Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The following exchange between Michael Carriere and Alex Knight occurred via email, July 2010. Alex Knight was questioned about the End of Capitalism Theory, which states that the global capitalist system is breaking down due to ecological and social limits to growth and that a paradigm shift toward a non-capitalist future is underway.
What is the difference between soil and dirt?
Soil is alive. Dirt is dead. A single teaspoon of soil can contain billions of microscopic bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes. A handful of the same soil will contain numerous earthworms, arthropods, and other visible crawling creatures. Healthy soil is a complex community of life and actually supports the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet.
-Permaculture in Malaysia
-Biomass Britain: do fields of energy crops spell an end to grazing livestock?
-A More Feminine Food System: Farmer Jane (a Book Review)
-Filming Haiti’s Food Crisis and Grassroots Movement for Sustainable Agriculture (VIDEO)
-Is the Next Global Food Crisis Now in the Making?
Perhaps the central reason I keep coming back to St. Andrew’s at this particular moment in history is the anguish I feel for the world.
It’s the concrete anguish we feel every day when we open the newspaper for the update on the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf. It’s that anguish that comes with hearing the news of the latest drone attack on a village in Afghanistan or Pakistan, or a reading a report on the most recent study of species extinction and reduction in biodiversity.
For me, anguish captures the emotion associated with recognizing that we humans have fallen out of right relation with Creation, and therefore inevitably out of right relation with each other.
(Sermon delivered yesterday at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.)
I finish my talk pointing at one of the windows of the church. I say, “and a vegetable garden is sustainable as well, as the one I have seen when I came here.” They smile. One of the old men says, “Yes, we are cultivating it. The young ones don’t care too much about it.” I say, “They’ll learn and they’ll be happy that you left it to them.”
The economic crisis in the United States has had a profound impact on the lives of millions of its citizens. Among the most damaging is the experience of unemployment. In a country where notions of work, self-reliance, and self-improvement are fundamental to its identity, the insecurities and hardships associated with forced idleness are hard indeed to cope with.
For more than 100 years the coal-producing counties of eastern Kentucky have been dependent on the coal industry, which has dominated them politically and, submitting only to the limits of technology, has come near to ruining them. The legacy of the coal economy in the Kentucky mountains will be immense and lasting damage to the land and to the people. Much of the damage to the land and the streams, and to water quality downstream, will be irreparable within historical time. The lastingness of the damage to the people will, to a considerable extent, be determined by the people.
Some mornings I don’t have a prepared topic, I just let the winds take me wherever they will. There was a gale blowing today.
What wildly underfunded climate solution can achieve all of these goals simultaneously:
The answer is a major effort to make roofs (and pavements) whiter and/or more reflective, which should be coupled with a major urban tree-planting effort.
-Why do economists avoid talking about ethics?
-Our nature is nurture: Are shifts in child-rearing making modern kids mean?
-National Post shocker: Global warming deniers are a liability to the conservative cause
-Clean, Green, Safe and Smart
Those who learn about Peak Oil, climate change, and economic hard times show a series of short-lived symptoms of stress over several months, but these are normal and expected reactions to these stunning findings. Roughly 50-60% of adults in North America are exposed to traumatic events, but only 5% to 10% develop maladjusted PTSD and related problems. What sorts of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors promote the development of longer-term traumatic reactions?
Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger, and despair as this country plunges into its worst economic crisis in decades.
