Building Community

“Democracy Uprising” in the U.S.A.?

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World-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky discusses several domestic issues in the United States, including the protests in defense of public sector employees and unions in Wisconsin, how the U.S. deification of former President Ronald Reagan resembles North Korea, and the crackdown on political activists with anti-terror laws and FBI raids. [includes rush transcript]

Bill McKibben: Climate change is our most urgent challenge

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Bill McKibben, author and founder of the international environmental organization 350.org, says that without a global campaign to curb climate change, the ecological devastation of our warming climate will make our planet uninhabitable. His appeal to citizens and policy-makers, the seventh video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, is a call to action as much as it is a sobering account of the damage we’re already doing to our environment.

The orgacity of hope

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One of the questions I encounter most frequently is how the vision for a sustainable society we are developing in the market town of Stroud might be applied to the cities where most of the world’s population now live. This is a troublesome question for me, because I have never enjoyed the city, with its concrete and anonymity, but from an ecological perspective no question is more important.

Desalination: Unlocking lessons from yesterday’s solution

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There is powerful information waiting to be unleashed in water data. If it were set free it would force us to re-think how we use, develop, sell, transfer, and dispose of water. Rather than focusing on the miles per gallon our cars get, we might consider how much water per mile that fuel’s production required. Rather than arguing over how much energy is being used to produce water, we would give credit to how much water is required to produce energy. Rather than focusing on whether our food is grown locally, we would consider how much water it took to grow that food in our locality.

Riches-to-rags – Our fashionable stories of stuff

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Sometimes l think about the clothes I used to own and it shocks me that I remember my wardrobe more intimately, more joyfully than I remember my friends of that time. The question I ask myself now is: is this because we were damned, fallen angels trapped in the colourful lures of the material world, or is it because our relationship with matter, with the fabric of the earth, has never been truly celebrated or understood? Or is it that our letting go of Stuff, our powerdown, has become the most urgent and most interesting story of our times?

Year one of the global commons movement

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Whatever we do, whatever we produce – we need common pool resources. So, the very question we have to answer is: What do we want to do with them? Do we want to produce commodities and convert everything – our collective knowledge, our genes, solar energy, public arenas and spaces, water, beaches, social care, etc. – into commodities? Or do we want to sustain and reproduce them as commons? It’s our choice.

Mink River

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Mink River is simply the best novel I have read in a decade. It is brilliantly and painstakingly crafted. It tells a wonderful and heart-warming story. It never manipulates. Its prose is pure poetry: Every word counts. Its characters are so contemporary and complex and familiar that they spring to life. And its message — about cultural transition driven by necessity, about the importance of community and of place and of resilience and of love — is essential and delivered with a power and richness that no non-fictional account could hope to match.

Lentils and justice for all

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Food justice is about ensuring access to healthy, quality food for all people, no matter their economic position. Ahmadi and Reverend Jeffrey sat down with YES! to explain how a total reorientation of the food system can support community health and wealth—planting local businesses, creating jobs, and growing a public understanding about why our current paradigm fails us all, especially those in the most need.