Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Sharon Astyk At every level, regulation stands to make it harder and harder to be a small scale producer of food – whether a farmer or a cook. And, of course, it makes it harder to be an eater as well. All of those regulations are going to have to be reconsidered if we are going to have a truly local food system, or a local economy for that matter.
Some parts of the world, including much of China, use far too much fertilizer. But in sub-Saharan Africa, where 250 million people remain chronically malnourished, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrient inputs are inadequate to maintain soil fertility.
In many parts of the world, common resources are still an essential basis of society. Additionally, several new communities which base their practice on the shared goal of creating and preserving a commons have emerged.
As Iraq runs dry, a plague of snakes is unleashed
African farms becoming too hot to handle
Warming may outstrip Africa’s ability to feed itself
Climate change hits China’s ‘poor hardest’
Learning to live with climate change will not be enough
Why we need the national academy of sciences to study peak oil
Peak flow rates, not peak oil?
The pitfalls of natural gas as the default climate change option
GM preparing for high oil prices: chief executive
Santa Cruz group gears up for life after cheap oil (Transition)
From crisis comes hope (can a weary Left come up with new ideas?)
Newfoundland/Labrador premier captures the flag from the oil patch
Greenpeace hands out fake copies of International Herald Tribune
Blowing the green whistle on sports
If you actually care about limiting the worst of climate change, Waxman-Markey is a disastrous bill. It enriches the powerful at the expense of the poor world and ordinary Americans. It fails to do anything useful, or to even address the science… And it is the only shot we’ve got, at least for a while, at getting one passed. I hate it. I support it.
Multinationals eye up lithium reserves beneath Bolivia’s salt flats
Will fertiliser scarcity harm farm economy?
Pressure over land rights to increase, conference told
California’s hard times driving people back to the ‘Dust Bowl’
Retailers Head for Exits in Detroit
Too Poor to Make the News
Urban Farming, a Bit Closer to the Sun
A food system without fossil fuels (Michael Bomford Interview) – audio
Philly’s fresh-food triumph: Nationally admired program opens supermarkets for underserved
Globesity: How climate change and obesity draw from the same roots
Marijuana and Cocaine Should Be Legalized, Says Latin American Drugs Commission
Stand up for rural America while you still can
For me a boat easily fit into my collection of human powered vehicles, yet was something new that I hadn’t tried before as an adult. And here it was entering my consciousness as a post-collapse survival tool, the context by which I justified my investments of time and money. But was a boat a survival tool or an expensive new toy? It was not as though I could commute in a boat as I would on a bicycle.
