Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Rob Hopkins The film’s power lies in the sections voiced by ordinary people, the Chinese teenager talking about how he loves America because everyone is happy there, the two Detriot urban food growers standing by their vegetable beds, and the two Ladakhi women looking, bemused and upset, at the lonely residents of a London old peoples’ home.
Gardening in the forest requires a much different approach than vegetable or landscape gardening…Unlike a vegetable garden or a flower garden or a field of wheat or corn, a forest garden can provide all the necessities of a human economy, especially at the small scale of a homestead or village. History confirms this. But to reap these harvests requires an economy that is in most of its features the opposite of the economy that we have now and that organizes our world.
At the same time, it’s important to have a realistic understanding of efficiency’s limits. Boosting energy efficiency requires investment, and investments in energy efficiency eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. Just as there are limits to resources, there are also limits to efficiency. Efficiency can save money and lead to the development of new businesses and industries. But the potential for both savings and economic development is finite.
In my layman’s cosmology, the anthropic principle says this: our existence implies that the universe must take the shape it does or we wouldn’t be here to perceive it. A universe with even minutely different physical laws wouldn’t include us (which isn’t to say that such universes don’t exist).
…I have suggested that revolts in so-called developing countries can be predicted not only by the fraction of educated youth who are unemployed and other factors, but also by the fraction of household budget spent for food. Now we might ask of developed countries: to what extent will voters tolerate extreme inequality if the standard of living of a large majority of them no longer gradually rises or at least seems to remain stable, but actually declines noticeably?
Some say it is senseless to advocate a steady state unless we first have attained, or can at least specify, the optimal level at which to remain stationary. On the contrary, it is useless to know the optimum unless we first know how to live in a steady state. Otherwise knowing the optimum level will just allow us to wave goodbye to it as we grow beyond it—or as we “degrow” below it.
Nobody writes about class in America and about America’s unacknowledged class war like Joe Bageant. Dubbed the “Sartre of Appalachia,” Joe writes about America’s largest, yet invisible to most, class — 60 million poor, undereducated white laborers. These are the folks who as Joe notes are on the other side of “the shower line” — those who pull off their sweaty work clothes and take their showers after their back-breaking day’s physical labor as opposed to those who shower and dress far more finely before heading off to work.
(Joe Bageant died March 26, 2011.)
I think it’s this sudden growth of biofuels that is the main shock to the global food system that has led to a reversal of the decades long fall in prices, and in fact price spikes in the last five years.
The great Sendai earthquake of March 10th should, however, teach us that the unexpected does happen, and there’s no time to prepare for it — except beforehand.
In a war zone, you have your vanguard. Then you have your tanks, your main body of troops, and your artillery. If all that fails, and you are being overrun, there is your rear guard. If they fail, and you cannot retreat, all is lost.
Here are some suggestions from my soon to be published (released May 30, 2011) ebook: “’I Can’t Believe You Think That!’ Relationship Struggles around Peak Oil, Climate Change and Economic Hard Times”
– Record gas prices blamed on peak oil (David Hughes interview)
– US incomes rise, but disposable income drops. Blame oil prices.
– New Scientist: Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels
