Year: 2012

The Buffalo Commons: Redefining how we think about place, politics, and policy

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One of my working hypotheses has been that commons discourse has great power because it is able to function as an open platform. It is both general and specific. I frequently compare the commons to DNA because both are under-specified design structures that evolve and adapt in relationship to local circumstances. A certain ambiguity and incompleteness in the language of the commons is precisely what enables people to infuse it with their own specific values, needs and aspirations. And this is what makes the commons both universally appealing and particular in its manifestations.

How to apply resilience thinking—In Australia and beyond

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Resilience, in the context of the earth’s ecosystems, is defined as the capacity to absorb a shock, reorganize, and continue to function as before. This basic ability is often taken for granted by the global economy, and yet evidence is mounting that crucial ecosystems are in decline. Without a rethinking of how we use the earth’s resources and the development of an approach based on resilience, many of those declines may be irreversible.

Green, Not Growing

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We asked environmental activists if they could imagine a world without growth, and how all this uncertainty made them feel and react. Of the 91% who said they had a moderate or strong understanding of the current economic situation, 74% said a return to economic growth would not resolve the situation…

The Twilight of Investment

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One of the more intriguing features of the current economic debacle is the way that remedies that have often worked in the past have failed so thoroughly this time around. Another is the way that remedies that have failed every time they have been tried in the past have failed this time, too. Behind the inability of central bankers to deal effectively with the crumbling of the global economy, though, stands a major shift in the shape of economic activity — one that promises to leave few aspects of modern economic life untouched.

Land grabs: a global epidemic

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I have spent the past two years investigating the global epidemic of land grabs for a book. Saudi sheikhs, private equity whizz-kids, Indian entrepreneurs and Chinese billionaires all believe, with financier George Soros, that “farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time.”

It is a rerun of the enclosure of common lands in Europe centuries ago – but taking place at breakneck speed and with the fences being erected mostly by foreign investors.

Is Barack Obama morphing into Dick Cheney?

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“As shown through his stepped-up drone campaign,” Aaron David Miller, an advisor to six secretaries of state, wrote at Foreign Policy, “Barack Obama has become George W. Bush on steroids.” When it comes to international energy politics, however, it is not Bush but his vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been providing the role model for the president. As recent events have demonstrated, Obama’s energy policies globally bear an eerie likeness to Cheneys, especially in the way he has engaged in the geopolitics of oil as part of an American global struggle for future dominance among the major powers.

Peak Oil and Climate Change: a Midsummer Night’s Meditation

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It is becoming increasingly clear that on the individual level at least, there is precisely no reasonable response to peak oil and climate change. This is an improv, a dance with emerging possibilities, and an invitation to get in touch with something that is deeper than reason and capable of reforming it, difficult as that may be to describe in reasonable terms.

The Prince of Pickles: Sandor Katz on The Art of Fermentation

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My first copy of Wild Fermentation, by author and fermentation extraordinaire Sandor Katz, was purchased after a friend had spoken about it as if it were a sacred text. Indeed, mine quickly got doused by brine as I put up beans and kraut, or splashed with dollops yogurt and other experimentations like honey wine. Now, Katz has released his most comprehensive fermentation tome to date, The Art of Fermentation. All of the traditional ferments, including vegetables, meat and dairy, are included. But also, Katz digs in with ideas from around the world. Fermented acorns? check. Forget Kombucha, have you tried Mauby? Or growing your own mold culture for tempeh? Its all there.

I got the privilege of learning more about the book and Katz’ perspective on fermentation as a radical practice in this recent interview.

OECD Oil Stocks

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Yesterday, I was musing over the fact that global oil supply has pretty much stopped growing in 2012, and that this seems strange given that prices are falling. My hypothesis yesterday was: the global economy is still growing so oil demand must be still growing. Thus with flat supply, prices should be growing. The fact that they are falling must thus represent fears about the future (Eurozone triggered financial implosion).