Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Richard Heinberg On Wednesday June 2, President Barack Obama called for an end to U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. Continuing reliance on oil, coal, and natural gas will, he said, “jeopardize our national security, it will smother our planet and it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”
Laura Allen gives an intimate tour of a home-built composting toilet in her Bay Area urban home. The nitrogen-rich composted “humanure” is used to fertilize the lush edible-food garden, and doesn’t waste precious drinking water like flush toilets. The co-founder of Greywater Action shows the throne-like toilet compartment whose distinctive feature is a urine diverter. Pee and poop are collected in separate containers beneath the toilet, and are accessed outside the house. Sterile pee is watered in at the base of plants, while poop is collected in barrels and aged for a year or more until it has composted fully. What a way to go!
Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one of the most interesting social movements to emerge in the last few years.” People have been talking about the “food movement” for a while, but I don’t think anyone has articulated its existence so clearly and in such an important publication.
Growing your own food can be a way to increase the security and health of your family in a world facing the multiple challenges of peak energy and resources, unpredictable and more severe climate, and financial uncertainty. At the same time, gardening may become more difficult due to the strange and shifting weather and uncertain consequences of peak oil. You can increase the resiliency of your garden in order to help deal with rapid changes in the economy, environment, and energy landscape.
Even though I spend a lot of time growing stuff and raising animals, I am an unreal farmer. A real farmer spends about half the year farming and the other half up at the FSA office trying to figure out how to cultivate the government.
-The Food Movement, Rising
-Economics and the nature of political crisis
-Being Realistic
-Educating for Democracy: What Motivates Children to Learn?
-Converging Crises: Reality, Fear and Hope
In this time of transition, two stories run through the culture. One is about continual growth and ascendancy. It’s mainstream culture’s story, the everyday world we’re familiar with. The other is the as yet little known story of radical change and descent as we enter the time of necessary simplification – reskilling, retooling, relocalizing.
As we struggle to fashion a livable future from the crumbling disaster of industrial civilization, we will need a general guide — and specifically, perhaps, a guiding document. This is my attempt at fashioning such a document from the accumulated wisdom of our great teachers. I invite (implore!) others to improve on my efforts. I feel this might actually turn into something that helps — something lasting and important. Heck, it’s worth a try.
There is a way we can stretch our oil use, decrease our involvement in the Middle East, reduce climate change, dramatically lower the number of traffic deaths, extend the life of our cars and increase neighbourhood safety all at once. It’s called driving slowly.
-Why America should thank BP
-Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it
-BP oil spill: Shares fall further
-BP’s OTHER Spill this Week
-The real cost of cheap oil
-What Will it Take to End Our Oil Addiction?
The [US] Materials Management Service report claims that the ecological consequences of an oil spill could be ignored because such an event was “unlikely,” and besides, “no additional mitigation measures” would be needed in the event of a spill.* We now know that this was a horrendous mistake. Here, as in many other cases, the questions people ask are instrumental in creating the future they manifest.
A weekly review including:
– Oil and the Global Economy
– Deepwater Horizon
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
