Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Dan Bednarz A year ago I asked, “How to understand health care’s inability to recognize that modern society has reached the limits to growth?” Since then I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to write on the urgent and bedeviling question, “What are the nuts and bolts of organizing a “small is beautiful” health system?” Here I want to lay the ground for exploring this second question while weaving in final comments on the first question.
Robert Blasiak from the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies had the opportunity to interview Allan Savory during several bus rides in Nairobi. Savory is a Zimbabwean-born biologist, farmer, game rancher, politician and international consultant and co-founder of the Savory Institute. He is credited with developing the “holistic management” framework back in the 1960s and has been leading anti-desertification efforts in Africa for decades now using a rather unorthodox approach of increasing the number of livestock on grasslands rather than fencing them off for conservation.
Whenever I go to a big supermarket that carries fresh food, I always find these long, wrinkled, ugly, rooty-looking things called parsnips on display. Someone must like them or they wouldn’t be there, but I can’t find anyone who admits to eating them, or anyone who knows what the attraction might be. It certainly isn’t phallic, as carrots sometimes get portrayed. What is the allure of parsnips?
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Japan has idled all 50 of its nuclear reactors. While the central government and business leaders are warning a prolonged shutdown could spell economic doom, many Japanese and local officials see the opportunity for a renewable energy revolution.
-New Microloans Could Give Young Farmers the Capital They Need
-From rooftops and abandoned lots, an urban harvest
-El Salvador women put their faith in agroecology
-UK families waste £270 a year on discarded food
Ever wonder how efficient it is to heat water? Of course you have! Ever measured it? Whoa, mister, now you’ve gone too far!
In the late 1800s northwestern Ohio was at the center of an oil boom as the state became the nation’s largest crude producer. Today Ohio is at the center of another fossil fuel boom, where a new drilling method — hydraulic fracturing (fracking) combined with modern horizontal drilling — is releasing natural gas from deep underground shale, leading to a rush of new leases. Is drilling safe or are contamination concerns unfounded?
…perhaps the next generation will work to coordinate and jointly design interventions, communications, and campaigns that discourage values such as money, image, and status and that instead provide many opportunities to pursue values such as personal growth, close connections to other people, and contributions to the larger world.
In a move indicative of a leadership grasping for control, the provincial government passed Law 78 in mid-May. Attempting to end the strikes and force the reopening of the universities, the law in no uncertain terms makes protest illegal. Groups planning demonstrations with more than 50 expected participants, according to Law 78, must inform the police in writing at least eight hours in advance of the protest with details of time, location, size and duration. More perturbing still, expressing support for demonstrations and strikes deemed unpermitted under Law 78 renders one guilty of that offense and liable to face the same steep fines.
Two years after directing the Academy Award-winning documentary, “Inside Job,” filmmaker Charles Ferguson returns with a new book, “Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America.” Ferguson explores why no top financial executives have been jailed for their role in the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We also discuss Larry Summers and the revolving door between academia and Wall Street, as well as the key role Democrats have played in deregulating the financial industry. According to Ferguson, a “predatory elite” has “taken over significant portions of economic policy and of the political system, and also, unfortunately, major portions of the economics discipline.”
Lessons from a tsunami are a terrible thing to waste, so last week, the Food Policy Research Initiative based at University of Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health hosted a symposium of Japanese food and agricultural experts and Toronto public health leaders to survey what others can learn from Japan’s response to the crisis.
In Extraenvironmentalist #41 we speak with Ronald Wright about his book A Short History of Progress which chronicles the idea of progress through human history and has been adapted into a new film, Surviving Progress. Then we hear from Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks who directed and wrote Surviving Progress. We ask them about the challenges of adapting the story of our complex civilization into a succinct and slick film. Last of all, we report back from Montreal about the Maple Spring uprising and our interviews with numerous ecological economists at the Montreal Degrowth conference as our civilization attempts to redefine our economic priorities.
