Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Let’s face it, we, the civilized, educated, enlightened part of humanity like things to be straight. Let primitive tribesmen live in picturesque and practical round huts–we require abstract boxes of steel and concrete clad in plate glass, with plenty of nice straight lines, true vertical and horizontal planar surfaces and lots of ninety-degree angles to please the eye.
And then *POP* just like that, my back-to-the-land bubble bursts. I rub the sleep from my eyes and blink: Ah yes, here I am. Back in Brooklyn, in school full time, pursuing a masters degree, racking up the loans.
Even if the good times were going to roll again, in the sense of our having more consumables, how well has that worked as a formula for happiness? And if it turns out that we have even less stuff in the future, can we find a source of felicity other than the mall? The good news is that alternatives are available. The more challenging news? Alternatives may emerge not where we normally look, but as the hidden complements of some of our dominant virtues.
If you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil — and just know that you’re not alone. In the Niger Delta and the Ecuadorian Amazon, among other places, your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades.
-Fools’ Errand: Effort to Shut Down Gulf Well is Failing
-U.S. allows Gulf well to remain closed despite seep
-BP Caps Well: What Happens to Oil Spill Ravaged Gulf Coast Now?
Achieving sustainability hinges on how effectively advocates can portray an attractive future based on stable resource consumption and highlight existing subcultural practices that, if properly scaled, can form the basis of such a future.
(Selections from an in-depth academic aricle by a professor of psychology – a paper rich in insight and possibilities. Maybe preaching and dire warnings are not the optimum ways to encourage sustainable lifestyles?)
The Transition Model has advanced a pathway towards ‘local sustainability’ distinct from previous sustainability models in a clear and important way: it is a grassroots, non-governmental model and also a networking movement. Still in its infancy, and with little academic attention so far having specifically focused on it; there is a clear gap in understanding of the Transition Model’s role in relation to (local) sustainability, which this research has sought to bridge.
(Highlights from a paper recommended by Rob Hopkins as “high quality research.”)
Lately I’ve been encountering articles and news stories touting the need for revolution in the wake of a gansterized U.S. financial system and a government that has itself become a criminal enterprise. I sense that many bloggers and their readers are salivating with anticipation that someone or something will light the fuse of a revolutionary cannon that will eviscerate the present system and replace it with something more just and humane.
Some stories makes so much sense when you read them that you wonder why you didn’t see them coming. One such story appeared recently in the New York Times — Wall St. Hiring in Anticipation of an Economic Recovery.
-Germany targets switch to 100% renewables for its electricity by 2050
-Report sees need for 500 additional biofuels plants
-No link between wind turbines and health: report
-Residents reject wind farm health findings
-Locally Owned Wind Power: Quaint it Ain’t
-Why the tech revolution isn’t a template for an energy revolution
-Right Wing Thought Police – An Analysis
-The Iranian Threat
Why are we as societies creating a world that we as individuals abhor? It’s a mind-bending question.
