Activism

The evolution of peak oil coverage – a grassroots view

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These are the slides and text for a presentation given at the ASPO-USA conference September 21-23.

In these ten minutes, I’d like to provide a context for the discussion. I’d like to paint a broadbrush picture of where we were, and where we are going. It will be from the viewpoint of someone inside the movement looking out.
From the grassroots, rather than from the media.

Responding to various critiques of Transition

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[In] much of the alternative/protest movement… we take up a position outside of mainstream culture, use language, dress codes, behaviour and forms of protest which at best bewilder and at worst enrage mainstream society, yet we expect them to see the error of their ways and the validity of ours and embark on a radical decarbonisation. What failed to come through in [these approaches] was any sense of humility, any sense that the answers might be found anywhere other than in their fondly held beliefs.

Beyond voting: guerrilla gardeners, outlaw bicyclists & pirate programmers

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This US election year an unprecedented number of voters will likely head to the polls to cast their ballots in an exercise that should take just a few minutes to complete. But what about the rest of the minutes left in the year? Author and activist Chris Carlsson has some suggestions for social change beyond voting in Nowtopia, a new book about modern day rebels who, in his words, “aren’t waiting for an institutional change from on-high but are getting on with building the new world in the shell of the old.”

Slow Food Nation to release healthy food & agriculture declaration

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“We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time,” begins the final draft of the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture. Initiated by Roots of Change and half a year in the drafting, it will be released August 29 at Slow Food Nation (SFN) at San Francisco’s City Hall.