Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Jake Caldwell Egypt faces daunting challenges as it prepares for broad presidential and parliamentary elections within a year. Ongoing volatility in global food prices will strain resources during this critical transitional period. As the world’s largest importer of wheat, Egypt is acutely vulnerable to any surge in food prices. Wheat prices have risen 47 percent over the last year and other staples are rapidly approaching dangerously high levels.
Riots and toppling governments in the Middle East, states taking drastic measures to balance their budgets, oil and food prices rising. The implications of all this turmoil are enough to make me start breathing into a paper sack. I can’t affect what happens in Libya or Wisconsin, but I can take action where I am, not only on my (semi-) urban homestead but also in my neighborhood and city.
-Mexico goes back to the land
-Corn’s Domino Effect
-Stop the global land grab
-From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty: The Challenge of Social Movements
Libya is one of the smaller oil exporters in OPEC. They were producing 1.65 million barrels per day in 2010 (through October) according to EIA data. However, the very serious political upheaval in this North African country poses a genuine threat to that production.
In early February, 2011, Jules Dervaes of the Dervaes Institute, released letters saying that he had secured trademarks for the terms urban homestead and urban homesteading, roiling the larger community or urban homesteaders, from actual businesses and organizations to folks who do it just for fun. Fighting what they consider an injustice, the group set up petitions and a day of action to fight back. We covered the fracas last week, and now follow up with news on the origins of urban homesteading and profiles of two prominent city dwelling farmers.
-Revolutions could rob Opec of its ability to manipulate supply
-IEA sees oil price danger, ready to use stockpiles
-Saudi Denial Not What it Seems
-Judge Tells Government to Resume Permits for Drilling
-Gulf spill’s effects ‘may not be seen for a decade’
This, we are told, is part of “the war on the middle class.” But a way of seeing is a way of not seeing, and when we hear this phrase over and over again, we are turning away from the longer and more violent war on the poor.
Life is up to something. It is becoming more diverse and more complex. Not always, and not in every place, but as an average across all of time from the beginning of life. Life may not have a goal, but the trend is unmistakable. The first principle that organizes reality has been with us all along.
We live by the grace of invertebrates. They work around the clock, collect and dispose of our waste, replenish the soil, feed animals above them on the food chain and allow plants to return each spring. This time of year, as those of us in the northern hemisphere plan our gardens and sow our first seeds, we must remember to devote part of our garden to reimbursing the armies that work for us.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-World in Upheaval
-In the Congress
-Briefs
-Quote of the Week
Amid all the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, it is important to note that his two-term presidency kindled a philosophy that has undermined governance in the United States, run in the opposite direction from a sustainable economy, and exhibited hostility toward a clean energy basis for the global economy. This was not, however, a strategy shared broadly by the Republican Party at that time.
Consider the first 15 minutes after the Titanic hit the iceberg versus the last 15 minutes before the ship sank. In the first 15 minutes, only a handful of people knew that ship would sink, but that did not mean that the ship was not sinking. In the last 15 minutes, it was readily apparent to everyone that the ship was sinking, but by then it was far too late to try to get to a lifeboat.
