Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
“There are people who have bought into what I would consider a very inappropriately optimistic idea of the future, and they insist I am a doomer. People who are hard core doomers insist I am a blind optimist. Because we in Western civilization these days tend to be thinking in terms of two and only two categories.”
A Transition council would be one where politicians and officers are fully aware of the implications of climate change and peak oil; where the community and council have a plan for life after cheap oil; where the council acts as an enabling force for community groups and as a liberator of new ideas from the community; where the council’s leaders put the local area and the planet before the needs of national government wherever necessary; where the priority is on increasing the happiness or well-being of residents above all else; and where there is space for a deeper understanding of the dramatic changes we are going through and how to achieve behaviour change.
Sheep, pigs and cows do not belong to massive agribusiness factories here; they often belong to smallholders, and you will see them in the space of a backyard.
Want to encourage the local economy? Try printing your own regional money.
A weekly free bike coop where you can use mechanic’s tools and expertise to fix your bike? Free clinics where schoolkids or neighbors learn to maintain or build their own bikes from used parts? While Chauncey and Dash Tudhope-Locklear make a living repairing bicycles, volunteer projects support their mission of empowering “social change through bicycles.” With an eye to local food self-reliance, they even repair farmers’ bicycles for free.
What are we for? What do we desire? While I acknowledge my own distasteful and ill-designed dependence on fossil fuels, I can heartily say I’m for community gardens, walkable and bikable cities, local economies that are (shockingly!) based on a currency besides money, and for vacant land and homes being available to those who need them or will make use of them.
Will my food stay local in hard times? Will we feed our community? Or will the bind that farmers live in – the need to feed the more affluent – continue to constrict my community. This is something I simply do not know. I tend to think, however, that the degree to which the community can support and build a network of intertwined food systems, and intertwined people, will in some measure define this.
The 2010 International Conference on the Future: Energy, Economy & Environment examines deflation, collapse, and the transition to sustainability. It features extended keynotes and extensive interaction with Nicole Foss, Joe Tainter, Richard Douthwaite, Steve Keen, David Korowicz, Steve Keen, Chris Bedford, and Aaron Wissner. The conference comences on Friday, Nov. 12 and runs through Sunday, Nov. 14 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Early bird 50% off registration is open through Thursday, Oct. 21.
As the world faces recession, climate change, inequity and more, Tim Jackson delivers a piercing challenge to established economic principles, explaining how we might stop feeding the crises and start investing in our future.
– How fear of bias dominates the climate change debate
– Is Social Networking Useless for Social Change?
– Monbiot: The Values of Everything
– In Los Angeles, people come out to play when streets are closed to cars (video of CicLAvia)
– There’s safety in numbers for cyclists
– 7 Rules for Sustainable Communities – British Columbia edition
In an age when wealth and power present a more diffuse and benign face to the world, the soft authority of knowledge is ever more important as a force for social change. The politics of knowledge – how ideas are created, used and disseminated – represents a key issue for the social change community.
