Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
President Obama’s instinct that staying in school is better than dropping out altogether is absolutely correct. It’s just that if we’re going to compel kids to stay in school, we need to make their schooling compelling.
Creating a sustainable world is about getting individuals, organisations and nations to shift their perspectives and practices. What can you do to influence this process? I describe three psychological principles to help sustainability advocates be more effective.
Kari Hamerschlag has a post up about the upcoming Farm Bill and its potential to move money away from large scale industrial agriculture and towards smaller producers. For most small farmers producing for local markets, the idea is heady – after all, the economics agriculture are tenuous for many of us – we get all of the burdens of regulation without any of the economies of scale that accompany large scale agriculture.
How appropriate then that we kick off this new way of working by taking a closer look at the concept of skillshare. It is the idea that you can learn anything from anybody, anywhere. No need for teachers or schools, just the willingness to share what you know and can do, with others, who will likewise share their skills with you. The most useful things I know were learned this way; my mum showed me how to cook, a friend explained the correct way to use a hammer and saw, another showed me how to split firewood using minimum effort. It’s how I learned to fish, grow vegetables, knit a jumper, ride a horse, bake bread, sharpen a knife, fly a kite and wash with a single cup of water.
– How to run a PERMABLITZ!
– Ten lessons from the great cycling cities
– Cracking Open the Scientific Process (NYT on ‘Open Science’)
– De la cultura del ‘pelotazo’ a la inversión ‘lenta’ (Slow Finance)
“What we have in each of those ingredients, is a problem that we’ve seen that Transition initiatives come up against enough times to think that that is some sort of a common experience; and then the solution to that problem that we’ve seen implemented enough times to have some kind of confidence that it works…”
(Transcript of a long conversation with Transition founder Rob Hopkins – newly edited and formatted.)
Two new books on the Occupy movement, reviewed by Transition Voice’s Erik Curren.
During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our survival.
In this interview, Joe Moore argues that democracy today is in a state of crisis, and that participatory budgeting is an antidote to the cynicism and disengagement that people increasingly feel towards the government. Moreover, he claims that participatory budgeting is a significant source of community engagement and civic learning, and one step toward the democratization of public institutions and the restoration of public trust in the democratic system.
While a great many commons seek to develop alternatives to conventional businesses – and even to bypass markets altogether – the struggle to democratize capital should not be lost in the shuffle. Popular ownership of capital assets and business enterprises is still a great strategy for building the commons and advancing the public good. Fortunately, there’s a growing enthusiasm for this approach.
-Sioux County, Iowa: Ground zero for U.S. farm boom
-Local Food and The Farm Bill: Small Investments, Big Returns
-UK needs scientific research into agroecology not GM
-How US Policies Fueled Mexico’s Great Migration
In Prosperity Without Growth, the seminal book by Tim Jackson, he concludes that our social logic must change: “The social logic that locks people into materialistic consumerism as the basis for participating in the life of society is extremely powerful, but detrimental ecologically and psychologically. An essential pre-requisite for a lasting prosperity is to free people from this damaging dynamic and provide opportunities for sustainable and fulfilling lives.”
