Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Earth Institute It is not just wealth that makes people happy: Political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of corruption are together more important than income in explaining well-being differences between the top and bottom countries. At the individual level, good mental and physical health, someone to count on, job security and stable families are crucial.
We’d heard that there were many benefits to milling your own flour, aside from being sure that your whole grain bread really gets the whole of the grain (commercial flour labelled as “whole wheat” omits the wheat germ, which would go bad too quickly on store shelves).
Flour milled at home is fresher, of course — you know it hasn’t set on those store shelves in its vulnerable ground form losing nutrients. Mainly, we thought it would be fun to process more of our food at home, encouraging us to eat more fresh whole foods while making our family more resilient.
Recently, the web has been abuzz over an MIT study predicting ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030. Ugo Bardi, who recently published the book The Limits to Growth Revisited, shares his views on this study and its implications.
What seems to be missing from the coming New York Times energy conference is a sense of skepticism about the underlying assumptions for energy sufficiency in the decades to come. The agenda, speakers, and likely attendees remind one of what a shipboard symposium might have been like on the future of trans-Atlantic shipping held in the salon of the Titanic exactly one hundred years earlier. Maybe it’s inevitable that the hard questions won’t be entertained until the disaster occurs and we realize there aren’t enough lifeboats.
We are a market people. In a world where all things are a commodity – air, water, food, animals, the seeds we plant in the ground, the minerals under the ground, the genetic make up of our bodies – money is our god. Everything we do we do in the name of profit. We emulate the rich, we despise the poor. All things on earth are property. This bird, this child, this lake, this mountain has value only insofar it can bring us financial reward. Every day we bow down to Mammon.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Iranian confrontation
-Iraq, the Kurds and Exxon
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Whether Occupy is able to deal effectively with the substantial external threats and internal obstacles is yet to be determined. It will depend partly on the capacity for self-reflection and compassionate listening, as well as the success of channeling anger and frustration into powerful, constructive action.
Many specific suggestions have come from psychologists and activists, such as those at the OccuPsy meeting last month in Oakland.
The ancient alchemists wanted to transmute corrosion-prone base metals into permanent, non-corruptible, time-resistant gold. Modern economic alchemists want to convert spoiling, rusting, and depleting wealth into a magic substance better than gold — not only does it resist corrosion, but it grows — by some mysterious principle the alchemists referred to as the “vegetative property of metals.” The modern alchemical philosopher’s stone, known as “capital” or “debt,” is not only free from the ravages of time and entropy, but embodies the alchemists’ long-sought-for principle of vegetative growth of metals. But once we replace alchemy with chemistry we find that the idea that future people can live off the interest of their mutual indebtedness is just another perpetual motion delusion.
– Bloomington city councilman: Peak oil already wreaking economic disaster
– Counterpunch: The Myth of Peak Oil
– Forbes: We’re Not Going to Run Out of Oil Based Fertilizer
– WaPo: Petroleum institute’s numbers on oil policy a matter of dispute
– WaPo: Jack Gerard, the force majeure behind Big Oil
In virtually every institution in human society, we humans concern ourselves with the continuation of the species. We have children, we raise them in some sort of family, we educate them for the world of work and citizenship, and then we see them couple and start the cycle all over again. All the while we seek to defend ourselves from disease, violence, economic deprivation, in fact, anything that might cut short our lives or those of our children. It ought to be self-evident that human beings do care about the future. What I want to examine is whether they should and if so, how much.
To make a movement, we have to connect with all of our feelings, and with our capacity to think reflectively about them. Since artists model this connection and help create a culture where it can happen, one place to start is by looking to our artists to help us make our own inner connections.
Merit pay for teachers is a distraction; it ignores the larger context that should be the focus of debate in education: what curriculum (knowledge and skills) will best prepare students and their families for life in a post-carbon world? If we don’t shift our focus to this larger question and begin implementing such changes soon, all other concerns may be moot.
