Peak oil – May 9
– Forbes: Peak Oil: Net Exports Aren’t Everything
– Portland mayorial candidate reads Kunstler, thinks peak oil is real
– Illustrating the new book “Peeking at Peak Oil”
– Niko Paech: Wir müssen weniger konsumieren
Building Community
Peak Moment 209: Growing up in the first Great Depression
Janaia’s mother Rowena grew up in a blue collar family during the 1930s. The kids helped their mom in her own pie delivery business while their dad did construction odd jobs. In this cash-only society, they lived on what they could pay for. She recalls losing her only pair of shoes and envying a school girl’s daily peanut butter-and-jam sandwich. But she didn’t feel deprived: people generously gave groceries and hand-me-down clothes. Kids entertained themselves with outdoor games, and later, from adventures emanating from the home-built radio. Her frugality, self-reliant attitude and do-it-yourself skills went on to enrich the family Janaia grew up in.
Education for a new era – May 8
– Jeffrey J. Brown: Instead of “Waiting for Godot”, emphasize vocational and agricultural training
– Learning That Works
– Young Italians flock to become shepherds
– The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps
Dealing with historic reversals – May 8
– Lundberg: Humanity’s chances dimmed when many progressives love slave-jobs and cheap gasoline
– Suicides have Greeks on edge
– Chomsky: On the History of the US Economy in Decline
– ‘Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate)
Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012), author of “Ecotopia”
Ernest “Chick” Callenbach, a film scholar and environmentalist who created a cult favorite in “Ecotopia,” a 1975 novel that predicted with uncanny accuracy a world where recycling is commonplace, food is locally grown and energy comes from the sun, died April 16 in Berkeley. The novel has now sold nearly one million copies and been translated into a dozen languages
Ernest Callenbach, Last words to an America in decline
This document was found on the computer of Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) after his death:
“As I survey my life, which is coming near its end, I want to set down a few thoughts that might be useful to those coming after. It will soon be time for me to give back to Gaia the nutrients that I have used during a long, busy, and happy life. I am not bitter or resentful at the approaching end; I have been one of the extraordinarily lucky ones. So it behooves me here to gather together some thoughts and attitudes that may prove useful in the dark times we are facing: a century or more of exceedingly difficult times.”
The conversation we need to have – Age of Limits conference May 25-28 in Pennsylvania
It’s time to talk instead about the things that actually matter in the age of limits that’s coming on the heels of the age of excess now ending — about what can be saved, what must be let go, and what options might enable individuals, families, and communities to make it through the troubled years ahead. That’s the conversation that needs to happen now, as the age of limits begins, and it’s the conversation a number of us hope to launch and to foster at the Age of Limits conference this Memorial Day weekend. (May 25-28, Artemas, Pennsylvania)
Expanding urban ag in San Francisco
Most of the city’s community gardens have waiting lists of two years or more, according to Public Harvest, a new report by San Francisco Urban Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR). The most comprehensive report of its kind in recent years, it paints a sweeping portrait of the current urban agriculture landscape and presents a bold agenda to help San Francisco meet the demands of a burgeoning movement.
Water commons, water citizenship and water security
One of the wonders of the Earth is the pristine waters that give life to an astonishing diversity of ecosystems and human societies. Climate change has made it painfully clear that although ecological regions are distinct, natural systems and human societies are intimately intertwined. Deforestation for agricultural expansion in one eco-zone can alter monsoon events in another. We all have a stake – and ought to have a voice – in making decisions about transformations of nature, even if they occur a continent away.
Global civil society and the rise of the civil economy
The last thirty years has seen the re-emergence of a civil economic challenge, side by side with the advance of globalisation, as a distinct strand in the development of global civil society. Don’t underestimate its longterm significance in the glacial shifts now taking place in the world economy.
Farmers markets move online
It isn’t always easy finding fresh, high-quality food in this country. Supermarkets with their long, complex supply chains usually offer unripe or subpar produce that leaves a lot to be desired. But the usual alternative methods of provision have distinct limitations. Luckily, technology provides one great answer to this dilemma, opening up an important new avenue for small-scale producers to connect to customers.
How to learn from the past
Showing how the present has come into being but remains continually connected to the past allows us to create what Stewart Brand has called a “long now”—a perspective that allows us a more complex understanding of the long-term social, economic, and environmental challenges that all civilizations have faced.
