Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Manuela Picq The National Movement of Maya Weavers think it’s time for Guatemala to safeguard their textile creations and the very fabric of Maya philosophy. But the Weavers aren’t just politely asking for change. Last month, they introduced a new bill in Congress to have their collective intellectual property rights recognized under Guatemalan law.
The Greening the Apocalypse team talk peak oil with Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute. This is the first of a two part interview.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is “supposed to last for eternity”, yet didn’t take the effects of climate change into consideration in its design and construction. One might wonder which “unknown unknowns” it’s not quite ready for either.
I think it is urgent that we overcome our fears of articulating grand narratives and lay out a vision that spells out the overcoming of the present world blighted by Capital through common struggle, with the end being the construction of societies that harness men and women’s deepest instinct— cooperation.
We CAN navigate the turbulence of our times by recognizing that the real state of power is culture. What I mean by this is that it is cultural narratives that drive our behaviors.
The 2009 report — which was sponsored by several organizations, including an urban agriculture organization called RUAF — helps me imagine how we could turn the gig economy into the subsistence-plus and self-reliance economy. Urban agriculture might just offer a pleasurable and affirming way to supplement incomes with sales or barter, or to offset the need to spend hard cash on food.
I remember the birth of antipolitics. I was a young woman when dissidents in the communist world began to associate official political activity with support for an immoral order. Voting, they believed, was an empty gesture if the ruling party won 99% of the ballots cast.
But if I could get to the bus stop, a mile and a half away, I could board a comfortable air-conditioned bus with connections to many points downtown and elsewhere in the county. Stops are much closer along the routes, but the nearest route is inconveniently far away. I hope someday to see a bus line closer to home. Until then, I consider my neighbors and I to be Transportation Disadvantaged.
Richard Heinberg joins Juliet Jacobs at BFM radio to discuss realistic avenues for transitioning to renewable energy, the environmental implications of economic growth, and how we can build more resiliency into the sustainability movement.
Ach, I’m a peasant populist at heart, and peasants have a canny sense of when a commons is a good idea and when it isn’t. Anyway, I’m not going to summarise exactly what Raworth says about commons, I’m just going to offer you the following six postulates about them prompted by my reading of her book.
The vision of humanity made omnipotent through technology—Men Like Gods, to borrow the title of one of H.G. Wells’ drearier novels—is on its way out. The question we face is what will rise to replace it.
The bus turning circle just off Tooting High Street is not a place that would usually inspire carnival, creativity and dancing in the street. As I say, not a place that would usually inspire great creativity, but that was until members of Transition Town Tooting started to look at it through their ‘Transition glasses’.
