Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It’s really important to get that we’re not creating a movement. Directing, guiding, or nudging perhaps, but not creating. We need to supply the “thread” onto which to string all the “beads” of positive, resilience-oriented action
You know you’re living in a chaotic situation when (1) the mainstream media are constantly surprised by what is happening; (2) short-term predictions by various pundits go in radically different directions and are stated with many reserves; (3) the Establishment dares to say things or use words that were previously taboo; (4) ordinary people are frightened and angry but very unsure what to do.
The world is immensely complicated, and the forces of sweeping change may overall boost transition towns for their positive contribution. Or as Ted Trainer lays out below, a course correction is needed now.
The best way to influence policy is for the “scientists and engineers” to influence policy makers directly — and you don’t do that in a report, in a letter, on a petition, or a blog. It requires a commitment to face-to-face relationship building, nurturing, and maintenance. Rarely does a policy discussion center solely around facts.
Amid today’s varying attempts to imagine a postpetroleum America, one very likely equivalent has received little attention — the impoverished, dysfunctional nations of the contemporary Third World. Maybe it’s time to consider the possibility.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-The Iranian situation
-Asia still growing
-UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security: 2010 Update
-What’s Missing from the New Clean Energy Agenda?
-Soaring cost of healthcare sets a record
-America Is Not Yet Lost
-Seven States of Energy Debt
-UK Government Classifies Eco Activists as ‘Extremists’ Alongside Al Qaeda
-UK call for European CAP farming subsidies reform
-Moorlands and hills targeted to grow crops for biomass and biofuels
A lot of things started shaking loose last week, and not just in Haiti. The Scott Brown senate seat victory in Massachussetts shook loose a Democratic “super-majority” that only had to be constructed because the US Senate stupidly turned the filibuster into standard operating procedure where it once was a seldom-used procedural dodge employed strictly by villains seeking to paralyze the chamber. Thanks to the new system, the senate is now in a continual state of paralysis.
-Obama’s year in power: Healthcare was tough, but the future is tougher
-A Year Later, Voters Send a Different Message
-A Very American Coup
John Michael Greer, Sharon Astyk and Rob Hopkins have made some interesting points on the topic of community, and I wish to join the fray. In all of my experience, communities — of people and animals — form instantaneously and rather effortlessly, based on a commonality of interests and needs.
William Morris offered a radical vision that sounds very much like the radical vision of those now proposing the relocalization of human society in response to the myriad challenges we face to our very survival as a species.
