The future of the university
Everybody knows how important it is to slow down and reflect. And like us humans society too needs places where it can meditate and reflect. And universities should be such places.
Marcus Kracht
The Wealth of Nature
What do you get when you cross Adam Smith’s economic classic, The Wealth of Nations, with E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful? Something like John Michael Greer’s latest book, The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered. Greer not only diagnoses why most economists are usually wrong when they peer into the future, he explains why the exuberant growth of the fossil fuel age is ending and suggests some steps you can take for a less insecure economic future.
Fukushima – July 20
– First phase of work to contain nuke crisis completed: Japan
– Japan Won’t Rule Out Possibility Radioactive Fukushima Beef Was Exported
– Brittleness factor of aging reactors key restart criterion
– Japan Geiger Counter Demand After Fukushima Earthquake Means Buyer Beware
Skywatchers
Brought up with my teeth to the biting wind, weather was the constant reality, I knew its dangers and terribly resented the fact that I could not be home with my wife and children all the time. Fellow workers in the big building society seemed to have no notion of this kind of concern. I knew I didn’t belong there. Maybe no one did.
Liberation from civilization!
For many years the thesis of this blog has been: Our civilization is in its final century, and there is nothing we can do to prevent its collapse. When I began writing this, I was largely dismissed as a defeatist and a depressed “doomer” (or worse). As awareness has grown about the now-inevitable end of (a) cheap energy, (b) stable climate and (c) the growth economy, there is a growing acknowledgement that the collapse scenario I have written about is at least conceivable.
Reading the world in a loaf of bread: Soaring food prices, wild weather, upheaval, and a planetful of trouble
What can a humble loaf of bread tell us about the world? The answer is: far more than you might imagine. For one thing, that loaf can be “read” as if it were a core sample extracted from the heart of a grim global economy. Looked at another way, it reveals some of the crucial fault lines of world politics, including the origins of the Arab spring that has now become a summer of discontent.
Biofuels – 20 July
-Biofuel demand in US driving higher food prices, says report
-EU powers ahead with ‘sustainable’ biofuel certification schemes
-Lufthansa begins flights with biofuels
-US Air Force: We want to use biofuels
What happens when you open the streets for people
The streets are commons that belong to everyone. So imagine diverting traffic from a major street in your neighborhood, then welcoming families on bikes, families on foot, babies in strollers, people in wheelchairs, toddlers on training wheels, grade schoolers on skateboards, teenagers on single-speeds, hipsters on fixed gears, grandparents on recumbents, couples arm-in-arm and even yoga classes in the middle of the road. What would happen? If your neighborhood is anything like mine—which I am sure it is—get ready for a massive outbreak of smiles.
Starting down the permaculture path: Thoughts from a PDC student
People come to permaculture for all different reasons, but all through some shared understanding that we live in a world full of disconnects. Many of us feel disconnected from the sources of our food, water and energy, and equally as disconnected from our neighbors, our communities, and our government. We know about the problems and we think there must be solutions. But what draws people to permaculture (as opposed to other approaches) is that its solutions fit together. In a world full of disconnects, permaculture shows us how to make connections.
Don’t alienate conservatives, says Rob Hopkins
“Transition is much more powerful for not being explicitly political,” Rob Hopkins told a conference call of American Transitioners yesterday. “It’s better when Transition avoids associating itself with either the left or the right.” But in the US, where climate denial has become an article of faith for the right wing, can a movement committed to cutting greenhouse pollution community by community hope to stay under the political radar for long?
A greener revolution
There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to ending world hunger, and the pathways to reform are many. Collaboration between diverse stakeholders, integrating technical innovations, crop-livestock rotations, improving access to markets, pricing ecosystem services and supportive policy developments are all part of the answer.
Overcoming overconsumption before it consumes us!
“Transition towns, recycling, alternative power, enduring design; they are just attacking the symptoms. They are merely allowing us to continue living the way we are. They are buying us time. They are not embracing the root cause — our psychology.” Evolution and psychology explain our urge to consume, argues a new documentary film from the United Kingdom entitledConsumed — Inside the Belly of the Beast.
