Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-Study links Texas earthquakes to drilling disposal wells
-Fracking poses risk to water systems, research suggests: U.S. study
-China Drills Into Shale Gas, Targeting Huge Reserves Amid Challenges
-Shale Gas And The Overhyping Of Its CO2 Reductions
-A ‘War on Shale Gas’?
Gibson Mill prides itself on being entirely off-grid, with 100% of its electricity, heating and water sourced on site. Electrical power is from water turbines and a 4kW solar photovoltaic array, water comes from a spring on the estate and heating is provided by a biomass (wood) boiler, using wood exclusively sourced on site.
Ultimately I’m not convinced you can have any kind of functional relationship with consumer culture — even though, of course, I have one. I live in large measure off the waste of industrial society, a waste that will probably dry up some day.
Fewer than 5% of all Americans drink raw milk. Yet, the question of whether Americans should be allowed to drink it at all is one of the hottest controversies between foodies and public health officials these days.
Jerry Mander’s new book, The Capitalism Papers, has a promising subtitle: Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System. None of the hedging of bets there that constrains much progressive social critique in the US. In liberal punditry, the acceptable spectrum of discourse does not even permit use of the word, and in the foundation-sponsored non-profit sector, such talk would be financial suicide. Nor are US trade unions, what’s left of them, anti-capitalist. (In fact their leaders explicitly claim their aim is to get capitalism to work better.) As he correctly points out, there is an unspoken consensus: “it is as if global capitalism” – a human creation – “occupies a virtually permanent existence, like a religion, a gift of God, infallible.”
Letting food sit at room temperature and become colonized by airborne microorganisms runs counter to everything we’re taught about food safety. But without this guided decomposition that we call fermentation there would be no bread, cheese, tequila, or kimchee.
To keep from becoming too depressed over the drought, I try to find lessons to learn from it, like trying not to be envious when rain falls on nearby farms but not ours. Two occurrences in my pastures suggest a teeny bit of optimism, but they run contrary to the way I usually think about pasture farming. That is to say, both occurrences involve plants whose names up to now have been hard for me to say out loud without prefixing them with cuss words.
Check out this short interview with Michael followed by short 12 ways community’s can become economic resilient. Recorded at the FL Small Farms and Alternative Enterprise Conference 2012.
While the whitetail offers many lessons, this essay focuses on the lesson they offer about diet. No, this is not an essay on being vegan or even vegetarian, it’s much deeper than that. A thoughtful glance at our modern food system suggests we’ve forgotten much of what the whitetail knows about sustainable food systems. My goal in this essay is to start us on a path of remembering, so that we can build an energetically sustainable food system that can feed and nourish us far into the future. We’re far from this ideal today.
-Three Cool Inventions For a Greener World
-Take Back Your Gadgets! 6 Reasons To Love DIY
-Innovative Financing Can Help Small Businesses and Nonprofits Invest in Solar Power
Katie Teague’s Money and Life documentary asks us to look at money in a whole new way.
-Avant Gardeners Awake!
-India’s Drought Highlights Challenges of Climate Change Adaptation
-Worst Drought Since 1956 Getting Worse; One-Fifth of U.S. Has Extreme Conditions
-Food Machine
