Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Justin Kenrick The premise of this chapter is that there is a proliferating movement of initiatives seeking to defend the commons (mostly in the Global South) or restore the commons (mostly in the Global North), to ensure our survival and well-being. This chapter is also premised on the notion that we still have time to act to restore our socio-ecological sustainability.
Cultural values are group norms or rules for behavior that make a culture work. Ethical values are our cultural DNA. But our values can change in response to the conditions of the economy and environment. Our current value system is no longer working—money, science, laws, mores, politics, religion, and culture are becoming less meaningful to many…The survival of the whole system is at stake, and ethics will begin to shift as old ways of doing and being endanger humanity…
What’s not to like about cutting the costs of a farm enterprise—and boosting its revenues? That, in effect, is Wichner’s pitch for the “beyond organic” farmland management system he plans to scale.
Sometimes well-meaning ‘green’ people like to imagine that the eco-cities of the future are going to look either like some techno-utopia – like the Jetson’s, perhaps, except environmentally friendly – or some agrarian village, where everyone is living in cob houses that they built themselves. The fact is, however, that over the next few critical decades, most people are going to find themselves in an urban environment that already exists – suburbia.
It’s easy to forget that every piece of our current infrastructure–roads, rails, runways, bridges, industrial plants, housing–was built with a certain temperature range in mind. Our agricultural system and much of our electrical generating system (including dams, nuclear power stations and conventional thermal electric plants which burn coal and natural gas) were created not only with a certain temperature range in mind, but also a certain range of rainfall.
In mid-May 2012, the United Nations Development Programme (the UNDP) released its Africa Human Development report for 2012. Entitled ‘Towards a Food Secure Future’, the report is unremarkable for its assessments and language – these have changed but little where Africa is concerned over the last 30 years – and is remarkable for the implications it contains concerning the agriculture and food focus to human development.
The European debt crisis is making the front page, again. Moody has changed the outlook of Germany to negative and Spain is forced to borrow at more and more unsustainable rates. The fate of the Euro is more and more uncertain and while it is not certain, it is quite possible that Greece, and perhaps other Mediterranean countries, will abandon it at some point of the future. This, of course, would trigger a trust crisis which would in turn further damage the position of a currency which has no need for that.
Scientists grasping at geoengineering straws to maintain a quasihuman technotopia into the post-Anthropocene have proposed a lot of bad ideas but occasionally something pops up that could conceivably work. Those in the latter category need to be put to the proof. We will have a closer look at one of those, but first a quick bit of background.
It took perhaps a little longer than usual, but the EU’s latest wheeze to rescue Europe’s struggling economies has again come apart at the seams. Borrowing costs for Spain have pushed back above 7% to their highest level since the single currency was formed. Greece will not meet its EU/IMF/ECB austerity targets. And even Germany has had its pristine triple-A credit rating tarnished by a “negative outlook” from ratings agency Moody’s.
Rental or leasehold coops are democratically run organizations of tenants that equitably share costs of renting or leasing a building owned by someone else. Rental coops may share part of the management responsibility and often have more power collectively than single renters leasing from a conventional landlord. Nonprofits can also buy a building and rent it out to lower income folks who might not be able to afford shares. Sharing a house can offer big savings and can help people avoid foreclosure.
Dr. Hall will provide an assessment of global energy trends from his perspective as a systems ecologist and pioneer in the emerging field of biophysical economics. This webinar will examine key concepts regarding energy quality and energy return on investment in the context of current world energy and economic challenges. A critique of neoclassical economics and its divergence from the laws of physics and ecology regarding energy will be implicit in the discussion. Dr. Hall will also provide highlights from his recent book, Energy and the Wealth of Nations, co-authored with Kent Klitgaard.
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