Building Community

Commentary: Lies we tell ourselves

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Our desire not to stand on the wrong side of history is radically tempered by our desire to keep the flow of oil coming and the markets stable. The US cannot endure another major economic shock, and oil price spikes and the possible market repercussions of a destabilizing Middle East clearly terrify our present administration.

Building a local food system: An interview with Bob Waldrop of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

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Bob Waldrop was the driver behind the forming of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative in 2003. Here Bob explains how the co-op, which started with just 60 members and 15 producers, has grown to 3400 members and 200 producers, effectively transforming the local food scene in Oklahoma. Bob shares thoughts about doing it where you are.

Strictly Roots – Low Carbon Cookbook

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When you have plants in common something happens. When you cook together something happens. It’s hard to say what really except that invisible connections are made that make sense of things in a time when absolute madness seems to rule. When fish are thrown back into the sea and everything once owned by the people is up for sale.

Film review: The farmer and the horse

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Jared Flesher’s film The Farmer and the Horse is a joy, an absolutely fascinating immersion into the world of three people who have fallen in love with working with horses. In a world where the production of food is hugely dependent on the availability of cheap liquid fuels and where, in the UK, the average age of farmers is 58, this film follows 3 young people trying to get into agriculture in New Jersey in the US, each of whom has a passion for working with horses.

 

The Arab crisis: food, energy, water, justice

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In Tunisia, Mohamad Bouazizi did not rebel because he did not find a job reflecting his ambitions and education. He did not burn himself when a police officer confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling at a street-corner on the pretext he had no permit. But when he went to file a complaint to seek justice, his demand was rejected. It was this feeling of injustice that led Mohamed Bouazizi to his desperate act. 
 
 
 


Small flood in Sri Lanka; no white people dead

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The old assumption about the superiority of white people, after all, was never simply biological. It was very much tied up with the cultural, economic and political achievements that the white people were responsible for. When a “developing” country is devastated by a natural disaster, it’s to be expected. When a “developed” country is hit, it’s counter-intuitive; it automatically becomes a crisis.

Arctic native peoples on the edge

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For millennia, the indigenous peoples of Russia, northern Scandinavia, and North America—the Inuits, Aleuts, Athabaskans, and Gwich’in, among others—have endured environmental and climatic change. But recent anthropogenic climate change may be their most formidable challenge of all. In the past few decades, Arctic average temperatures have risen at almost twice the rate as in the rest of the world (and in some areas, like Alaska, annual average temperatures are rising at five times the global rates). Sea level is rising, the ice is thinning, and the ranges and availability of the seals, whales, caribou, and fish that have sustained northern cultures are changing.

We need freedom of action to confront peak oil

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In the third video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth productions, co-editor of The Automatic Earth, Nicole M. Foss, explains how energy relates to the economy and what our impending energy crisis will look like. Foss discusses the issues associated with peak oil in financial rather than environmental terms, because she finds that peak oil has much more to do with finance than it does with climate change.