Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Our leaders have failed us. Our leaders are failing us. Our leaders will continue to fail us. It is time – past time – to ask ourselves the necessary questions: Who will step forward to restore sanity to our lives? Who will provide us the real leadership necessary to extricate ourselves from the delusional madhouse our culture has become? If our leaders will not lead us to a livable future, then who will?
Humans must create paradise or they cannot live on the planet Earth. Paradise here is described as a human community that lives in perpetuity and in peace on one place on the earth, over many generations.
Taking responsibility for our own lot and the climate crisis means we must first reject an unworkable system and culture. I hasten to clarify; this does not mean there aren’t a lot of nice people caught up in it. But if they believe elections and voting with their consumer dollars are going to save them from the ecological crisis and the slide into societal chaos of collapse, they are of no help to themselves or to the countless species being driven extinct by modern civilization.
-From farm field to cotton mill: The making of America’s denim
-Can China Turn Cotton Green?
-Pastoralism Unraveling in Mongolia
This is a preliminary attempt to explore the relationship between the current predicament facing humanity arising out of an exploding population facing planetary resource limitations, in other words known as overshoot, and the psychology of work inherent in the human species.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen never expected the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to amount to much. He told the British Guardian newspaper that it would be better if Copenhagen failed. That’s because Hansen is a vocal critic of the economic policies discussed there, and he hopes Copenhagen’s failure gives the public a chance to talk about new options.
-Ed Miliband: China tried to hijack Copenhagen climate deal
-Carbon Supplicants on the Copenhagen Pilgrimage
-Review of the Year 2009: Climate change
-How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room
-There’s No Negotiating With Nature
-BC Fossil of the Decade Awards
-Copenhagen’s failure belongs to Obama
-Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees
-Doom and Gloom
-Mammals May Be Nearly Half Way Toward Mass Extinction
-Death, taxes, and Mr. Market calling the bluff
-Forget the Happy Talk: Longer, Deeper Recession Lies Ahead, Execs Warn
-Why Britain is still in recession
-The “Slow Money” Movement May Revolutionize the Way You Think About Food
A Field Study of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) in Shanghai
-The Dirt on Climate Change
-HomeGrown
-Open University Transition Films Now Embedded Here Too…
-Seed behemoth Monsanto stumbles into antitrust trouble
-Weather no obstacle for Pittsburg garden
-How a Hoop House Can Extend the Growing Season
-Copenhagen: peasant farmers can save the planet
-Getting at the roots of unsustainable U.S. ag policy
-Copenhagen could lead to increase in intensive farming
-Meet the Milk
-Where Industry Once Hummed, Urban Garden Finds Success
For many centuries, canal boats were propelled by men, horses or mules on the towpath beside the water. Before diesel power took over, engineers developed several interesting methods powered by electricity: trolleyboats, floating funiculars and electric mules. Many of these ecological solutions could be applied today instead of diesel engines.
Former truck driver Bill Wilson tells an insightful story about the energy packed in a gallon of gas — which we won’t always have in cheap abundance. Now a permaculture educator, he sees permaculture as a viable, realistic way to use nature to provide the abundance we really need — harvesting sunlight, food, wind, water and more. Can you guess what the magic stuff is that we all can’t live without? (No, it’s not oil.)
