Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Liz Borkowski As the global supply of fossil fuels shrink and oil gets more expensive, foods that have to be shipped long distances – and particularly those that have to be refrigerated in transit – will become much harder to afford. Urban agriculture, which already seems to be undergoing something of a renaissance, will become more necessary.
In most legal systems, you have a right to freedom of speech or religion, but you don’t have a right to breathe clean air or drink safe water.
I read Michael Brownlee’s recent piece “The Evolution of Transition in the US”, with a mixture of fascination and a sense of disquiet that increased the deeper I got into the piece. The concept of Transition has been regularly critiqued, a positive process which has helped to shape what it is today. Most critiques run along the lines of “Transition, nice idea, but it isn’t [ … ] enough”. So, for Alex Steffen, Transition isn’t technologically savvy or optimistic enough, for the Trapese Collective it isn’t politically savvy enough, for John Michael Greer it is guilty of “premature triumphalism”, for Ted Trainer it isn’t sufficiently rooted in alternative culture or focused enough, while for others it is too riven with New Age thinking and pseudoscience. Now, according to Brownlee, it is fatally flawed by not having the “Sacred” at the heart of what it does.
It is no small thing to shift the burden of proof. Yet that is what Lawn and Clarke, and their colleagues, have done in this remarkable study. The presumption in the “empty world” has been that growth in GDP is “economics” in the sense that it increases benefits faster than costs, as well as in the sense that this thing we call the economy is getting physically bigger. Lawn and Clarke have shown that in a large part of today’s “full world” growth in GDP often costs more than it is worth at the margin, and thus should be called “uneconomic” growth.
– Leaked cables reveal Saudi minister of petroleum helped craft toothless Copenhagen climate accord
– WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord
– WikiLeaks cables: Seven key things we’ve learned so far
– “We Have Not Seen Anything Yet”: Guardian Editor Says Most Startling WikiLeaks Cables Still to be Released
– Ongoing coverage
– Nassim Taleb looks at what will break, and what won’t
– Tea Party & Cars
– Post Carbon Politics, Intro
– Slow Money: Reconnecting The Economy To Soil, Biodiversity and Food Quality, By Woody Tasch
– UK economic recovery ‘poses threat to environment’
– Robert Rapier reviews “The Impending World Energy Mess” by Hirsch et al
– Crude Oil Futures Increase to 25-Month High in New York as Dollar Tumbles
– Coal and Cancun
– U.K. Natural Gas – An Early December 2010 Status Report
– Next Generation Democracy: What the Open Source Revolution Means for Power, Politics, and Change
– Cyber-Con (US government and the online revolution)
– The Atlantic: The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange
– Forbes: An Interview With WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange
– Ron Paul: ‘What we need is more WikiLeaks’
– Is WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange a Hero? Glenn Greenwald & Steven Aftergood debate
– Pepe Escobar: Cracks in the wilderness of mirrors
– Steve LeVine: Why diplomats secretly love WikiLeaks
– On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy
– Dispatches from a beleaguered America in imperial retreat
– State Department To Columbia University Students: DO NOT Discuss WikiLeaks On Facebook, Twitter
– US blocks access to WikiLeaks for federal workers
– Cyber-Con (quotes on transparency from Obama and Clinton)
For many decades, America’s global leadership success has been attributed to its robust and rigorous public higher education system. The business model upon which U.S. public higher education is built has rendered it unaffordable to students, and it is in fragile fiscal health. There is little accountability. This article discusses that transition and offers a solution: an online education environment that capitalizes on the power of digital technologies, rich content, open learning systems, and the sharing of capabilities across campus boundaries to engage students already comfortable with online interactivity.
Long a proven technology in Europe, green roofs are becoming increasingly common in U.S. cities, with major initiatives in Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C. While initially more expensive than standard coverings, green roofs offer some major environmental — and economic — benefits.
