Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Mathew Lawrence August 1 was Earth Overshoot Day, the date when we have taken more from nature than it can renew in an entire year. Unsustainable extraction is occurring on a planetary scale: we are using natural resources 1.7 times faster in 2018 than the Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate this year.
At The Future of UK Farming conference this April, The Sustainable Food Trust’s Patrick Holden chaired a session on “Measuring and Valuing Sustainability”. The panel discussed how to transform the economic environment for sustainable food production by empowering farmers to deliver measurable public goods.
When people invoke the “new normal,” Stamper says they’re not referring to an unchanging, static condition, but rather “a measure of uncertainty and worsening danger.” In other words, the cliche conveys exactly the message that climate scientists want to convey.
A fascinating new piece of research on Transition has just been published, entitled Transitioning towards Sustainability: What are we waiting for?. The Masters thesis explores Transition in Ungersheim, a fascinating village in the Alsace in France which is home to a remarkable experiment in Transition.
The more I study the story of the Roman Empire, the more I see the similarities with our world. Of course, history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it is impressive to note how with the start of the collapse of the Western Empire, the Roman elites abandoned the people to build themselves strongholds in safe places.
Oil prices fell last week mostly on concerns that the looming US-China trade war would stifle demand. There was a short-lived rally on Thursday after the stocks report showed a 3.8 million barrel increase in total crude stocks mostly due to lower exports, but a 1.1 million drop in the inventory at Cushing, Okla.
Truly, this isn’t much on which to build an optimistic view of the current rural-urban divide. Yet as I mentioned in my piece A Great Divide, the hard work of dialog will be left to us — town and country, middle America and the coasts — to create anew a language of respect and understanding.
The central, overarching question on which all sides apparently agree is this: To avoid disastrous climate change and environmental destruction, how are we humans to manage our land such that the land regenerates, biodiversity increases, and carbon is sequestered?
The organization’s Ark of Taste initiative is cataloging indigenous species of fruits and vegetables all over the world. And every 2 years, Slow Food brings members together to celebrate Terra Madre, or Mother Earth, at Salone del Gusto in Turin, Italy.
As temperatures bust heat records across the globe and wildfires rage from California to the Arctic, a new report produced annually by more than 500 scientists worldwide found that last year, the carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere reached the highest levels “in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years.”
Among a number of movements, civil society organisations and campaigns addressing the agrarian crisis and the effects of industrial agriculture in India, the permaculture movement is fast gaining ground among subsistence farmers and proponents of alternative agriculture.
Since its founding 50 years ago — when it became both the first Smithsonian museum located off the National Mall and the first federally-funded community museum in the country — the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum has served as an interactive space, engaging local residents in the power of neighborhood storytelling.
