Building Community

Less is more

by

Within the body of Transition movement literature, I don’t often see references to the Simple Living or Voluntary Simplicity movement.  Perhaps the Voluntary Simplicity movement is less active in the places that Transition founders Rob and Naresh have lived. Perhaps it is because at its origins, Voluntary Simplicity focused more on individual choices and individual changes than on community-centric and societal-transformation ones. I can only speculate.

A pathless land

by

As peak oil moves from the fringes toward the mainstream, the dream of shaping a mass movement around it has caught the imaginations of a growing number of peak oil activists. Is creating a mass movement toward sustainability the best hope we have, or a blind alley that could negate any hope of managing the challenges ahead of us?

The lost civilization: Finding a reality-based frame of reference in the age of delusion

by

We are a lost people. Here in the frantic, waning days of industrial civilization, we have almost completely lost our bearings. We no longer know who we are, what we are, when we are, where we are, or why we are. And as we prepare to embark on a harrowing descent from our civilization’s peak, it would behoove us to find an honest, reality-based frame of reference. So let’s get out our navigation equipment — it’s time we ‘found’ ourselves!

Eat less meat, eat better meat

by

The list of Meatless Monday supporters continues to grow across the globe, and surprisingly to some, many of the latest enthusiasts make their living either cooking meat, such as chef Mario Batali or producing it, like rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman. What makes Meatless Monday so successful is its simple and inclusive message which promotes moderation with the goal of improving public health and the health of the planet.

Introducing the “Post Carbon Reader”

by

In 2009, Post Carbon Institute recruited 29 of the world’s leading sustainability thinkers to answer one fundamental question: How do we manage the transition to a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable world? Like us, our Fellows see five key truths:

  • We have hit the “limits to growth.”
  • No issue can be addressed in isolation.
  • We must focus on responses, not just solutions.
  • We must prepare for uncertainty.
  • We can do something.

The death of sprawl: designing urban resilience for the 21st century resource and climate crises

by

In April 2009–just when people thought things couldn’t get worse in San Bernardino County, California—bulldozers demolished four perfectly good new houses and a dozen others still under construction in Victorville, 100 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

Deconstructing Dinner: Margaret Atwood joins prison farms campaign / Vancouver’s backyard chickens I

by

Margaret Atwood Joins Prison Farms Campaign As part of our ongoing coverage on the future of Canada’s prison farms, we check in on the campaign where well-known Canadian author Margaret Atwood has now joined the fight. We’ll listen in on the June 6 rally in Kingston, Ontario and the subsequent rally in Ottawa one week later.

Detroit’s renewal: Can it inspire the social forum?

by

Detroit was not an accidental choice for the U.S. Social Forum (USSF). Take a look at the decaying Packard Plant or at boarded-up homes and small businesses, and you’d say this city is dying. Less well known is that it is a city in the midst of a rebirth from the bottom up, and the organizers knew this well when they chose Detroit for the second USSF.

Deepwater Horizon and the education of desire: A review of “Everyday Ethics and Social Change”

by

Anna L. Peterson’s “Everyday Ethics and Social Change: The Education of Desire (EE) concedes that is it is our nature to hope, even “when nothing in our world indicates progress is possible” (Pg. 1). She’s not a Pollyanna, noting there are no “valid arguments to justify moral and political hope… This book is about the connection between ‘that which is hoped for’ in our everyday lives and the possibility of [bringing about] this good on a larger and more lasting scale”.