Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
William deBuys Dire fire conditions, like the inferno of heat, turbulence, and fuel that recently turned 346 homes in Colorado Springs to ash, are now common in the West. A lethal combination of drought, insect plagues, windstorms, and legions of dead, dying, or stressed-out trees constitute what some pundits are calling wildfire’s “perfect storm.”
The drought that is affecting much of the Midwest is scary enough but what makes me even more nervous is the way speculators in the grain futures market are sending grain prices gyrating all over the place as they bet on what will happen next. Betting on the future supply of food is risky business.
Modern economics assumes that human beings are fundamentally self-interested. This essay will challenge that assumption, drawing in part on the ideas of Karl Polanyi, Marcel Mauss, Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni. By contrast with the idea of the self-interested homo oeconomicus (central to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations), my argument is that humans are more relational, ‘gift-exchanging animals’ who are naturally disposed to cooperate for mutual benefit. In the following I will attempt to show how such an alternative anthropology can translate into a ‘civil economy’ and transformative policy ideas: rebuilding our economy and embedding welfare in communities.
Going for a drive along a nearby street isn’t my usual idea of a good conversation starter or a way to get to know someone, but it was all for a good cause, so I gave it a try—and ended up seeing the internal workings of my main street for the first time.
Climate hawk Bill McKibben has a terrific new piece in Rolling Stone, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” It is getting monster social media numbers of the kind usually reserved for pieces on HuffPost about Kim Kardashian in a bikini: 66k FaceBook likes and an astounding 6300 retweets.
We found our original premise holds. While the mainstream media focus on Washington and Wall Street, we found the real agents of change are on Main Street, where they are testing and perfecting some amazing innovations.
Originally published in 1974, How to Grow More Vegetables, Eighth Edition: (And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine) remains a vital resource for farmers, agricultural researchers and planners, sustainability activists and home gardeners, as the world confronts the challenge of feeding a global population of 7-9 billion without access to the cheap fossil fuels that have run “industrial” agriculture for the last century.
Once we realise that currency — nay, money in general — can be designed to fulfill or support specific objectives, it sets us free. Free from the constraints of the broken pseudo-science that is mainstream economics; free to recognise that not all transactions are of equal importance; and potentially free to redesign ourselves away from our existing pervasive elite monetary hegemony and reclaim the monetary commons.
– Chris Nelder: Is peak oil dead?
– Oil, politics and resource wars (interviews with Robert Hirsch, Michael Klare … )
– The Unfinished Story of Iraq’s Oil Law: An Interview with Greg Muttitt
– Will Drought Cause the Next Blackout?
– Murdoch Censorship Gives the Lie to ‘Freedom of Speech’ Claims
– Journatic worker takes ‘This American Life’ inside outsourced journalism
– Forgive us our Press Passes (audio)
– Aggressive Cluelessness: Then and Now
– The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER… (from HBO)
– John Perkins: Occupy the Dam: Brazil’s Indigenous Uprising
– Appalachia Turns on Itself (over coal)
– ‘Deep Green Resistance’ — how not to build a movement
In the first installment of this series, I reviewed U.S. and global oil reserves according to the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The second installment covered oil production, and the third looked at global consumption trends. Today, I look at the growth of global carbon dioxide emissions since 1965. A great deal has changed over the past 46 years.
