Building Community

Chris Hedges on 9/11, Touring U.S. economic disaster zones in “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”

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In the new book, “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt,” journalist Chris Hedges and illustrator Joe Sacco look at the poorest areas in the United States, “sacrifice zones” where human beings and natural resources have been used and then abandoned. A former New York Times correspondent, Hedges reported from Ground Zero beginning just after the 9/11 attacks…”The most retrograde forces within American society have used the specter of the war on terror or terrorism in the same way the most retrograde forces within American society used communism or anti-communism to crush any kind of legitimate dissent or any questioning of the structures of power,” Hedges said.

Review: Too Much Magic by James Kunstler

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…Kunstler has a new work of social criticism titled Too Much Magic, his first nonfiction book since The Long Emergency came out in 2005. The book is an inquiry into a skewed, delusional perception of reality that Kunstler thinks has become “baseline normal for the American public lately.” Americans, he says, have been led astray by the incredible technological advancements of recent times. We’ve come to believe that any problem we face is solvable—as if by magic—with the application of some new technology.

Community Energy in Lewes

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Ouse Valley Energy Supply Company, or Ovesco as it is commonly known, is a powerful inspiration for enthusiasts of community renewable energy….Standing on a hill above Lewes you can not only see the solar PV installations completed by Ovesco but also arrays of panels inspired by their projects. The local football club, the leisure centre and many local homes, have all followed the example of Ovesco. Other sites are looking to follow and there are also plans for community wind and hydro-electric schemes.

Geographer David Harvey on Urban Commons

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Mainstream discourse about cities is dominated by free-market, pro-growth ideas that has continued unabated even after the flaws of capitalism were made glaringly obvious by the 2008 financial meltdown…The commons is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Without the commons, there is no market or future. If every resource is commodified, if every square inch of real estate is subjected to speculative forces, if every calorie of every urbanite is used to simply meet bread and board, then we seal off the future. Without commons, there’s no room for people to maneuver, there’s no space for change, and no space for life. The future is literally born out of commons.

Co-operative History Tour

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Radio 4’s Farming Today recently focused on the role co-operatives might play in supporting the incomes of farmers, especially dairy farmers, and increasing their ability to withstand the oppressive power of the supermarkets. In the Year of Co-operation this is to be welcomed, and the comparisons with the situation in other countries, where more than 90% of dairy farmers sell their milk through co-operatives, are particularly useful. However, it is not just a question of transferring a business model: we need to understand how our political and economic history has left us with a different attitude towards co-operatives.

Regenerative Adelaide

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An urbanizing world requires major policy initiatives to make urban resource use compatible with the world’s ecosystems. Metropolitan Adelaide has adopted this agenda and is well on its way to becoming a pioneering regenerative city region. New policies by the government of South Australia on energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transport, zero waste, organic waste composting, water efficiency, wastewater irrigation of crops, peri-urban agriculture, and reforestation have taken Adelaide to the forefront of eco-friendly urban development. Working as a thinker in residence in Adelaide in 2003, I proposed linking policies to reduce urban eco-footprints and resource use with the challenge of building a green economy.

Digital snow days

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As we progress further into descent, we will see more electricity brownouts, blackouts, and other events where there is a sudden failure of complexity, resulting in a shutdown of productivity. This failure of complexity has created a new urban word: “digital snow day.” And since our digital snow day in Anchorage coincided this time with termination dust on the mountains, the name is especially fitting. When we lose complexity suddenly, much of modern life stops, as our subsystems are highly connected. When complexity brownouts occur, what systems will be impacted, and what will some of those snow days look like? Does digitization make the failures worse, with a drop to a lower trophic level than would have occurred without digitization?

Finding your calling in a Transition world

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Personally I’m at the cusp of stay-at-home-mom returning to the workforce. The landscape of the working world has completely transformed during the decade-and-a-half I’ve been out of it. I’d done quite a bit of volunteer work, but that is a very different scene. I was facing going back to classes to gear up to reenter the corporate world I left many years ago, all the while knowing that corporate world was on self-destruct like some massive Death Star, or …

Or what?

Community rights vs. states rights vs. federal law

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I just don’t see local communities making better choices than those made at the state and federal level. This may happen in isolated pockets, but by the same token you could see vast swaths of places overturning the few gains the environmental movement has achieved on the level of federal and state policies and regulations, which is exactly what the Tea Party wants to do.

Pathways to a new society

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George Lakey has campaigned and written about non-violent social change since the 1960s. He says:

“… people get farther if they do have a vision of the new society and that be a widely shared vision that comes about through a discussion. That process seems to be very important, that people both develop a vision of where they want to go and also a strategy from getting from here to there.”