Reponse to the peak oil story in the New York Times
Boy am I ever humbled to have been featured in the New York Times story ‘Imagining life without oil, and being ready.’
Building Community
Living simply: Finding real happiness
We’re caught in a vicious circle: The more we’re concerned with money, the less time we have for others (making and managing money takes time). When we’re mainly concerned with money, others are our adversaries — we’re all competing for limited resources.
The power of television in Asphaltistan
The ongoing economic collapse will not reach completion while the television remains on. Viewers are simply too easily and chronically manipulated by the irresistible medium. Resistance is futile.
Waiting for the Millennium, part 1: Peak oil goes mainstream
As cracks spread through the wall of peak oil denial, the subculture that has grown up around peak oil activism may just have to deal with their concern becoming mainstream. That offers many positive options, but also some troubling possibilities on the downside — among them a social phenomenon common in periods of turmoil and the collapse of existing cultural narratives.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
