Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
John Michael Greer Too often even those people who are striving for sustainable ways of living find it hard to shake off the notions of linear resource use fostered by our ecologically dysfunctional culture. This week’s post explores ways around this blockage, using soil nutrients as a starting place.
In what may be President Obama’s most significant foray into changing U.S.-Africa policy since his election in 2008, the United States is embarking on a new initiative to boost agricultural production in the global south. Feed the Future (FTF) came out of the G8 summit in L’Aquila in 2009 where developed country leaders committed to acting to “achieve sustainable global food security.” Obama pledged $3.5 billion over three years toward this goal, in hopes that other rich nations would also make significant investments in agricultural development.
Unlike conventional fossil fuels, where nature provided energy over millions of years to convert biomass into energy-dense solids, liquids, and gases–requiring only extraction and transportation technolgy for us to mobilize them–alternative energy depends heavily on specially engineered equipment and infrastructure for capture or conversion, essentially making it a high-tech manufacturing process.
-Engineers Use Rocket Science for Self-Sufficient Wastewater Treatment
-World’s first grid-scale flywheel energy plant to go online soon
-Oxy-fuel concept sustains electricity grid demand
-China orders polluting and unsafe factories to shut down
-Shorter, cheaper vacations the new normal
-The Work-Sharing Boom: Exit Ramp to a New Economy?
-Work-Life Balance Reconsidered
-It’s official: We’re all burnt out
Every year the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) holds a conference where legislators from all over the U.S. gather for updates on major policy concerns. This year the organization found that issues surrounding the future of nation’s energy supply were becoming of such paramount importance to state governments that it set up a task force to study the issues; produced a report on meeting the energy challenges; and devoted a whole day prior to the annual meeting to an “Energy Policy Summit.” … A key unstated issue was completely ignored: resource depletion
Oil and safe drinking water are on parallel courses to depletion – a scarcity that will lead to starvation, disease and warfare. The issue here is drinking water. And there is a lot less of that than seawater. Due to a number of management issues, made worse by climate change, drinking water is fast becoming a geopolitical resource to rival oil – a flashpoint at various places around the globe.
But let us not for a second believe that this drama is not staged, that all these foundations of consumerism (though less so the consumerism) are not fully approved and applauded by the writers, reporters, and editors of NPR, even if they should be forgiven for knowing not what they do. For there is no reluctance to talk about the “good news from Wall Street” or the “positive developments in consumer spending,” not an instant of caution or reflective ambivalence.
In a “powered down” future—the one almost certain to follow the end of the era of “Hydrocarbon Man”—the practical size of my collapsed world (and yours) could well be defined like this: How far can we walk away from home and back again in a single day?
My own answer? About ten miles. And that’s optimistic…This is the pivotal moment when the story of my life officially becomes the story of this place.
Dave Gardner’s upcoming documentary looks at modern society and asks, why are we behaving irrationally? There’s overwhelming evidence we’ve reached the limits to growth, yet we continue in our addiction. In searching for a cure, Dave starts with the need to tell different stories and shares examples from several folks he’s interviewed. He highlights an amusing segment which depicts a family’s impacts remaining in their yard! This “crowd-produced” film will also show activities at the community level which could make a huge positive difference. (www.growthbusters.org).
Everyone agrees: our economy is sick. The inescapable symptoms include declines in consumer spending and consumer confidence, together with a contraction of international trade and available credit. Add a collapse in real estate values and carnage in the automotive and airline industries and the picture looks grim indeed.
On the good hoe, the angle of blade to handle is more acute, so that when the hoer chops down, the blade meets the earth at a slicing angle— more easily skims through weeds or soil surface. The muscular effort involved is appreciably less. The old hoe makers knew a thing or two about hoeing that has evidently become lost to new hoe makers.
