Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff -Jaywalking and the Motor Age
-In China, Cars Lose A Little Luster
-Integration of Bicycling and Walking Facilities into the Infrastructure of Urban Communities [report]
-A Bay Area Experiment in Electric Bike Sharing
– Portland, the US capital of alternative cool
– Are electric or hybrid cars a green marketing myth, or a real solution?
– Is This the Most Beautiful Street in the World?
– Voices from the previews of ‘In Transition 2.0′ (video)
– When the Transition Movement & the Community Rights Movement Start Collaborating, Watch Out!
The first thing you do is show a film. It starts with Power of Community. It starts at the 11th hour at the End of Suburbia. You go against your wishes, lured by a love of documentary, and find yourself talking animatedly amongst strangers about Life at the End of Empire, asking whether you can come to the next core group meeting. In these films there is a moment when you realise that life is not the fairy tale you have been taught to believe. It’s the moment you join Transition.
In this essay I argue that the rapid decline of Greece’s health system –and socioeconomic conditions throughout the nation- is proximately due to a fiscal/economic crisis that political and financial leaders have chosen to address by imposing draconian austerity measures upon most of the Greek people so as to: a.) protect the wealth, status and power of dominant elites, and b.) shield and resuscitate a moribund financial system. The distal cause of the deterioration of Greece’s health system, however, lies in reaching the earth’s physical limits to perpetual economic growth. Therefore, attempting to restart growth –the taken-for-granted panacea- is not working and the case of Greece demonstrates that “austerity” has pernicious costs.
– The rising global protest movement: job insecurity and the “precariat” (Dr. Standing interview)
– NYT: Occupy Movement Regroups, Preparing for Its Next Phase
– We’re More Unequal Than You Think
– Punishing Protest, Policing Dissent: What is the Justice System For?
The propaganda technique of the repeated lie has been applied obsessively, against the “hockey stick,” the reconstruction of past temperatures on which Michael Mann and coworkers had been working from the 1990s.
It is rare in the history of science that a single piece of experimental evidence has been the object of so many attempts of demolition. Yet, all the serious reviews of the original data have basically confirmed the initial results. Being unsuccessful in demolishing the science, the attacks have moved against the scientist, Michael Mann himself, who has been subjected to an unbelievable denigration campaign, defamed, insulted, and even physically threatened.
– Former OPEC researcher on peak oil
– Science: Technology Is Turning U.S. Oil Around But Not the World’s
– Former deputy prime minister of Australia: ‘Peak everything’
– Peak oil moves to the mainstream
Outrageous, snarky, “madly engaging,” bileful—these are a few of the terms that have been used to describe author and social critic James Howard Kunstler. But he’s actually a great deal more than these things, as anyone who’s really come to know him, even if only through his books and Internet postings, can tell you. His most personal writings reveal a human, vulnerable, wonderfully versatile, cheerful side that few people know exists.
When I first saw the film “Three Kings” years ago, it occurred to me that it was one of the clearest explanations of American foreign policy I had ever seen. I am certain, however, that this was not the intention of the filmmaker. But let’s see how the story illuminates our foreign policy.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise.
Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet.
– My Decade of Being “Peak Oil Aware”
– Peak oil educator Richard Heinberg challenges “binary thinking”
– U.S. Oil Fields Stage “Great Revival,” But No Easing Gas Prices
– Robert Rapier: Peak Oil & Carbon Emissions (video)
Connecting food to the local economy can provide more people with greater access to local foods.
Making it happen is another story since the necessary infrastructure was gradually dismantled over the past 70 years in favor of a national/global food system that promises low prices, year-round accessibility of products and convenience.
