Cool ideas – April 7
-TAKE ACTION on conserving home energy (with a sexy helping hand)
-How to Design a Neighborhood for Happiness
-In Africa’s largest slum, a cooker that turns trash into fuel
-A Mad Scientist’s 50 Tools for Sustainable Communities
Building Community
Economic Contraction
Just like peak oil and global warming, economic contraction is a “game changer.” As the economy we now know crumbles, the far-reaching repercussions will sculpt every aspect of our future. In my opinion, any long-term plan — Transition EDAPs included — must anticipate that it will unfold amidst a world of economic contraction. We have to plan for it, and put alternative financial tools in place to weather it, or it will undermine all of our other efforts.
Money, simplicity, and embracing new paradigms: Quaker tuition follow-up
My recent piece on the cost of tuition at the Friends Seminary in Manhattan has gotten enough play to warrant a response. So here goes.
Can the commons move from the margins to the mainstream?
Why is it that the commons is so often excluded from official policy discussions about how to manage resources and improve people’s lives? This strikes me as a serious void in our public conversations, one that we desperately need to correct.
Sir Thomas Enough: Utopia and the steady state
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia was written almost 500 years ago, in the early 16th century. The book has since influenced many a philosopher interested in the concept of Utopia, in theory or in practice. It is an attempt to outline the workings of an ideal state – in this case a small island state in the New World. As I began to read this book, I was startled by the early realization that this book is nothing short of a 500-year-old vision of a steady state economy.
Communications – A new narrative
How do you tell a downstory? Downstories are hard to find in our culture. There are plenty of upstories that don’t work out that act like scary cautionary tales (if you don’t make it to the ball, you never get out of that fireplace and will always wear rags). But how do you go about telling the story of Transition, of the energy descent we have to make as individuals and as a people? How do you turn the coach back into a pumpkin and the princess back into someone who can tend a fire?
The new food movement: politics and pleasure
Food has become – to use an older phrase now being recycled by contemporary activists – the “edible dynamic” at the heart of mainstream economic and environmentalist debates.
The Cuckoo that won’t sing. Sustainability and Japanese culture
Here, I discuss what we can learn from Japanese culture in terms of sustainability, referring in particular to the “Edo Period” from about 1600 AD to mid 19th century. The Japanese society of that period is one of the few historical examples we have of a “steady state” economy. How did the Japanese managed to attain that? Here I am suggesting an explanation on the basis of the old Japanese story of “the cuckoo that won’t sing.”
Freedom through Frugality
Montpelier resident Jane Dwinell has followed the method in Your Money or Your Life to live frugally and retire in her mid-fifties. She celebrates and elaborates on the method in her new book, Freedom through Frugality. Annie McCleary is coordinator for Transition Town Montpelier, part of the worldwide Transition movement, which helps Vermonters take control of their food, energy, and other resources, while moving from oil dependence to community resilience.
Another bite out of life
But one thing is for sure. The malfunctioning at the nuclear plant is but one of the bites out of life stemming from the human failure to recognize, much less plan for, the high price and growing risks of economic growth.
Cities, Towns, and Suburbs: Local goverment in a time of peak oil and climate change
Many responses to peak oil urge individual and community solutions, ignoring government. They argue that since government hasn’t done anything to address the problem, citizens and businesses must take matters into their own hands. Some even argue that government is part of the problem, particularly federal and state governments. This attitude is shortsighted.
What is adapting in place?
So what is Adapting In Place anyway? I’m writing a book about it (coming out next fall), I talk about it a lot, but what exactly am I getting at? It is partly about preparedness, both individual and community, partly about changing expectations, partly about achieving a kind of balance. It seems pedestrian in a way – lots of questions about how to do the laundry and keep food cool and work with your neighbors – ordinary things. Trivial seeming things.
