The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) oil spew demonstrates that we just don’t get it
The GOM oil spew reinforces the extent to which Americans “just don’t get it” regarding
the unsustainable nature of our American way of life.
Building Community
This oil spill, too, shall pass
You have been warned. This is a politically incorrect article. In 1999, I read Jane Goodall’s book, Reason for Hope, which took the optimistic view that, in spite of human activity, our beautiful blue planet is very resilient. She lists nature’s resiliency as her third reason for hope, the others being the human brain, the indomitable human spirit, and the determination of young people.
Fixing Planet Earth: a not-so-modest proposal
Mahatma Gandhi is widely regarded as the father of the Indian nation, which he was. But the founding of the nation was not his only aim. He was, as he freely admitted, using India to demonstrate to the whole world how nonviolence could change history. The swell of mostly nonviolent revolutions that has followed in the last 30 or so years would seem to indicate that his bold scheme worked.
A dialogue with Lorna Salzman – part III
In her Commentary and her Critique of the Transition Initiative/Network, Lorna Salzman questions the role of government and Transition. Ms. Salzman asserts that the Transition approach omits government. As I will attempt to explain below, our approach is far from that.
Denver busts urban farming’s yuppie stereotype
When we were still in Seattle, preparing for this project, a few friends asked if this was a tour of ‘yuppie urban farm projects.’ Isn’t that who participates in the urban farm? they generalized.
Notes from a “Co-creating earth based communities” workshop
The insights of process work are enormously helpful in understanding group dynamics, especially how to work with rank and power, and be creative with conflict – key skills for successful projects in all parts of Transition.
Deconstructing Dinner: Exploring Ethnobiology I: Preserving traditional foodways among indigenous youth
As people throughout the Western world are increasingly seeking to reconnect with their food, there’s a lot to be learned from the many peoples who have long maintained these dynamic relationships between their sustenance and the earth. Ethnobiologists research these very relationships through a scientific lens and it’s a field of study bringing together many disciplines like anthropology,ecology and conservation to name just a few.
Review: Thriving Beyond Sustainability by Andrés R. Edwards
Given what a sweeping category sustainability is, author and noted sustainability expert Andrés Edwards is to be commended for distilling it down into two easily digestible volumes for lay readers: The Sustainability Revolution and Thriving Beyond Sustainability.
What Price Pelican?
Our energy subsidy from the stored sunlight in fossil fuels is gigantic. The chemical and kinetic energy embodied in the thick gooey condensed organic matter from past eons is, for all human intents and purposes, indistinguishable from magic. Once in a while, like now, we see the downsides to our dependency on this elixir, in this case the ecological degradation of increasing areas of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystems, and collateral damage to other species.
New York Times on peak oil … and the problem of history
You learn pretty quickly to adjust for what any mainstream media says about peak oil and anyone who does any kind of preparation.
Urban farms don’t make money – so what?
Over on Earth Island Journal, Sena Christian has an excellent, rigorously reported article about the tough economics of urban farming. She focuses on some of the more famous city farms of the Bay Area, where EIJ is based — City Slicker Farms, People’s Grocery — but she also discusses projects like Milwaukee’s Growing Power. And she finishes the piece with a farm I’d never heard of before: Greensgrow, in Philadelphia.
Rethinking Transition as a Pattern Language: an introduction
Yesterday I posted a document which contained the first rough attempt at sketching out a new way of communicating Transition, using Christopher Alexander’s ‘pattern language’ approach. Over the coming weeks and months I will be blogging more about this, but in advance of the 2010 Transition Network conference (only a week to go!), I thought it might be helpful to give some more background on this. What is a ‘pattern language’ and why might it be a better way of communicating Transition? Here are some initial thoughts.
