Jenna Banning

Five great grains with promise for the future

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According to the United States Department of Agriculture, grains account for more than half of the calories consumed by people in developing countries. Yet, over the last few decades, grain production has been narrowed to only a limited number of varieties – wheat, for example, has over 200,000 varieties, yet only a few genetic lines are being used. Such dependence on a limited number of crops has proven problematic, especially because of rising food prices, climate change, and health concerns.

Japan’s Green Renewal? After the Disasters UN Tour

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I’ve returned from a sobering United Nations-led tour of six tsunami-damaged communities and two radiation-impacted cities in Northern Japan. The obvious conclusion: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is forcing Japan to go green, including the launch of a new renewable energy national feed-in tariff that starts in July. Meanwhile the governor of Fukushima, Yuhei Sato, told us that renewables will be the “key factor” in the revival of his cesium-laden prefecture.

Uneconomic growth deepens depression

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The US and Western Europe are in a recession threatening to become a depression as bad as that of the 1930s. Therefore we look to Keynesian policies as the cure, namely stimulate consumption and investment—that is, stimulate growth of the economy. It seemed to work in the past, so why not now? Should not ecological economics and steady-state ideas give way to Keynesian growth economics in view of the present crisis?

The Transition Companion

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We can do this the hard way or the easy way. The easy way is that you skip this post and buy the book now.

The hard way is that your reviewer attempts to describe a 320 page book whose contents have been shaped by the infinitely varied experiences of self-organising initiatives around the world. In these, thousands of people have explored one question over a five year period: “How do we make our community more resilient in uncertain times?”.

Amory Lovins lays out his clean energy plan

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For four decades, Amory Lovins has been a leading proponent of a renewable power revolution that would wean the U.S. off fossil fuels and usher in an era of energy independence. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his latest book, which describes his vision of how the world can attain a green energy future by 2050.

Review: “The Geography of Thought”

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It was suggested that I read this book because I was looking for a Western proclivity for apocalypse fever. My conclusion after reading it is that change is simply scarier for the Westerner, while in Asia, change is so much the expected norm that it is taken in stride. I would add that Americans tend to spin out their horror far into the future or, as one therapist I know puts it, to awful-ize a situation. Watching Bangkok friends and family face the recent flood crisis with a remarkable amount of equanimity confirmed this for me.

Our co-owned future

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The explosive force of Occupy Wall Street—and more than a thousand other local efforts—offers hope that a movement committed to long-term change might one day achieve a fundamental transformation of the American political-economic system. Quietly, a different kind of progressive change is emerging, one that involves a transformation in institutional structures and power, a process one could call “evolutionary reconstruction.”

Kick Wall Street to the curb, get $15 trillion

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It was only a matter of time after we started eating local food and Buying Local from main street stores that we’d start hearing about local money…Now, Michael Shuman, the author of The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (2006), wants to make local investing accessible to ordinary people.