Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Tyler Jenkins One month after seeding, we headed back to Eastern North Carolina to check in on the first organic hemp seed trial in the state under the new pilot program. What we could see immediately upon surveying the plots was a refreshing sight – clear germination and growth, differentiation amongst the varieties, and patches of heavy sprouting.
The Standing Rock standoff over the Dakota Access Pipeline was a reminder that colonization, and resistance to it, both exist in the present tense. Fossil fuel pipelines that despoil indigenous lands and waters have become key flashpoints in long-standing anti-colonial resistance. An important precursor and inspiration for the Standing Rock camp is an indigenous occupation in northern British Columbia, Canada.
We are currently facing the most severe migration crisis in history. But this is only one dimension of a broader civilizational crisis. Thus, anti-racist movements should not focus solely on issues of human mobility rights, but also build new paths of solidarity with societies in the geopolitical Global South.
The US electricity system is often described as the world’s largest machine. It is also incredibly diverse, reflecting the policy preferences, needs and available natural resources of each state. Carbon Brief has plotted the nation’s power stations in an interactive map (above) to show how and where the US generates electricity.
Ex-hurricane Ophelia smashed into Ireland Monday morning with record-breaking gusts of up to 119 mph. The powerful extra-tropical storm — which has already killed two people and blacked-out some 360,000 Irish homes and businesses — is what’s left of the most powerful Eastern Atlantic hurricane ever seen.
If disasters related to droughts, floods, and other extreme weather seem more common globally, it’s because they are: according to a United Nations study, between 2005 and 2014, an average of 335 weather-related disasters occurred per year, nearly twice the level recorded from 1985 to 1995.
Our world is experiencing a dark wood that appears to stretch to the horizon and beyond. A dark wood in which there are no maps, because we have created a forest empty of the stories that connect us back to our deeper soul, to our natural ground, to our understanding that we are all connected. When we lose our stories we lose this common ground, that which holds us and grounds us in a sense of the whole.
As many of you know, permaculture will often have you disappear down a rabbit hole, if not an entire warren. Or, in permaculture-speak, will take you off the well-beaten track to explore those infamous edges. The Hornshurst Forest Garden is one such edge. It is an acre site, deer and rabbit fenced, within a much larger 160 acre wood. I have been designing it for the wood owner, Doro Marden, for about 3 years.
In this moment of massive wealth inequality, we urgently need to develop a new model for society to deliver both social and economic equity. The answer may be in the concept of Universal Basic Assets (UBA), which in my definition is a core, basic set of resources that every person is entitled to, from housing and healthcare to education and financial security.
Perhaps one gift the Trump administration has given us is the final lifting of this veil — just in case there was any lingering faith that authority still meant something and could be depended on. Now we no longer need suspect. Benefit of the doubt is over — it’s all a façade, a sham, a bully’s blow-horn silencing a people’s wisdom. So now we know. What we do with this knowledge holds the key to the future.
Prices climbed last week with Brent up almost 3 percent to $57.17 a barrel and WTI up over 4 percent to close the week at $51.45. The major developments affecting prices was an unexpected jump in Chinese oil exports of 1 million b/d in September to 9 million and the announcement that the President would not certify Iranian compliance to the nuclear accord.
We speak today of food felons, for they walk anonymously among us. Their despicable, unimaginable, reprehensible crime against society: a lifelong disrespect and disregard for producing and indulging in good food. Like the dying punk in “Repo Man,” I blame society.
