Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Brandon Jordan It Takes Roots is a coalition of people of color from groups such as the Indigenous Environmental Network and Cooperation Jackson. They went to COP 23 to pressure officials and government representatives like Jerry Brown — who are there to work on specific goals to reduce carbon emissions — as well as to highlight the damage caused to frontline groups, such as indigenous people.
I think and hope that many from both left and right of politics would consider it a relief to sink into the comfort of a gently applauding ancestry. Of course, the applause is in our imagination, but that imagination narrates the unwinding tale of Everyman’s place – her identity; her terrain; her culture. Hey! Storytellers narrate, farmers farm, fiddlers tap my feet and shoemakers make shoes – and good, ordinary, proper architects design possibly-good permacultures – on the page – not on the land. The page is a wonderful thing and all may do better by opening the book.
When I talk to my elderly neighbours, or read interviews with people from earlier eras, one of the things that most comes through about their childhoods, and seems dramatically different than the way children are raised today, is how far and freely they roamed. Unlike most modern children, they did not spend most of their time indoors watching television or playing video games, or following one adult-led activity after another.
Two Pennsylvania children and a Philadelphia-based environmental organization filed suit on Monday against the Trump administration for its gutting of climate regulations, laws, and policies—actions which show the government’s “reckless and deliberate indifference to the established clear and present dangers of climate change.”
So, is mineral depletion an existential threat to human civilization? Or is it just a marginal problem that can be fixed by some technological improvements? This is truly a fundamental question for the future of humankind. An answer is provided by the latest report to the Club of Rome that was published in 2017, “The Seneca Effect.”
We no longer think of food as medicine, or expect it to be medicine. We are more often concerned about the negative aspects, avoiding the unhealthy foods we shouldn’t eat. Plants have provided our medicine for most of human history.
Oil prices leveled off last week with New York futures closing at $56.74, up more than $20 a barrel since June. Brent closed about $7 higher at $63.52. As has become normal these days, multiple factors impacted the oil prices last week pulling the markets in both directions.
Somewhere — the gravel road I grew up on, the wharf I fished from, the woods at the end of the road where we roamed, the edge of the bayou where we fought off pirates to keep them from landing — is no longer. It is now an anywhere of pavement, sidewalks, Walmarts, hotels, casinos, and housing developments. Anywhere is nowhere.
Our egalitarian hunter-gatherer ancestors developed sophisticated social technologies for keeping upstarts in check. What can the popular resistance movement learn from them in confronting the worst excesses of Donald Trump? The recent election results in Virginia and elsewhere suggest that the tide may be turning away from the egregious behavior exhibited by Donald Trump, and back toward a sense of decency in American politics. How can we keep that momentum going over the next three years?
What happens in the Arctic doesn’t just stay up north. It affects the world, as that region is the integrator of our planet’s climate systems, atmospheric and oceanic. At the moment, the northernmost places on Earth are warming at more than twice the global average, a phenomenon whose impact is already being felt planetwide. Welcome to the world of climate breakdown — and to the world of Donald Trump.
A recent report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems identifies these five mechanisms whereby the current food system makes people sick. The report calls for a reform of the food and farming systems to be made on the grounds of protecting human health. Many of the most severe health are caused by core industrial food and farming practices, such as chemical-intensive agriculture; intensive livestock production and the mass production and mass marketing of ultra-processed foods. They are in turn stimulated by the deregulated global trade.
The Appalachian region, home to 25 million people, comprises of West Virginia and parts of twelve of its surrounding states, reaching as far north as New York and south to Mississippi and Alabama. Certain areas of the region are known for high levels of poverty and infant mortality rates and low life expectancies. The region is also home to a number of sharing initiatives, from community gardens to coworking spaces, that aim to connect people to various resources and to each other.
