Building Community

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

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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”.

Towards a new economy and a new politics

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The U.S. political economy is failing across a broad front—environmentally, socially, economically, and politically. Deep, systemic change is needed to transition to a new economy, one where the acknowledged priority is to sustain human and natural communities. Policies are available to effect this transformation and to temper economic growth and consumerism while simultaneously improving social well-being and quality of life, but a new politics involving a coalescing of progressive communities is needed to realize these policies.

Vietnamese gardeners in New Orleans offer much food for thought

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East New Orleans is lush and crumbling. Sometimes it feels like the built environment — the convenience stores, sugar factories, distant oil refineries, houses, brick apartments, parking-lot pavement — is no different than the vegetation: all bloom and decay, the life cycle spinning in time lapse.

Natural gas – June 21

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-The Costs of Natural Gas, Including Flaming Water
-Marcellus Shale gas drilling put under microscope: Moratorium weighed as towns, people wary of potential mishaps
-Struggle for Central Asian energy riches
-Russia Cuts Gas Deliveries to Belarus

Waiting for the Millennium, part 2: The limits of magic

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The first half of this essay sketched out the unfamiliar terrain that’s beginning to open out in front of the peak oil community as the concept of hard energy limits seeps back out into public awareness, after thirty years of exile in the Siberia of the imagination where our society imprisons its unwelcome truths. One probable feature of that landscape is the rise of revitalization movements among people in the industrial world.

What happens when energy resources deplete?

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One view is that energy prices will rise, substitutes will be found, and prices will come back down again, perhaps settling at a somewhat higher equilibrium reflecting the cost of producing the substitute energy source… Another view, popular among those concerned about peak-oil, is that oil and energy prices will just keep rising. If scalable substitutes aren’t found, some expect that oil prices will rise from their current price of $75 barrel, to $100 barrel, to $200 barrel, to $300 barrel, and eventually to $1,000 barrel or more.

Make me a pallet on the floor: Preparing to take in short-term refugees in tough times

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One of the inevitable realities where people get poorer and are subject to more climate-related and infrastructure failure disasters is that people have to take in friends and family who have no other place to go. Hurricane Katrina, for example, for several million people represented an exercise in shared housing – sometimes for a short while, sometimes for a long one.

Creating a game plan for the transition to a sustainable U.S. economy

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The Obama administration should take advantage of the economic crisis to redefine the country’s social goals to prioritize sustainable human well-being and not just grow the economy. We should strive for a future that has full employment and more leisure time to spend with friends and family, thereby reducing conspicuous consumption and poverty. This article envisions what that society might look like with redefined goals, and includes specific ideas as to how to achieve this vision.

Global scenarios for the century ahead: searching for sustainability

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Building on earlier work of the Global Scenario Group and the Stockholm Environment Institute – Boston, this paper presents four updated and contrasting global scenarios for the twenty-first Century created with the PoleStar modeling system. These scenarios feature brief narratives and integrated quantifications across numerous economic, social, resource, and environmental dimensions.

Peak Moment 173: Transitioning to the Elm Street Economy

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How can you contribute your skills towards meeting real needs now and in the future? Paul and Sarah Edwards, the authors of Home-Based Business for Dummies, focus on the “Elm Street Economy” of locally-owned businesses rather than “Main Street”, which we hear so much about, but is comprised mainly of franchises. In the Elm Street Economy, local businesses meet local needs — for food, shelter, clothing, heating, electricity, healthcare, and other products…