Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Sustainable Food Trust Staff The only practical way to produce human-edible food from grassland without releasing large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere is to graze it with ruminants, and with the increasing global population it would be highly irresponsible to stop producing meat, milk and animal fats from grassland, since this would cause even more rainforest to be destroyed to produce soyabean oil and meal, as well as palm oil.
A 2013 technical memo on seismic considerations at Site C dismissed fracking as a potential threat to public safety. But since then a wave of industry-triggered earthquakes — and BC Hydro’s concerns about the waste water disposal well near the Peace Canyon Dam — suggest that fracking and dams are simply incompatible land uses.
The stage is now set for the next scene in our whistle-stop tour – the emergence of capitalism. But first a quick aside. Enmeshed in a contemporary global capitalist economy as we are, it’s easy to read it back into history as some kind of inevitable culmination of past processes. But there’s no reason to think that our present was foreordained.
High temperatures and fast winds are fueling more than a dozen wildfires across California, forcing more than 20,000 northern California residents to evacuate their homes and communities. At least 17 people have died, and more than 200 have been reported missing, after several fires spread rapidly throughout Monday.
Partnerships between food banks and local agriculture are on the rise. Food banks are farming produce, recovering (or “gleaning”) agricultural surplus straight from the fields, building urban demonstration gardens and seed libraries, and teaching classes in underserved neighborhoods for those who want to grow food in their backyards or in balcony bucket gardens.
In a stagnant economy, a UBI can create the demand needed to clear the shelves of unsold products and drive new productivity. Robots do not buy food, clothing, or electronic gadgets. Demand must come from consumers, and for that they need money to spend.
Playing for Team Human today is Post Carbon Institute fellow Richard Heinberg. Richard is the co-author of Our Renewable Future and most recently, the manifesto, There’s No App For That. On today’s show Richard and Douglas challenge the idea that technological “progress” is a panacea for solving systems-level crises like climate change.
In a commentary paper for the journal Geophysical Research Letters, we show that the temperature limits in the Paris Agreement should be understood as changes in long-term global averages attributed to human activity, which exclude natural variability. This means 1.5C might be breached in individual years well before the global long-term 1.5C temperature limit has definitively been crossed.
George has been almost a lone voice in the mainstream British media putting the case thoughtfully and iconoclastically for radical, egalitarian and environmental alternatives to a status quo that’s so fawningly celebrated by the majority of his journalistic colleagues. But when it comes to his recent article enthusing about the advent of artificial meat as the welcome death knell for livestock farming…George, you’re scaring me, man.
The MP Sergi Saladié (a university professor when not in parliament) presented an “interpelation1” on degrowth to the vice-president and minister for the economy in Catalonia, Sr. Oriol Junqueras, currently president of The Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC: Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya). It is the first time that a motion of this type has been discussed in a national parliament in Spain, and this makes it an event of great importance.
US crude futures fell to $49.23 on Friday for a weekly loss of nearly 5 percent – the first weekly drop in more than a month. Hurricane Nate struck the US Gulf Coast Saturday night forcing the temporary closure of some 70 percent of US offshore oil production. In comparison with other recent hurricanes, Nate was relatively weak, so the damage to oil production and refining should be minimal and production back to normal in a day or two.
When Brazilian indigenous leader Sônia Guajajara gave a fiery speech on environmentalism and human rights at the Rock in Rio music festival in September 2017, alongside Alicia Keys, she captured the power and authority of Brazil’s National Indigenous Movement (Mobilização Nacional Indígena, MNI). “This is the mother of all struggles, the struggle for Mother Earth!” exclaimed Sônia to a massive, cheering audience.
