Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo Greenbelt is not the only city where these ideas are taking off, but its “new” economy is unique in one way: It’s in fact quite old, going back 80 years. During the Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt set up three “Greenbelt Towns”: Greenhills, Ohio; Greendale, Wis.; and Greenbelt, Md., a tree-lined city 13 miles northeast of Washington, D.C.
Europe has been the global leader in energy transition for decades, offering to the rest of the world many useful examples of both policies that work and those that don’t. As a result, European countries now have some of the world’s most energy efficient economies, and the largest shares of renewable energy.
Our approach starts with an unequivocal realization: human activity is systematically degrading our planet’s life-support systems. Yet prevailing norms and institutions continue to rely on systems of thought which are not fit for the situation we are now in. Through a new synthesis of contemporary science, economics and the humanities, we aim to reconcile fragmented disciplines and find a path to a world where our relationship with the community of life on Earth becomes mutually enhancing.
As odd as it sounds, I can’t help but think that it’s so ridiculously easy to point fingers at the short-sightedness of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault that not only is it also all-too-easy to label it as the “Vault of Doom”, but that this can lead one to miss out on the much more dire issue of what the Vault represents in the present.
Humans are motivated by love, belonging, meaning, and mattering. People love good stories—even ones (or especially one) that have shame, fear, guilt, and anxiety. To understand such stories, one has to have a conscience and care about the world. There’s no need to sugarcoat the situation we’re in; let’s put a rest to that argument. What we need is heaps of fierce compassion and bravery.
A first-of-its-kind educational partnership between the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) and the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) is training hundreds of new seed growers in organic production. Through an online certificate-granting educational platform and an accompanying structured internship program, the two groups hope to train enough farmers to help supply meet demand—and make a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) loophole irrelevant.
With support from visionaries like you, CUESA is cultivating a sustainable food system that strengthens local farms and builds healthy communities. Join us in looking back on our exciting year, spring 2016-spring 2017. Together, we expanded our farmers markets and educational programs, and widened our community.
There’s really no shortage of ways that people can pool resources. But there’s a huge difference in the goals between for-profit sharing economy companies like Uber and Airbnb and nonprofit groups like tool libraries, time banks, and makerspaces. Juliet Schor, professor at the sociology department at Boston College, explores this tension between for-profit and nonprofit sharing groups.
“The grass was tall, and the house was in bad shape,” Alan remembers. But somehow it became home — the couple raised four children there. And they wound up restoring not just the once-vacant house, but the downtown community around it, as well.
This is the second and final part of a recent conversation with Richard Heinberg by Greening the Apocalypse. Greening the Apocalypse is a weekly show on Melbourne’s Triple R 102.7FM.
The problem of legislative gridlock and failed governance is not going to be solved anytime soon by routinely voting the out’s in and the in’ s out over the course of an election cycle or two–then rinsing and repeating. The question we are left with is: what’s a practical alternative? Unfortunately, I don’t have a pat or complete answer I do, however, have a suggestion that the clean energy and climate defending communities might want to discuss amongst themselves.
Continued exponential economic growth is impossible, but the S-curve of slowing growth followed by a steady state is not the only other alternative. If the goal is maintaining GDP at the highest possible level, then the S-curve is the best case scenario, but in today’s world that isn’t necessarily desirable or even possible.
