Dan Palmer

Advanced Permaculture Planning and Design Process 2017: The Second Day

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I explored the parallels with reading landscape in that you are not only iterating between inspecting, aspecting, and sidespecting as you get to know your clients, but you are iterating between what you observe or feel and guesses about what this is indicating, which you then test with further questions and so on. As you immerse in the parts of the clients being shared with you, you slowly build up an increasingly complete and coherent picture of the whole. This process is integral to sound design process and has traditionally not been a strong point in permaculture.

From Growth to Degrowth: a Brief History

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In growth-based societies, the cessation of growth means prolonged economic recessions, an explosion in poverty, an intensification of productivist or extractivist activities and setbacks in democracy. But social progress, prosperity and living well are possible without economic growth; in fact, they require a shift towards post-growth or degrowth societies.

How We Can Transition to a Bottom Up Economy

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Bottom Up is a comprehensive primer on the transition to a new economy—the place-based movement to rewire the economy for equity and ecological sustainability. It is rich in stories and detail for the curious or discouraged and those seeking a strategy to move toward a sustainable and equitable future.

One Family’s Bold Stand to Block Construction of a New Pipeline at Camp White Pine

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In central Pennsylvania Ellen Gerhart’s property lies about midway along the length of the Mariner East 2 pipeline that reaches from west to east across the state. It is slated to carry a variety of natural-gas liquids under high pressure to the coast and then exported onto the international markets. This project is not without opposition, however. The Gerhart family are one of a number of private property owners across the state who object to their land being confiscated using eminent domain laws and used to further global climate destabilization.

Municipalities in Transition

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An innovative project stemming from the Hubs group in partnership with Transition Network to create a clear framework for how Transition groups and municipalities can create sustainable change together This project has been collaboratively designed across borders and will map existing experiences of effective and systemic-change collaboration between local authorities and transition initiatives, worldwide. Launched in early 2017, the project will initially run until the end of 2018.

Half a Degree could Make a World of Difference

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Observational records show us that half a degree of warming in the recent past has brought significant increases in extreme weather events, which provides another line of evidence for what an additional 0.5C of warming could entail. Differentiating climate impacts between 1.5C and 2C warming above pre-industrial levels has been a hot topic in climate science since the adoption of the 1.5C long-term temperature limit in the Paris Agreement and much research is underway for inclusion in the IPCC special report on impacts at 1.5C warming.

Free from Debt and Suicide: India’s Natural Farmers

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It will take some time for Amrita Bhoomi to build a new food system. Chukki and KRRS have to resolve how to broadly distribute peasant-grown and saved seeds, how to strengthen markets for agroecologically produced food, and how to knit a coalition with farmer organizations across India. So far, however, Chukki said, “No zero-budget natural farming farmer has ever committed suicide or gone into debt.”

How the Share Shed in the UK is Building Community

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The Network of Wellbeing with support from the Big Lottery Fund helped launch the Share Shed Totnes in Devon, U.K., this year. It acts as a “library of things,” a place where people can borrow tools and other equipment that they need. These are all things that people might not be able to afford or want to buy.

When does the Commons Transition begin?

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All of the above form a strategy for a multi-modal commons-centric transition, offering a positive way out of the current crisis and a way to respond to the new demands of the commons-influenced generations. The Commons and the prefigurative forms of a new value regime already exist. The commoners are already here, and they’re already commoning; in other words, the Commons transition has begun.

Court Rules Trump administration Can’t just Suspend EPA’s Methane Rule

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The Trump administration’s anti-regulatory environmental agenda suffered a major blow this week, with a federal court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not suspend an Obama-era methane rule. The rule limits methane emissions from new oil and gas operations and requires operators to submit to either semi-annual or quarterly emissions monitoring. It also requires operators report and fix any methane leaks in their equipment.

Real Secret Behind Canada’s Success Resisting Right-wing Populism

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American farm radicals from the American West of the 1880s and ’90s called themselves Populists. They blamed Eastern elites and the “moneyed power” — the one per cent of the Gilded Age — for their problems. Today’s media pundits tag angry but conservative farmers and blue collar workers as populists. This name-calling discredits people who pioneered the language and methods of grassroots democracy.

July 2017 Stormwatch: Climate Change

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This month we’re going to talk about the current pace of anthropogenic climate change. That’s perhaps the most massive story of our time; it’s happening a good deal faster than I expected — though in all fairness, a great many climate scientists have been caught flatfooted by the pace of change as well.