Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Doyle Canning So what is the role of community organizers and progressive leaders in this moment of #occupy momentum? After the dramatic mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, the #occupy meme is spreading like wildfire and progressive forces are rapidly aligning around the protests.
I use these two examples because I think they are good ways to describe the range of possible places that reducing your impact can take you. Adapting-in-Place, Rioting for Austerity, making your life more resilient and reducing your consumption aren’t one-size-fits-all activities, and determining what is truly sustainable is never going to involve plugging in formulas. There are some generalities that one can articulate, and some broad principles we can apply, but the answer isn’t simple.
The UK Supreme Court hears appeal cases of huge constitutional significance, the outcomes of which often ricochet through the political arena, challenging the status quo, and shifting societal perceptions. It is fitting then, that on 30th September 2011 this grand building in Parliament Square provided a stage for the hearing of Regina v Bannerman & Tench. In this mock trial, two CEO’s stood accused of aiding and abetting the crime of ‘ecocide’. Currently just a conceptual crime, ecocide has been submitted to the UN for consideration as the fifth crime against peace (alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity).
What? Don’t know what bunkty means? Now you know how I feel about the word “sustainable.” My paper towels separate into smaller segments than they once did. It’s sustainable! These potato chips arrive in a box that says SUSTAINABLE in big letters on the side. I’m eating green! When I’m in a hotel, I hang the towel back up rather than throw it on the floor (would I ever do this anyway?) and the placard says I’m being sustainable. Can it be that easy? I claim that not one among our host of 7 billion really knows what our world would look like if we lived in a truly sustainable fashion. Let’s try to come to terms with what it might mean.
The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have gone into full crisis mode with live blogs continuously reporting unfolding events. Equity markets are falling and London oil prices have been flirting with $100 a barrel for the first time since February. Talk of recessions, depressions, and even collapse of the euro zone is everywhere.
There is a definite possibility, if not a likelihood, that the innumerable debt crises when coupled with high and ever increasing energy costs could evolve into a major economic depression.
For environmentalists protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, the battle is about more than just transporting tar sands oil from Alberta. It’s about whether the United States — and the rest of the world — will finally come to its senses about global warming.
I received an interesting comment today on my first post on the renewable revolution. In answering it, I thought that the exchange was worth publishing as a post in its own, so here it is.
More and more of today’s unemployed college grads would like to become farmers. But if they can’t get their own land, could they wind up at the bottom of a new family feudalism?
The big bronze bull is surrounded by metal fences and strategically placed members of NYPD’s finest. The famous statue, the symbol of aggressive market optimism, is normally open for tourists to grope and fondle, but today, in part because of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest, it has been penned. Today, the Wall Street Bull looks amusingly like a panicked animal in a cage.
Grazing animals is not as easy as I thought at first for about the same reason that annual cultivation is not easy. There are nasty weeds out there, and more coming, that grazing animals won’t eat and which can’t be controlled by mowing either.
Join a dialogue hosted by Orion magazine on the end of economics as we know it, with Richard Heinberg and Helena Norberg-Hodge, on October 18 at 7 PM Eastern, 4 PM Pacific.
A commonplace of discussion in the peak oil scene for most of its existence is the way that communication so often fails between those who get peak oil and the majority that doesn’t. In this third post discussing the interface between peak oil and magic, the Archdruid offers another way of looking at these breakdowns. Step into the lodge room and make the secret sign–today’s meeting of the Ancient Hubbertian Order of Peak Oil is about to begin…
