Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Christine Patton 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.
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.
As elsewhere in the region, the main foreign powers involved — France, Spain, and the US — don’t seem to care much as long as the oil and gas flows, the country implements World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs to modernize the oil industry to increase output, and their ‘strategic interests’ are protected. As long as these things happen, the country can go to hell in a hand basket – as it has. None of them have lifted a finger in protest to government practices and corruption.
-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’
-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
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.
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.
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.
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.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-World in Upheaval
-In the Congress
-Briefs
-Quote of the Week
The standard economic assumption is that, as a resource becomes scarce, prices will rise until some other resource that can fill the same need becomes cheaper by comparison. What really happens, when there is no ready substitute, can perhaps best be explained with the help of a little recent history and an old children’s story.
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.
