No Elitist Farmers Markets Here—Free Healthy Food and Profits for Farmers

“Farmers markets have the reputation of being somewhat elitist, not open to all,” she says. “That is the opposite of here. The intent was not to be a poor person’s market, but to be a market for everyone. There are folks with money who come, but our market board has said if rich folks want this to be an experience for them, they may have to go somewhere else for that.”

Juliana vs US: For Children of all Ages

Juliana will mark the first time federal fossil energy policy and climate change will be argued together in open court. The hyper-partisanship darkening the skies above Capital City, the one-sidedness of most mainstream news outlets, the enmity exhibited in public forums like town-hall meetings and elsewhere, suggest Their Honors Aiken and Coffin are right. The venue best suited to host and manage such a debate would indeed seem to be a court of law.

Cooperative Economics in African-American Communities

n her engrossing TED Talk, business owner Niki Okuk explores three key themes: racism, economic oppression, and privilege, and how they relate to cooperate economics. Okuk, who runs tire recycling company Rco Tires, shares her personal story of starting the business, but puts it in larger, historical context.

Thermal Optimization: A Private Sector Program for Energy Efficiency in Existing Residential Buildings

Global concern about escalating atmospheric carbon is closely connected to the continued dominance of carbon-based energy.  According to the International Energy Agency (2015), coal, oil and natural gas account for 82% of the world’s growing energy use, while renewable energy (geothermal, solar, and wind combined) provides only 1%.  “100% renewables” is very futuristic.

Factcheck: Climate Models have not ‘Exaggerated’ Global Warming

A new study published in the Nature Geosciences journal this week by largely UK-based climate scientists has led to claims in the media that climate models are “wrong” and have significantly overestimated the observed warming of the planet. Here Carbon Brief shows why such claims are a misrepresentation of the paper’s main results.

Learning the Language of Plants with Local Dialect

“I don’t create complicated fiber art. My pieces are simple, natural and classic. They’re wearable and not at all fussy. I want my customers to use and enjoy my clothing for a long time. For it to be part of their identity.” It’s slow fashion at its core.

Eroles Project – Deepening Citizenship

What is the Eroles Project? I could give several answers. It is a network of change-makers connected through a set of evolving principles, annual learning-for-action residencies, an online community platform and a library of resources. It is a threshold marked by a cobalt blue door. It is a small core team of organisers, a growing number of alumni and an advisory board. It is projects and workshops that root around the world. Mostly though, in whichever form, I feel it is an opportunity to inquire.

The Terror of Deep Time

Grasp the fact that our species is a temporary yet integral part of the whole system we call the biosphere of the Earth, and it becomes a good deal easier to see that we are part of a story that didn’t begin with us, won’t end with us, and doesn’t happen to assign us an overwhelmingly important role. There’s much to be gained by ditching the tantrums, coming to terms with our decidedly modest place in the cosmos, and coming to understand the story in which we play our small but significant part.

A Society beyond Consumerism

Post-purchase dissonance is an expression psychologists use to describe the disappointment we sometimes feel on realizing that our latest consumer purchase does not fulfil the promise we bought it on. At first sight it’s a curious anomaly. On deeper reflection, it turns out to be the structural basis for the entire edifice. The engine of consumer society is discontentment. This is more than a rhetorical claim.

7 Inspirational Quotes to Make You Feel Better about Climate Change

It’s easy to get struck by existential dread when you’re reading about climate change. Personally I think there hasn’t been enough attention on the psychological effects of this. Although you can find a few fantastic articles on the subject – such as this one from Grist. My personal favourite antidote for climate fear is to throw yourself into pragmatic climate action.

Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution

Beautiful Trouble lays out the core tactics, principles and theoretical concepts that drive creative activism, providing analytical tools for changemakers to learn from their own successes and failures. In the modules that follow, we map the DNA of these hybrid art/action methods, tease out the design principles that make them tick and the theoretical concepts that inform them, and then show how all of these work together in a series of instructive case studies.

How a Universal Basic Income could Fire the imagination

UBI is basically an idea that says everybody, simply by virtue of being alive, gets an income that gives them enough to survive, if not thrive, and that’s one of the debates.  There are lots of different people talking about it right now from across the political spectrum.  This is one of the things that makes it an interesting idea, or an idea that’s worth engaging with right now, because it’s an idea that’s emerging.  It’s formulating, so it’s not settled.