The Call for a New Economy
Bellowing out in the songs of eco-village choirs and reverberating down city streets through the chants of the 99%, the call for a new economy echoes out over the dying gasps of late capitalism.
Upstream staff
Article 51
There’s a logic of accumulation in capitalist economies which left to its own devices tends to commodify everything, including things that can’t ultimately be commodified, like humans, nature, and money (or ‘labour, land and capital’ – the classic ‘inputs’ of orthodox economics).
Warning for BC: Methane Emissions Still Increasing in Big US Shale Play
Despite a major downturn in drilling activity, levels of methane, one of the world’s most potent greenhouse gases, have been steadily increasing over Pennsylvania’s unconventional shale gas reserves.
Introducing the Terrifying Mathematics of the Anthropocene
In our recent study, we wanted to find the simplest way to mathematically describe the Anthropocene and articulate the difference between how the planet once functioned and how it now functions.
Breaking Through Partisanship: Left-Right-Local
I think the issue of partisanship is one we have to take very seriously, because the arguments that we make and the analysis that we make and our focus on local economies is not a partisan issue among most people.
Michael Abelman: Urban Agriculture
The Sole Food Project, now one of North America’s largest urban farm initiatives, has empowered dozens of individuals who are managing addiction and chronic mental health problems by providing jobs, agricultural training, and the chance to be part of a vibrant community of farmers and food lovers.
Cultural Capital: Part 1
Cultural capital is rooted in society’s values and traditions. Sadly, over the past few generations in the West, we have departed from the time-honored (and honed) customs and rituals of our ancestors, and adopted a much more “it’s all about me” approach to life.
A Transportation Revolution
Transportation investments can create jobs, growth and opportunity in the short term while at the same time not only paying for themselves but making our cities, and our nation, financially stronger in the process. America needs a transportation revolution. Here is how we propose that be done.
Rescuing Los Angeles
Ecovillages are like a shadow world government. They are not top-down electoral, C3I or Deep State puppeteers; they are grass roots, spontaneous, semi-autonomous networked infiltrators. Their weapons are not Death Stars or enslaving financial schemes but viral memes spread by new media, art and gardening.
Chemical Industrial Agriculture is Unsustainable. Here’s why
Even without pesticides, industrial agriculture is doomed to fail from extremely high rates of soil erosion and soil compaction at rates that far exceed losses in the past, since soil couldn’t wash or blow away as easily on small farms that grew many crops.
Peak Oil Review – Mar 27, 2017
A weekly roundup of peak oil news. Last week oil prices fell for the third time in a month, closing in New York at just below $48 a barrel. Increasing US crude inventories remain the chief motivation for the price drop as many traders now see higher US production as largely offsetting the OPEC/NOPEC production cuts.
Appropriate Civilization versus New Despotism, Month 2: Tech-for-good and truth take a pounding
…a Microsoft researcher warned openly this month that AI, even in its current state, is ripe for abuse by aspiring despots: perfectly suited to the centralizing of power, tracking of populations down to the last individual, the demonizing of outsiders, all while radiating authority via a faux neutrality. “This is a fascist’s dream,” said Microsoft’s Kate Crawford, pulling no punches. “Power without accountability.”
