Building Community

Lessons from the Edge

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One of the best things about being invited to present at conferences and events is that I get to meet the other speakers, and usually talk with them in at least a semi-relaxed setting. Generally speaking, at a good conference I can count on meeting at least a few people who I’ve never heard of, but should have, at least one person who I regard with a measure of awe (sometimes even more), and a whole lot of just plain interesting people doing important work.

Native Recipe for Health

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On a stretch of desert near the U.S.-Mexico border, the only eatery on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation opened last spring to a full house. The Desert Rain Café brightened a space in a small shopping complex, drawing dozens of curious customers who filled patio tables by noon. Its menu, local by design, featured ingredients from the café’s own farm: desert squash enchiladas, mesquite-flour muffins, hummus made from tepary beans. The café recently extended its hours to take advantage of its booming business.

What "Lower Consumption" Means

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As a high-school teacher, I wanted to give my thoroughly-industrial, suburban-NJ students a more detailed peek at their upcoming post-industrial future. I felt the need to challenge their prevailing mindsets regarding our resource-depletion predicament: the “shorter showers & change the light-bulbs” crowd, the “engineers will surely come to our rescue” folks, and the “problem? — what problem?” people. This essay and the before/after comparison chart that follows are part of my ongoing (unsanctioned) attempts at doing so.

Responding to Alex Steffen’s Critique of Transition at WorldChanging

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I have been following with interest the discussions surrounding Alex Steffen’s piece at WorldChanging in which he critiques Transition. I am honoured that someone so widely respected as a writer on sustainability issues saw fit to engage in discussions around Transition, but, as a critique of Transition, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Transition: Meeting the Challenge of Energy Descent

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…Where we are now is at the beginning of a transition from an industrial growth culture to a culture of descent. This transition will be characterized by much cultural chaos, and then we will be declining or descending to a far more sustainable low-energy culture. Regarding this, David Holmgren says, “We have trouble visualizing decline as positive, but this simply reflects the dominance of our prior culture of growth…The real issue of our age is how we make a graceful and ethical descent.”

It’s Too Late, Baby, Times Up!: A Book Review

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I live in Boulder, Colorado where the buzz among eco-activists who attended a recent lecture by Vandana Shiva is her chilling statement that if the human species continues on its present destructive trajectory, it has no more than 100 years of life on this planet. At about the same time this bomb was dropped on Shiva’s audience, Keith Farnish’s amazing book Time’s Up: An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis arrived in my mailbox for review…