Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
By now, you’ve likely heard conflicting reports on what was or was not accomplished in Copenhagen these past two weeks. Whatever you’ve been told, I can tell you with conviction you need only know this: The U.N. convention on climate change in Copenhagen resulted in zero meaningful progress on global emissions reductions. Feel free to read the spin, but please, don’t get caught up in its spokes.
A few years ago, when the Local Agenda-21 group for Copenhagen (Agenda 21 was the name of the sustainable development plan the UN launched at the Earth Summit in Rio) started to look at what kind of changes might be needed to place the city on a more sustainable path through the challenges of the coming century, they requested a guided tour of Christiania.
As many have now written, the Cop15 conference, which is focussed on creating a treaty that will prevent our climate from undergoing a systems state change and re-establishing itself in a new stable state that much less conductive to human survival, seems certain to fall far short of what is needed or fail completely.
The economic troubles and energy concerns of the present invite comparison with the 1970s, the last time industrial civilization had to deal with the limits to growth. The abandonment of the initiatives of those years offers a troubling cautionary tale for the present, in this second part of a three-part series.
-Unplugging from the world’s power lines
-How Effective Are Renewables, Really?
-Bringing Hope to Copenhagen With a Novel Investment Idea
-Fairness, Personal Action and Al Gore’s House
-Do Panels Dispense Advice or Rationales?
-Unschooling & Unworking: Confessions of a stay-at-home family (Part 2)
-COP15: Climate ‘scepticism’ and questions about sex
-Can Obama Stop America’s Gas-Guzzling Ways?
Right now, on two different fronts, political progressives face a horrible choice: Accept a severely compromised political agreement or stick to their guns and run the risk of getting nothing. Sure, this is a recurring question for activists and advocates of all stripes but—unlike the so-called “death tax”—in these two cases the question really is a matter of life or death.
“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”
Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages
-Sinking Feelings About Storing Carbon Emissions on the Farm
-California’s Troubled Waters
-L.A. cooperative provides communities with produce
-Farmers Reclaim Power!
-Free lunches handed out to highlight food waste
-Setting the Table (report)
Kris Holstrom’s off-grid permaculture farm at 9000 feet high is living proof that food can be grown nearly anywhere. Managing with a very short growing season and water constraints, she and her interns have created magic. Tour the sun-warmed, insulated greenhouse where greens are grown year-round.
I made myself swear that I would not argue with any of my fellow Science bloggers for one full week after my arrival here, no matter what. Fortunately, my first week wound up yesterday, and with the arrival of Greg Laden’s essay on the political and intellectual dangers of relocalization, I’ve got good fodder for my first donnybrook ;-).
The signs up all over the airport and various places elsewhere in town are calling it Hopenhagen, but everybody I know is calling it Cop-enhagen, which seems far more appropriate. The international media have been giving this lots of coverage, and rightly so.
