Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Few places in the U.S. are as well suited to developing renewable energy as the contaminated sites known as “brownfields.” But as communities from Philadelphia to California are discovering, government support is critical to enable solar and wind entrepreneurs to make use of these abandoned lands.
Sacred natural sites such as forest groves, mountains and rivers are arguably the world’s oldest form of protected areas. These sites can be found in almost every country and culture, and they play a vital role in the informal conservation of both biological and cultural diversity.
When I finally got a copy of Hayes’s book, Radical Homemakers, I confess it wasn’t what I expected–rather than a serious, theoretically grounded critique of consumer culture, family life, and the structural obstacles that often stand in the way of adopting a simpler, more communal lifestyle, I found an often sloppily researched but nonetheless impassioned instruction manual-cum-rallying cry.
As we cope with downturns in American power in the world and the American economy at home, there is much talk about reviving, renewing, rescuing, or redefining the American Dream. We would be better off facing the anguish inherent in the American Dream. Once we recognize that the dream has always been dependent on domination, we can see more clearly our options for a just and sustainable future.
There’s a war on the future. Who’s paying the price? Main Street suffers as Wall Street thrives…Every state but one is facing fiscal nightmares. The exception is North Dakota, which is debt-free and on strong fiscal ground: the only state that ran a major budget surplus in 2010, cut personal and business taxes during the recession, and has the lowest unemployment and foreclosure rates. And yes, the North Dakota Bankers Association and its member banks strongly support the BND.
Calling E. F. Schumacher the “Copernicus” of economic theory, Greer bases his new work on Schumacher’s path breaking book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Citing Schumacher’s ideas about “intermediate,” or “appropriate” technology, which the respected economist developed as a way to help the people of third world countries achieve employment and a reasonably comfortable standard of living, Greer says that using these same ideas might be a sensible approach for Americans in an age of scarcity.
When an international peak oil celebrity comes through Totnes, Rob Hopkins often posts a brilliantly insightful interview with carefully crafted questions and thoughtful interchanges. Last week, Nicole Foss (pen name “Stoneleigh”) came through Los Angeles. Rather than sitting down for an hour or so of focused interview like it sounds Hopkins does, ours was a multi-day visit unfolding amid the stark realities of our Transition operations.
Last week it emerged that the Department of Energy and Climate Change, whose official position remains that “we do not have any contingency plans specific to a peak in oil production”, was actually stating in internal documents released under the Freedom of Information Act that “it is not possible to predict with any accuracy exactly when or why oil production will peak”.
“Because money talks and BS walks, if the hydrogen economy was an apprentice working for Donald Trump, it would’ve been fired in the first season.” This is just one of the pearls of wisdom from Transition Voice’s new “Snarky Guide to Peak Oil.” It’s got the facts you need to debunk energy myths and the attitude you need to defuse a heated discussion with a smile.
This is a medicine story. And if I could tell you all the medicine stories I heard in my travelling days I would. Because those stories are about how life turns around just as you think it’s about to end. We need more than anything now these stories of restoration and regeneration because they hold an opportunity. If there is one theme that unites them all it is this: the transformation moment comes when you realise it’s not just about you.
The failure of economic democracy has led to the atrophy of political democracy, as corporations buy politicians: we are ‘citizens in politics but subjects in the marketplace’. While we enjoy voting rights in our political systems, ‘our economic systems are still stuck in the 18th century’. Challenging the ideology of free markets, he asks how can we claim to have free markets when firms are still stuck in the ideology of command and control?
(Article based on the keynote speech at the Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards in New York on 8 June.)
We will not transition successfully to a restorative economy until systems thinking becomes as natural, for millions of people, as riding a bike. That’s a big ask. How do we get from here, to there? …
Outside the business-as-usual tent, gradualism is on the retreat. A new kind of economy – a restorative economy – is emerging in a million grassroots projects all over the world. The better-known examples have names like Post-Carbon Cities, or Transition Towns. But examples also include dam removers, seed bankers, and iPhone doctors.
A restorative economy is emerging wherever people are growing food in cities, or turning school backyards into edible gardens. The movement includes people who are restoring ecosystems and watersheds; their number includes dam removers, wetland restorers, and rainwater rescuers. Many people in this movement are recycling buildings in downtowns and suburbs, favelas and slums.
