Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – How the Recession Changed Us (graphic)
– Gail Tverberg: Oil Limits Overview
– The Japan Myth
– East and west converge on a problem
– Global Crisis – A Russian Perspective (Boris Kagarlitsky interview)
– Marx at a book signing, speaks on crisis
One of the main enablers of a demographic shift away from a rural-agrarian population to an urban-industrial one is the combine. The combine removes most labor from agriculture for the most critical crops: edible grains, legumes and oil seeds. Seeds are a highly portable, storable and versatile class of food, allowing civilizations to trade and buffer against shortages. Most calories now consumed derive directly or indirectly from seeds.
Some economists have high hopes for 2011. The stock market has broken 11,000 and many predict GDP growth. I don’t necessarily see a rising stock market and GDP as indicators of economic health, especially since the vast majority of stock market gains goes to a very small minority of people. The stock market may zoom, GDP may grow, but what will be happening to the majority of people – considering the forces and trends that are in play? Maybe it’s my pessimistic side, but I continue to have some major concerns about the economy…
At the end of my visit, I came away feeling that Detroit has quite a bit to teach the rest of us about how to build a local economy from the ground up.
In one of the last entries for 2010 on Transition Culture Rob Hopkins posts his interview with Christopher Alexander, a discussion of the links between A Pattern Language and the new Transition ingredients. At some point the architect and writer’s wife, Maggie enters the conversation: “If Transition was successful, what the community would feel – it would feel like home. Simple. Everyone can feel that feeling. You know it when you see it; it just feels like home…
Coal will not be able to replace the other fossil fuels. Whether extraction peaks in 2011 or in 2050, the probabilities of coal on its own being able to help the world avoid the Olduvai cliff are slim at best.
Certainly, this fossil fuel can still become more relevant as a fuel in some regions of the world.
This can occur in the US for instance, if reported reserves are anywhere near a geological reality. In such places, coal can provide time for a smoother transition to a fully renewable energy paradigm, but on a global scale, the panorama is entirely different.
For states or nations that are net importers today but do not possess realistic reserve perspectives, the use of coal is more a thing of the past than of the future.
– Gwynne Dyer: The Future of Food Riots
– Andrew Revkin: Beyond the Eternal Food Fight
– At least 14 dead in Tunisian riots over rising food prices
– Latest Food Crisis Brewing for Months
Despite blanket media coverage of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, there has been little discussion of the fact that Assange is merely one leader within a large and complicated social movement, the “free culture movement.” The present situation was predicted by visionary hackers over thirty years ago, and they set out to ensure the victory of free culture over proprietary culture, open organisation over closed, and privacy over Big Brother.
-If Shale Gas Is a Game-Changer, Why Are All the Major Producers Looking for Oil?
-Natural Gas: Continually Running Into New Obstacles
-Pennsylvania’s Drilling Wastewater Released to Streams, Some Unaccounted For
-Fracking the life out of Arkansas and beyond
Efforts to organize the unemployed are going on around the country, with informal groups such as UWAG, and official efforts by the AFL-CIO and some individual unions (eg., the Machinists), but these fall well short of what’s necessary to put these folks back to work. That’s why it’s time for the 80% solution. It’s a fresh idea that solves a number of problems: unemployment, work-family pressure, and an impoverished civic sphere.
By integrating poverty alleviation with environmental conservation, microforestry eases market pressure on indigenous forests, restores degraded landscapes, and helps Africa’s farmers—the majority of whom are women—make life-long investments in their families’ futures.
America has food taboos just as powerful as the Levitican prohibitions against pork or boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, and for most people, until recently, they are about constituting ourselves as unrelated to our agrarian past.
