for this approach.
-Sioux County, Iowa: Ground zero for U.S. farm boom
-Local Food and The Farm Bill: Small Investments, Big Returns
-UK needs scientific research into agroecology not GM
-How US Policies Fueled Mexico’s Great Migration
Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy.
That’s the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in the current issue of the journal Nature (Jan. 26) that the economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels.
The “tipping point” for oil supply appears to have occurred around 2005, says James W. Murray, UW professor of oceanography. The commentary concludes: “This will be a decades-long transformation and we need to start immediately. Emphasizing the short-term economic imperative from oil prices must be enough to push governments into action now.”
-DOE slashes gas estimate for Marcellus Shale
-DOE report projects greater coal production drop
-Obama makes strong call for clean energy — oh, and drilling and fracking too
-Obama sets out ‘all-of-the-above’ clean energy policy
-Obama’s speech and some sober talk about the oil patch
-Shale Gas a Bridge to More Global Warming
-REPORT: Venting and Leaking of Methane from Shale Gas Development:
Response to Cathles et al.
-Dueling Research: Fracked Shale Gas Worse For Climate Change Than Coal! Or, The Opposite!
Animals are great to talk to. They can be trusted to keep any secret, will not point out to you embarrassing contradictions of logic in your arguments, and they never argue back. They just nod and keep on eating. They will only interrupt your flow of brilliant reasoning if they run out of food.
-Fossil fuels are sub-prime assets, Bank of England governor warned
-The real beneficiaries of energy subsidies
-Podcast: How Equity and Economics Will Drive Climate and Energy Stories in 2012
-Companies and tax authorities can all benefit if they work together
With the exception of tidal energy, our focus thus far has been on land-based energy sources. Meanwhile, the ocean absorbs a prodigious fraction of the Sun’s incident energy, creating thermal gradients, currents, and waves whipped up by winds. Let’s put some scales on the energetics of these sources and see if we may turn to them for help. We’ve got our three boxes ready: abundant, potent, and niche (puny). Time to do some sorting!
A day of hard rain and wind could not dampen the spirits of activists representing the 99% as they gathered at Justin Herman Plaza (dubbed Bradley Manning Plaza by locals) in San Francisco on Friday, January 20th, 2012, to mark the dark anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision with a day of action. Organized by a coalition of over 55 Bay Area organizations and dozens of OccupySF affinity groups, protestors disrupted business as usual with demands that banks end predatory evictions and foreclosures and that corporations lose the rights of personhood.
Most of us dress ourselves each morning with garments that were grown, processed, designed and sewn by an anonymous supply chain. A combination of animal, plant, machinery, imagination, and technical skill came together to clothe you, but it is rare to have connection to any of these real life elements. It is the goal of one central Californian community’s members to put a face on their wardrobes, and to uncover, develop, and build a new way of engaging with the textiles of their lives. A bioregional supply chain known as a Fibershed is being grown out of a region with a 150 mile diameter — the epicenter just north of San Francisco.
Michael Mandlebaum argues in The Frugal Superpower that the US is too cash-strapped to continue its interventionist stance. He advises cutting oil dependence.
“Fiddling while Rome burns” may seem a stale analogy, but when talking of “green growth” and “green economy” (GGE, for short), it is appropriate. Despite assertions to the contrary, the only thing innovative about the GGE concepts is the buzz that surrounds them. Getting excited about them when they are hardly new or creative notions blithely ignores their critical limitations for dealing with the social and ecological challenges facing us today.
