John Michael Greer

The parting of the ways

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Over the last few months, the effects of peak oil — and the broader predicament of industrial civilization — have become steadily more visible; over the same time period, claims that peak oil and the predicament of industrial civilization don’t matter, and everything is just fine, have become steadily more shrill. Counterintuitive though this relation of stimulus to response may seem to be, it’s anything but accidental, and may foretell a significant cultural shift in the offing. Despite a lack of psychic antennae, the Archdruid explains.

Is ‘conspicuous consumption’ destroying the earth? (book review)

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From the beginning, Climate and Capitalism has been devoted to “making the greens more red, and the reds more green.” So it was with great anticipation that I picked up a book that makes “a double appeal upon which the future success of everything depends: to ecologists, to think about social arrangements and power relationships; to those who think about social arrangements, to take the true measure of the ecological crisis and how it relates to justice.”

Can garden farming be too successful?

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One of my favorite books is the classic “Farmers of Forty Centuries” by F.H. King, written in 1911. It details the way food was produced in much of Asia for something like four thousand years and still is in many places there. It was, according to King who traveled the area at that time, an amazing kind of small scale agriculture that, without chemical fertilizer or power machinery of any kind was producing more food per acre at the beginning of the 20th century than farming in America then or now. The way the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese returned all organic wastes, including human manure, to the soil was an absolutely triumphant model of sustainable farming.

More on Plan C: A Clear, Actionable Platform for Those Who Care About Earth’s Future

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What can we, the people, do to create a political movement that has Plan C as its core economic platform? While it is radical, it is not at all difficult to do. Of course it will be opposed by the 1%, but why are we so afraid of that, and so cynical that any political group could stand up to the 1%?

Preface to Sharing for Survival (a new book from Feasta)

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In confusing times one approach that makes sense to me is to put lots of seeds out trying lots of different things. The more approaches that are tried the more likely some are to work. As we are not all approaching the climate problem, and the limits to growth situation, from the same place we do not have the same connections, or the same resources, the same knowledge and ability to apply ourselves to a common unified path. It is inevitable that we try different paths. There’s a metaphor that is commonly used in discussions of spirituality that the view from the top of the mountain is the same. However because we are starting out from different points, the path up the mountain will be different.

Eating our way to a better world? : A plea to local, fair-trade, organic food enthusiasts

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The organic and fair-trade industries are booming, Farmers Markets are the new norm, the word “locavore” was added to the Oxford Dictionary, and Michelle Obama even planted a White House garden. But agribusiness continues to consolidate power and profit, small farmers worldwide are being dispossessed in an unprecedented global land grab, over a billion people are going hungry, and agriculture’s contributions to climate change are increasing. It’s not just that change is slow, but we actually seem to be moving in the opposite direction than alternative food movements are trying to take us.

Food & agriculture – June 12

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– Why our food is making us fat
– Greece’s ‘potato movement’ grows in power
– Australia’s two biggest supermarket chains are reshaping the nation’s agriculture
– Food, Farmers and a Free Trade Agreement (New Zealand)