Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Extreme commuters – who spend at least three hours per day traveling to and from their workplace – doubled in the U.S. between 1990 and 2005. Since the onset of the subprime and financial crises, the trend to move further and further away, and to travel longer and longer distances, has reached the end of the road.
-Obama’s year in power: Healthcare was tough, but the future is tougher
-A Year Later, Voters Send a Different Message
-A Very American Coup
Nobody wants to be the last person into a community in disarray. Nobody wants to come skating in, unknown by the neighbors, when the food and water are running low. Nobody wants to be known at the new kid in town, regardless of her age. So there’s the central issue of building community in the community. As if that’s not difficult enough, in a culture anathema to community, there’s more.
John Michael Greer, Sharon Astyk and Rob Hopkins have made some interesting points on the topic of community, and I wish to join the fray. In all of my experience, communities — of people and animals — form instantaneously and rather effortlessly, based on a commonality of interests and needs.
Hot from combined gatherings of Peak Oil, Climate, and new planning experts in Vancouver, October, this episode of Radio Eco-shock features California green guru Warren Karlenzig on post carbon cities and former Shell Exec now anti-corporate activist Anita Burke. This is the first of a series of speakers from “Gaining Ground/Resilient Cities, Urban Strategies for Transition Times” conference in Vancouver October 20-22nd, 2009.
Peak oil will force us to acquire new knowledge and skills – The Great Reskilling. These “new” skills are often old skills that our grandparents took for granted. In this spirit, “my” ecovillage-to-be organized three courses this past summer on Building with natural materials, Permaculture Design and Local Economic Regeneration.
Organizing: Movement, Community, Pressure Group?
Greer begins with a serious confusion when he conflates “community”, “movement” and “pressure group”. He is talking about movement building, not community building, when he references the Grange or civil rights.
-Fear of the poor is hampering Haiti rescue
-Why The US Owes Haiti Billions – The Briefest History
-Senegal offers land to Haitians
-Year 501: The Tragedy of Haiti
-Haiti: a long descent to hell
Had Noah built his ark and the Great Flood never materialized, he would have felt very, very silly indeed! Noah could thank God for such an accurate weather forecast. In the biblical story, once the waters receded, God told Noah that there won’t be any more Great Floods, and some of us may still find comfort in this bit of divine dispensation, but rising ocean levels are a fact that more and more of us will be forced to take into account as we redraw our coastal maps.
-Emissions from UK food industry far higher than believed
-Poachers Arrive at Egg Farms
-Striking a bargain: With supply limited, state targets water demand
-Will Anyone Stand Up For American Industry?
-The Key to Local Food Systems’ Survival: Strong Community Support
‘Eco’ packaging
-Google defies Chinese censors after cyberattacks on Gmail accounts of activists
-Public Produce: Filling the Sidewalks with Fruit Trees
-As the World Burns
-Movie Review Friday: The Road
-A New Eden, Both Cosmic and Cinematic
-Photo Gallery: Homes for a Changing Climate
William Morris offered a radical vision that sounds very much like the radical vision of those now proposing the relocalization of human society in response to the myriad challenges we face to our very survival as a species.
