Alex Smith

Stake Your Acre Challenge

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I’m calling it the “stake your acre” challenge. And the sum of it is this – I want everyone who can to find an acre of land and tend it. There are so many profound pressures on the land and people around us – our places need us to take more responsibility for them, for keeping them safe, clean, humane, wild.

An Interview with Neil Adger: resilience, adaptability, localisation and Transition

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Professor Neil Adger is a lecturer and researcher at University of East Anglia. He is a researcher and teacher who specialises in social vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to environmental change; on justice and equity in decision-making; and the application of economics to global environmental change. He is a member of the Resilience Alliance, and is involved in a range of climate change research projects, including the IPCC and work for the Tyndall Centre.

Why are we propping up corn production, again?

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News flash: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a lousy product. As Tom Laskawy reported here Tuesday, a recent study by Princeton researchers found that rats fed chow laced with HFCS gained more weight than rats fed equal calories of table sugar. All processed sweeteners add empty calories to food; but calorie for calorie, HFCS appears to be even worse than white sugar. Although the two sweeteners have roughly the same fructose/glucose ratio, we mammals seem to metabolize the HFCS differently than we do cane sugar.

Food & agriculture – Mar 26

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-Is urban farming Detroit’s cash cow?
-Looming citrus disease could annihilate county’s trees
-The Great Sustainability Debate: Meat Or No Meat?
-The London Orchard Project: bringing fruit to car parks
-Don’t confuse manure tea with Earl Grey
-China faces ‘diabetes epidemic’, research suggests
-Big food push urged to avoid global hunger
-The Radical Necessity of Cooking: Mollie Katzen, Vegetablist

The Logic of Abundance

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Too many discussions of the future after peak oil start from the assumption that the only alternative to collapse is maintaining the arrangements for energy distribution and use we have today. This kind of thinking, rooted in a logic of abundance shaped by three extraordinary centuries of unparalleled energy glut, forms one of the principal barriers in the way of workable responses to a challenging future.

As Glaciers Melt, Bolivia Fights for the Good Life

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Bolivia is watching its glaciers melt, early casualties of a changing climate. As communities struggle to adapt and the government tries to pioneer an alternative way forward, rural Bolivians believe the answer lies not in consumerist striving to live better, but in learning to live well.

Will enhanced oil recovery be an oil supply savior?

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Oil supply optimists often say that the application of enhanced oil recovery techniques to existing and future wells will vastly expand oil reserves and oil production. The trouble is these techniques aren’t new, and they are already being widely applied. That means current oil reserves and production already reflect any effect they have had.