Year: 2012

A year on from Occupy and austerity is foundering

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It’s one year since Occupy took over the churchyard at St Paul’s. Thwarted from their original plan to take Paternoster Square – opposite the London Stock Exchange, privately-owned – by its closure and surrounding with police, the Cathedral steps next door were turned into an impromptu forum. Over the next few months, Occupy, haphazardly and with no grand strategy in sight, managed to break through the omerta surrounding Britain’s financial services.

Peak Moment 221: Human-powered machines – Can pedals power the world?

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Jump on that bike and power up the blender for your morning smoothie! Matthew Corson-Finnerty shows several machines he has developed while at Aprovecho Center in Oregon. Watch us pedal power an electricity generator, a grain mill, a blender, and a straw-chopper. Matthew notes there’s “considerable difference between the power that one person can generate, and [what’s] generated by a fossil fuel engine or a coal-fired plant to provide electricity.”

Transition Network – What’s it for? Where’s it going?

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Years on from the early days, one could argue that the world looks more or less as Transition visioning sessions then might have imagined – climate change more evident, energy descent and peak oil important topics albeit discussed differently, and economic relocalisation a front burner issue. Loosely accurate forecasts of the realities we’re living now, but lacking the immediacy and urgency of the current moment.

Food and Revolution

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Three guests. Rob Stewart, Director of movie “Sharkwater” and now his latest “Revolution” – is the ocean dying? An international media briefing by Lester Brown of Earth Policy Institute about rising food prices & his new book ‘Full Planet, Empty Plates’. Wes Regan on urban farming in the poorest neighborhood in Canada.

Pulling back the curtain on economic growth’s magic act

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Wheelan’s argument and the main message of today’s globalized economy is that Twinkies spontaneously sprout on supermarket shelves. Hamburgers originate from the silver stovetops of McDonalds restaurants. Water itself flows from shiny taps, translucent bottles, and fancy vending machines. We don’t need to concern ourselves with trifling matters such as where this stuff comes from or how it arrives. Because of the magic of the market, we only need to know how to get our hands on sufficient cash, credit, or public funds to buy it. In a nutshell, the argument says that all the cheap food, cheap products, and cheap thrills of modern times spring directly from global trade and economic growth.

Make Me!

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No, that’s not the cry of a spoiled child. It’s food, calling to you! Anyone can grow, gather, or make a lot of their own food. We do it on four fronts – we garden, we catch a lot of fish, we raise chickens, and we make some of our favorite foods from scratch. What have we learned along the way?