Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Anna Leach In focusing on soil, Camp Altiplano’s ultimate goal is to learn how to bring degraded land back to life. If current rates of global soil degradation continue, it’s estimated we may only have 60 years of farming left.
In this article, I would like to propose some ways that an exchange of knowledge and knowledge-sharing strategies between permaculture and degrowth would be beneficial for both movements. This argument is based on the idea that the most interesting and diverse areas of any system are located at the edge, where one system, community, or way of thinking intersects with another.
“Knowing that we need better jobs and a good environment? That’s all you need to know to tell your lawmakers,” Short says. “It’s up to us to express our will.”
Humans and our livestock now make up 97 percent of all animals on land. Wild animals (mammals and birds) have been reduced to a mere remnant: just 3 percent. This is based on mass. Humans and our domesticated animals outweigh all terrestrial wild mammals and birds 32-to-1.
Close to where I live is a project called Landworks. Landworks describes itself as “an independent charity providing a supported route back into employment and community for those in prison or at risk of going to prison”.
Local farming isn’t the only way to have an authentic relationship with the universe, local farmers aren’t necessarily immune from the siren song of nationalism, and not everyone who lives in the city mourns its implicit alienation.
This year, the US Worker Cooperative National Conference is being held in Los Angeles, California, but it will not be the first time cooperators have converged in the state. As cooperative historian John Curl documents below, California has a long history of cooperatives and collective action of all kinds.
A method being applied more widely in the food system today is an economic model called true cost accounting, which identifies and quantifies the total cost of food and agricultural production depending on the type of farming system.
James Kagwe, who runs a waste management collective called ‘Waste to Best’ in Naivasha Town in Kenya’s Rift Valley. His path has taken him from flower growing to street clean-ups, waste collection and waste management.
Many people, including myself, fear that the great acceleration (1, 2) of our consumption and destruction of resources such as land, biodiversity, soil, minerals, and fossil energy sources, could lead us into a catastrophe.
Comparing greenhouse gases with each other using GWP* preserves the link between emissions and warming or cooling of the atmosphere. Therefore, GWP* is better suited than GWP100 to assessing whether the world is on track to limit warming to well below 2C.
We may benefit if we simultaneously hold two extremes of action; both the huge, universal movements for ecology and justice and the daily, personal actions that help slightly and make us better examples to others.
