Food & agriculture – Oct 7
– Costa Rica will pay the price for cheap fruit
– Farm-to-School’s Teachable Moment
– Ellen Thrives On Pinkerton and Hopkins’ ‘Local Food’
– Haitian Farmers: Growing Strength to Grow Food
Staff
Climate campaigns – Oct 6
– White House goes green with solar panels
– The New Yorker on how the Senate & White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change
– Business is changing the landscape of the climate battleground
– California’s Proposition 23: The Real Job Killer
Racing against finite petroleum supply
TOD’s contribution to Honda’s “Racing Against Time” thought leadership series.
Picking blackberries without bleeding to death
Carol has stories to tell about picking blackberries. For her family in Kentucky, wild blackberries were a cash crop. Her mother would sally forth into the puckerbrush with her children every summer to pick them by the gallon. They sold the berries along with other produce from garden and orchard at local farm markets. The blackberry money was used to buy new school shoes.
Peak oil & supplies – Oct 6
– Is Venezuela the Next Flashpoint for Oil?
– Iraq Is Back In The Game
– Jim Baldauf of ASPO-USA in “The Hill”: the end of oil as we know it
– Jeff Rubin: Depletion Is Economic, Not Just Geological, Concept
– Shale oil boom underlines importance of innovations on another fuel – oil shale
– LNG Trumped
Support groups for hard times
How can Transition Towns and Common Security Clubs help us navigate a changing economy and environment?
(Common security clubs are typically founded by people concerned about their economic security. These small groups of 10-25 adults are consciously breaking down the isolation and fear triggered by the 2008 economic meltdown.)
Web and media – Oct 6
– Why I Left My Publisher in Order to Publish a Book
– Twitter and Facebook cannot change the real world, says Malcolm Gladwell
– The Jewish Journal: Ten Commandments of social networking
– At Flagging Chicago Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture
Vegetable / herb seed swap
Seed swaps are lots of fun. People gather to exchange seeds, but at the same time they swap garden stories, garden tips, and generally connect with each other around food gardening.
Michigan conference on the future Nov. 11-14: energy, economy & environment
Keynote talks by Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth), Dr. Joe Tainter (author of “The Collapse of Complex Societies), Steve Keen (author of “Debunking Economics” and winner of the Revere Award), Richard Douthwaite (author of “The Ecology of Money”, David Korowicz (director for the Risk/Resilience Network), Chris Bedford (president of the Center for Economic Security), and Aaron Wissner (president of Local Future).
Premiere issue of “Transition Voice”
Welcome to the premiere issue of Transition Voice, the new online magazine covering the predicaments of peak oil, climate change, economic crisis, and the the Transition movement’s response.
When the market fails
The market does some crucial jobs so well that we’re tempted to make a quasi-religion of it. But at other jobs it fails: for example, at giving a timely signal to prepare for “peak oil.”
Work, exergy, the economy, money, and wealth
The economy is very much a physical process that requires energy to continue operating. All of the money in the world will not suffice to maintain the motivation of the wheels of industry unless it can be used to exchange for energy flow. Here is a guide regarding how the real wealth of nations is created and a more concise look at the nature of energy flow needed to do so.
