12 ways community can become economic resilient
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.
Year: 2012
Curious observations about the drought
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.
Towards an Energy-Positive Food System
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.
Cool ideas – August 8
-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
Solar Data Treasure Trove
I have not kept it secret that I’m a fan of solar power. Leaving storage hangups aside for now, the fact that the scale of available power is comfortably gigantic, that perfectly efficient technology exists, that it’s hard-over on the reality axis (vs. fantasy: it’s producing electricity on my roof right now), and that it works well almost everywhere—what’s not to like? Did you trip over that last part? Many do. In this post, we’ll look at just how much solar yield one may expect as a function of location within the U.S.
Why Things Bounce Back
Is there a way to mitigate the current volatility of our social and economic systems by designing built-in coping mechanisms? We’ll explore the possibilities this hour with Andrew Zolli, director of the global innovation network Poptech and co-author of the new book “Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back” (Free Press, 2012).
Profiteers of Climate Change in the Arctic
Seventy percent of the Arctic’s natural gas reserves are thought to be on Russian territory. It’s no wonder then that Russia is particularly active in the Arctic at the moment. Last year a deal was announced between Rosneft, Russia’s largest state petroleum company, and ExxonMobil to extract petroleum and gas in the Arctic. Billions are to be invested in these projects over the coming years. Jonas Grätz is convinced: “Russia is one of the major winners from the situation in the Arctic.” Grätz is a scientist at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich and has just published an analysis of the conflict potential in the region.
The hunger wars in our future: Heat, drought, rising food costs, and global unrest
The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains. This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.
The Mighty Dehydrator
I started dehydrating food out of simple necessity. I needed a fast and easy method to preserve the hundreds of pounds of peaches I get from my two peach trees every year. However, I soon became a food dehydration fan, searching out foods to dry to see how they would taste. This year my goal is to stop buying fruity lunch snacks for my son, who loves the dried peaches, bananas, apples, pears, cantaloupes, and even the tart plum chips that I make for him.
Putting a price on nature – Aug 7
-Putting a price on the rivers and rain diminishes us all
-By insisting that nature is priceless, George Monbiot would condemn the world to destruction
-How Do We Value Nature?
Degrowth, expensive oil, and the new economics of energy
Our understandings and expectations of the world have been shaped by our experience of economic growth. The dynamic stability of that growth has habituated us to what is ‘normal.’ That normal must soon shatter. – David Korowicz
Food production and nature: The deadly paradox of a class-riven society
More than 50% of counties in the United States are now officially designated “disaster” zones. The reason given in 90% of cases is due to the continent-wide drought that has been devastating crop production. 48% of the US corn crop is rated as “poor to very poor,” along with 37% of soy; 73% of cattle acreage is suffering drought, along with 66% of land given to the production of hay.
The ramifications of the drought go far beyond what happens to food prices in the United States.
