Jon Steinman

Deconstructing Dinner: Exploring Ethnobiology IV: (The immaterial components of food sovereignty)

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Exploring Ethnobiology is a new series Deconstructing Dinner has been airing since June. With seemingly more and more people becoming interested in developing closer relationships with our surroundings (our food, the earth), there’s much we can all learn from ethnobiologists, and in particular, from the symbiotic human-earth relationships that so many peoples around the world have long maintained. In the first half of the episode, we listen in on some of that discussion and in the second half, we listen to Associate Professor at Cornell University’s Department of Horticulture, Jane Mt. Pleasant, whose research has involved a fascinating comparative look into 17th/18th century cereal grain farming between the Iroquois people of what is now upstate New York and early European colonizers.

An atmosphere of crisis

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Interviews with Julian Cribb, author of The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do To Avoid It, and Dr. Tim Garrett, a physicist and cloud specialist from the Univeristy of Utah. He’s published two peer-reviewed papers showing a quick crash of the world economy is the only way to avoid wild inflation, and a world 5 degrees C (or more) hotter by 2100. And we visit with climate denial from France.

Peak Moment: ¿Cuánta comida puedo cultivar en mi casa?

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Uno de los mejores y más inspiradores capítulos de Peak Moment. En esta ocasión, Janaia Donaldson entrevista a Judy Alexandre, una mujer que ha convertido su jardín, y parte del de su vecino, en una auténtica mina de producción de alimentos. Descubre su ingenioso sistema para recoger y canalizar el agua de lluvia y conoce a sus abejas, lombrices y gallinas. Un verdadero Ejemplo Alternativo.

Peak Oil: Apocalypse or Promised Land?

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If we can’t honestly admit that staying the course means slamming into a brick wall at high-speed before the wreckage sails over a very high cliff we won’t make the necessary changes to do any more than stave off the inevitable–at best. The reality of the global situation today is that if you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention.

The IEA’s new peak

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For two weeks now the peak oil portion of cyberspace has been abuzz with commentary on the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) newly released World Energy Outlook 2010. Without missing a beat and without much explanation, the world’s leading compiler of everything about energy has gone from denying that conventional oil production will peak in our lifetime to saying it happened four years ago. Will wonders never cease!

It’s official: The economy is set to starve

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Once a year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) releases its World Energy Outlook (WEO), and it’s our tradition here at ChrisMartenson.com to review it. A lot of articles have already been written on the WEO 2010 report, and I don’t wish to tread an already well-worn path, but the subject is just too important to leave relegate to a single week of attention.

Aliens from inner space

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Now every year when winter approaches, as I watch to see which trees and bushes (other than evergreens) stay green the longest, this doughty bush always wins the contest. It outlasts weeping willows and peach trees, the usual runner-ups. I draw the kind of optimism from this strange plant that I need to head into cold weather with my chin up.

Economics 095, or, contribution to the preface to the end of “Economics”

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Despite the increasingly abstract and alienated nature of the world of exchange, its ability to wreak havoc on basic survival has only increased. It is therefore important to understand it, to work to find a way of extracting ourselves from it with minimal damage and disruption. But our imagination will be stunted and we won’t get much further if we don’t begin to talk about labor and production, about goods and necessities, about the value of things whose value is their usefulness.

Income to rise 564%, predicts Int’l Economics Agency

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The International Economics Agency today released their World Income Outlook, which predicts an incredible 564 percent increase in the median world income over the next three months. IEA Chief Economics Officer Brandon Blighted reports, “Our meticulous research clearly shows that an overwhelming majority of people, especially the Chinese, want more money – a lot more, in fact. With demand for income rising, it appears that the economy has little choice but to produce more well-paying jobs and excessive bonuses. That’s what we’re assuming, anyway.”