The new food movement: politics and pleasure
Food has become – to use an older phrase now being recycled by contemporary activists – the “edible dynamic” at the heart of mainstream economic and environmentalist debates.
Geoff Andrews
Communications – A new narrative
How do you tell a downstory? Downstories are hard to find in our culture. There are plenty of upstories that don’t work out that act like scary cautionary tales (if you don’t make it to the ball, you never get out of that fireplace and will always wear rags). But how do you go about telling the story of Transition, of the energy descent we have to make as individuals and as a people? How do you turn the coach back into a pumpkin and the princess back into someone who can tend a fire?
Confronting climate collapse
How we think about climate destabilization has a great deal to do with how we talk about it. For example, we do not face merely a “warming” of the Earth, but rather a worsening destabilization of, well, almost everything. We are rapidly making a different and less hospitable planet, one that Bill McKibben calls “Eaarth.”
Another bite out of life
But one thing is for sure. The malfunctioning at the nuclear plant is but one of the bites out of life stemming from the human failure to recognize, much less plan for, the high price and growing risks of economic growth.
Energy – April 5
– Brent jumps to 2-1/2 year peak
– VOA: Libyan Rebels Preparing to Export Oil
– Chomsky: Libya and the World of Oil
– 6 surprising ways oil prices affect you
– BBC: Over a Barrel
– Jim Rogers on the Dangers of Price Inflation, the Promise of Commodities and America’s Continued Decline
– Can ‘peak oil’ help slow climate change?
Laying hedgerows
The principle of a hedgerow is simple, but laying them was a respected skill in traditional Ireland and England, one that took years to learn. Every year farmers would take a few days out to maintain their hundreds of metres of hedge, re-weaving or pruning the new growth, and each area had its own style and method. Ireland has hedge-laying groups, festivals and specialists, and some take pride in maintaining the same hedges that have existed for decades.
Business Development: The Cavalry’s on the Way
Regardless of the industry, "Most companies tend to use the same standard systems and more and more companies arrive at a situation where time and cost have been reduced to a minimum." It is bitterly ironic that so much success could lead to an ultimate failure to find further paths toward innovation and earnings.
A film review: ‘Gasland’
The second half of the oil age will be very, very different from the first half. The first half was awash with cheap, easy-to-find and easy-to-produce oil and gas. The second half will be the story of expensive-to-produce hydrocarbons, from increasingly inaccessible places … Unless we are able to break our addiction to hydrocarbons sooner rather than later, it will be a wretched and increasingly desperate time of squeezing fuel out of anything we can.
What is adapting in place?
So what is Adapting In Place anyway? I’m writing a book about it (coming out next fall), I talk about it a lot, but what exactly am I getting at? It is partly about preparedness, both individual and community, partly about changing expectations, partly about achieving a kind of balance. It seems pedestrian in a way – lots of questions about how to do the laundry and keep food cool and work with your neighbors – ordinary things. Trivial seeming things.
Octogenarian recalls the First Great Depression
Rowena spoke about people giving them hand-me-down clothes and a bag of groceries from time to time. “But we never felt deprived,” she told me. “And having hand-me-downs is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Turning storm water into productive water
Today, cities face substantial barriers to effective water management due to the sheer extent of non-permeable surfaces such as pavement and concrete. During rain events, the main function of these impervious surfaces is to concentrate and dispose of water as quickly as it arrives, sending it to storm sewers where it inevitably ends up in creeks, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Not only is this poor water management, but unfiltered water can cause major damage to ecosystems!
Cities, Towns, and Suburbs: Local goverment in a time of peak oil and climate change
Many responses to peak oil urge individual and community solutions, ignoring government. They argue that since government hasn’t done anything to address the problem, citizens and businesses must take matters into their own hands. Some even argue that government is part of the problem, particularly federal and state governments. This attitude is shortsighted.
