Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For something as critical as food, it is common sense that society should design for resilience. Reliability in food production in the face of change requires a system capable of rapid evolution. Resilience is therefore a core principle of sustainability.
It takes a long time to make big changes to society. I would argue that looking ahead 40 years, to 2050, is probably a wise thing to do for planning purposes.
First, we need a miraculous comprehensive substitute for crude oil. Then we need a miraculous removal of carbon from the atmosphere. We need the first miracle right now. We need the second within a generation.
Rather than follow the customary American dream, Tammy and Logan sold their home and car, and moved to a bikeable/walkable neighborhood in Sacramento, California. After reading Derrick Jensen’s writings, this couple used Your Money or Your Life as a means to get out of debt and, they feel, regain their lives and their future. While they recount the psychological challenges of facing a future of declining resources, the catalyst that continues to move them forward is a dream of living in an affordable tiny house within a supportive community).
A friend of mine, Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man) once observed that cutting your energy usage should be as easy as rolling off a log – that as long as it is always easier to use more resources, and the path of least resistance heads towards taking the car or turning up the heat, we’re destined to struggle. And he’s right.
-When the Media Is the Disaster
-Naomi Klein on how corporate branding has taken over America
-The best things in life are free
-Do soot emissions mean that wood heating causes global warming?
-Bavarian prince hits resistance over plans for giant solar park
-Companies team up with Abu Dhabi over green jet fuel
-Hybrid Cars Won’t Save Much Oil
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—giving corporations the ability to spend money directly to influence federal elections under the Constitution’s First Amendment—was inevitable. It represents a logical expansion of corporate constitutional “rights”—which include the rights of persons which have been judicially conferred upon corporations. “Personhood” rights mean that corporations possess First Amendment rights to free speech, along with a litany of other rights that are secured to persons under the federal Bill of Rights.
-Pick-your-own vegetables to replace flowers in high street
-Permaculture Design is for Disaster Relief, Not Just for Gardens
-Sharon, the bounty!: A review of Astyk’s “Independence Days”
-Oilrigs should be used for homes in areas at risk of flooding, report says
-Growing Home—Urban Agriculture in Chicago
-Towns Rush to Make Low-Carbon Transition
This episode we welcome Ragan Sutterfeld of Felder School Farm, a school farm located in Little Rock Arkansas that is pioneering the way to get agriculture into our country’s schools. Topics of discussion include barriers to adoption, the agricultural calendar vs. the educational calendar, and agriculture in education. This idea can be summarized in five words: Turn the Schools into Farms. Now, let’s go out there and make it a reality.
It is true that people worked long hours in the past – but the pattern of those hours was radically different. Community thrived when more people lived and worked embedded in their community. Now most Americans spend a third of their waking hours in a workplace community, often completely unconnected from the community proximate to their home…Instead of belonging to connected social institutions, if they are members of community organizations, they are probably members of completely different ones.
Faith Carr, after working hunched over a desk for 35 years, ended up disabled. Exhausted after even more years of progressive political activism with no success, she turned her hand to her own backyard. The 25 square-foot herb garden turned into a homestead. Come the revolution, she’ll bring the eats.
