Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff -The explosive truth behind Fukushima’s meltdown
-Cracked Fukushima: Radioactive steam escapes danger zone
-Mushrooms Join Growing List of Radioactive Threats to Japan’s Food Chain
-5 Months After Meltdown, Fukushima Citizens Still Face Radioactive Risks
-Japan utility may face delay in Fukushima cleanup plan
-Fukushima Daiichi Radioactivity Down to 20% of July Levels
-Japan reopens first nuclear reactor since tsunami
The issues we are confronted with today seem to be a subset of the issues foretold in the book Limits to Growth back in 1972. At some point, the economy cannot continue to grow as rapidly as it did in the past. It appears to me that the most immediate limit we are hitting today is inadequate low-priced oil, but there are other limits lurking not far away–inadequate fresh water and excessive pollution, for example. When the economy cannot grow as fast, or actually starts declining, recession sets in…This issue is a difficult one to talk about, because there really is no good solution.
Many food justice advocates are brought into their work by an emotional reaction to the tragic hunger that exists in the world, be it in the context of the U.S.’s inner cities or global poverty. Indeed, hunger and emergency food efforts have been the recipients of the bulk of funding in the growing food movement over the last 40 years, a time period that simultaneously saw an expansion of hunger and food-related problems. Focusing on the one issue of food access has only enabled the persistence of the true underlying causes of our unjust food system. Food access, though important, cannot be the focus of efforts. It is more important to restructure the food system in a way that empowers a community to have control in their food system thereby ensuring their continued access.
Most people who follow renewable energy have heard of biogas by now, yet the origins and uses of biogas remain mysterious to many.
This is a first for us at Post Carbon Institute/Energy Bulletin: an online ‘creative’ fundraising campaign. We want to create a presentation deck for all the HUNDREDS of people who have asked us over the years for our slides. But rather than just dump our slides on people, we want to develop a presentation deck and story that is easy to present and personally resonant. Richard has written a fantastic script that presents our oil journey in a truly accessible way, we are now looking to turn this into something really user friendly and inspiring to present. If we’re able to raise the funds, not only will we create the slideshow but will train volunteers so that they can deliver it in their own communities.
Today, the view that the United States has declined, has seriously declined, is a banality. Everyone is saying it, except for a few U.S. politicians who fear they will be blamed for the bad news of the decline if they discuss it. The fact is that just about everyone believes today in the reality of the decline.
What is however far less discussed is what have been, what will be the consequences worldwide of this decline. The decline has economic roots of course. But the loss of a quasi-monopoly of geopolitical power, which the United States once exercised, has major political consequences everywhere.
The Spanish uprising was born largely online in the wake of the Arab Spring, when hundreds of small-scale grassroots groups joined together to form Democracia Real YA — Real Democracy Now — to unify their efforts in demanding social change. Taking their slogans from Stephane Hessel’s internationally famous manifesto Indignez-Vous (translated Time for Outrage in English, Indignaos in Spanish), the group helped to move massive demonstrations on May 15 as public outrage against the Spanish government austerity measures and bank bailouts reached the boiling point.
This essence was beyond figuring out where our food will come from or how we’ll keep the lights on. I couldn’t put my finger on what that essence was, but I also couldn’t get this feeling out of my mind. It had nothing to do with Britain being the only one “doing Transition” properly, or that this essence didn’t exist anywhere else. I believe that it does. But Britain was my initial experience of Transition, and of course the home of the founders of the movement. I was creating in my mind a myth of Transition. It was a myth to me as I was unsure whether it was true. But I believed that within this myth was the essence of what Transition is.
For those of us who have been thinking and talking about peak oil for more than a few years, one of the most common sources of frustration tends to be the vacant looks generated in so many faces by what are, after all, straightforward and reasonable concepts. Maybe it’s time we talk about the cultural forces that foster, at all levels of American society, the almost trancelike conviction that everything will somehow come out fine.
“We are a group of Pacific Islanders who have come together from many nations, sailing as one across the Pacific Ocean. We are voyaging to strengthen our ties with the sea, renew our commitment to healthy ecosystems for future generations, and to honour our ancestors who have sailed before us.”
Despite flood, hail, drought, high winds, plant diseases, weeds, bugs, deteriorating muscles, coons, deer, squirrels, moles, stock market crashes, grain market inflation, skyrocketing land prices, root rot, robins, rabbits, and radio talk shows, once more the annual great miracle has occurred. We are (literally after the last downpour) swimming in homegrown food. The August Glut is upon us, and we dance among the corn stalks in sheer delight.
In a move that came as a shock both in this city and throughout the planet on which it is located, Standard & Poor’s late Monday downgraded Earth from its unique HHH rating—the only one in the galaxy—to HH+. – Humor
