Sharon Astyk

Rabbit-fed pigs and farmers as teachers

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I am on record as believing that the de-industrialization of our agriculture is both wise and inevitable – I do not believe we will have the wealth, the energy resources or the ability to absorb the outputs of our present agricultural model over the long term, and that because such a transition is necessary, we’d be better off doing it sooner than later, and more gradually than not. I believe in the necessity of that transition, and I also believe it is viable to drop the energy intensiveness of our agriculture dramatically while still feeding people…

Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan website launched today!!

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It gives me the greatest pleasure this morning to launch the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan website. The site makes the full version of the UK’s first EDAP freely available, invites comments and discussion, and will act as a dynamic portal for people to discuss the Plan and reshape subsequent revisions.

China’s coal bubble…and how it will deflate U.S. efforts to develop “clean coal”

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The conventional wisdom in energy-and-environment circles is that China’s economy, which is growing at a rate of eight percent or more per year, is mostly coal powered today and will continue to be so for decades to come…Most of this conventional wisdom is correct, but some of it is plain wrong—so wrong, in fact, that environment-, economic-, and energy-policy wonks are constructing scenarios for the future of U.S. and world energy, and for the global economy, that bear little or no resemblance to the reality that is unfolding.

Industry leaders seem to be showing more openness to energy descent issues

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I’ve spent the last two days at the Institute for the Future’s Ten-Year Forecast retreat in Sausalito, CA…At this retreat, I introduced ideas relating to peak net energy, and the possibility of major changes in the years ahead. I found industry leaders much more open than I had expected to listening to and understanding our energy predicament, and talking about what may be ahead. In this post, I would like to tell you about my experience.

Faces & visions of the food movement: Sam Mogannam

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Sam Mogannam is the much-loved owner of San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market, Bi-Rite Creamery, and founder of 18 Reasons, a community space that invites people to explore art, food, and community…With his market and his devotion to people, and farmers in particular, he’s brought back the family-owned grocery and created a renewed sense of community in this pocket of the Mission District (and also my neighborhood). I sat down with him in his office above the store recently to interview him as the first in a series of perspectives on folks around the country who are making a difference in the effort to transform our food system.

Worse than 1789?

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Senator Levin pretty much had Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein dead in a casket with that now-notorious email from GS’s head of sales and trading, Tom Montag, describing one of their billion-dollar investment “products” as “one shitty deal.” Levin seemed to delight in crossing the boundary into the realm of the unspeakable, knowing that even the so-called “family” newspapers and cable TV networks would have to report it. And just to make sure nobody missed the point, the senator repeated that phrase at least twenty times before the day was over.

Peak oil, prices, and supplies – May 4

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-BP Fought Safety Measures at Deepwater Oil Rigs
-Toyota’s Bill Reinert on Peak Oil
-How Bad Is the Oil Spill? Ask the Pelicans
-Asean members try to forge agreement on oil and gas rich Spratly Islands
-Track the Gulf of Mexico oil spill movement in animated graphic
-Response options for BP oil spill

Conservation and the Community Garden: One Suburban Model That Works

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Conservation efforts are surely the only sane response to the insane destruction accelerating all around us. But what should we spend our time conserving, and how can we maximize success? In this essay I discuss my local community garden as a conservation project and the factors that I believe are making it successful.

The trophic theory of money

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We can only hope that last week’s edition of The Daly News finds its way into the monetary policy arena, but without the cartoon. Something is very wrong with an image of Herman Daly holding a money bag from which a tree is sprouting. The brainy proportioning of Herman is nicely done, but the relationship between the money bag and the tree is completely backwards.