Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Joel Stronberg Administrative incompetence and an unwillingness to operate within established practices may not be impeachable offenses. I can guarantee it is likely to turn out to be political suicide. For climate defenders and supporters of a more moderate national agenda, that may not be such a bad outcome.
Most useful to good food campaigners, McDonald’s book positions food security within the context of “human security” — a new way of framing the issues that boosts the chances of food getting the green light as a priority.
The financial struggle of the poorest Americans is a national concern as wages for those at the bottom fail to keep pace with the rising costs of living: food, housing, medicine, doctor’s visits, and even household water service.
There are plenty of troubling things about the Anthropocene. But to my mind, one of its most troubling dimensions is the sheer number of people it fails to trouble.
The ideas of the economists are important because they frame the way we understand the world, sometimes distracting us from understanding and living in the world in other ways. The economists claim that they describe the world as it is, rather than describing it as it should be, but there is an entire value system implicit in economics.
The ELC is the only organisation in England to offer affordable residential smallholdings for ecological land users. Their approach aims to overcome two key barriers to accessing land: high land prices and the planning system.
We demand egalitarian treatment of others, and for others. Yet, do our own daily actions indicate that we value each other’s humanity equally? How does the Transition movement square with egalitarian, non-hierarchical practice?
In history, we see the widespread attempt to place a single human being – that is, a single brain – in charge of the activity of the state. That sometimes leads to attempts of planning for the future of the whole colony, but it often backfires creating disasters. A single human brain cannot manage the immense complexity of a human state.
Proponents call them oil sands while opponents call them tar sands. Whatever they’re called, Alberta’s bitumen reserves are so massive, James Hansen warns that it could be game over for the world’s climate if all are extracted and burned.
However, determining whether storage can indeed solve the problem of intermittency of wind or solar requires assessing the ‘energetic productivity’ of using energy storage in combination with variable renewables.
We all have to consume; it’s a necessary reality of existence. However, in the ‘consumer society’ the most radical thing you can do is not to consume ‘as directed’ – by finding alternative options that meets your needs while enacting a set of principles in opposition to that overbearing and exploitative economic paradigm.
Local is the obverse of global. It’s not just a good soundbite to say that we cannot have both a dominant global economy and a thriving local economy. For one is the master and the other the servant.
