Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The following is the text of an address by Richard Heinberg to the Moana Nui Conference in Honolulu, November 12, 2011. Honolulu was concurrently hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference; as a response to that secretive international trade meeting, the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala Ka Po collaborated to organize Moana Nui.
-Come together: Could communal living be the solution to our housing crisis?
-US millionaires say ‘raise our taxes’
-Brightfarms reduce supply chain … to about 10 vertical metres!
-Can a Clothing Factory Stay Competitive While Paying Workers a Living Wage?
The work of mathematician and architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros continues Christopher Alexander’s work on the nature of architectural order, with more development of specifically scientific aspects. A basic point both make is that natural, biological, and urban systems have a great deal in common. In particular, they all function in complex, varying, and adaptive ways on many different levels. For that reason, they can’t be designed in any very comprehensive way but must largely be allowed to evolve through variation and selection.
Three elements have made the global movements of 2011 so powerful and different. 1) the extraordinary capacity to include all types of people 2) the impulse to move beyond traditional forms of the protest and contention, so as to create solutions for the problems identified 3) the horizontal and directly participatory form they take.
In the second phase of these movements, the focus shifts from acts of protest to instituting the type of change that the movements actually want to see happen in society as a whole. The capacity to create solutions grows as the movements expand in all directions, first through the appearance of multiple occupations connected among themselves, and then through the creation of—or collaboration with—groups or networks that are able to solve problems on a local level through cooperation and the sharing of skills and resources.
Cody Lundin imparts details that often pester my mind when thinking about emergency scenarios and in so doing makes me far less cavalier about the more grim possibilities. A great deal of this information would be useful right now for my family in Thailand as they suffer through the flood. Indeed there is a very third world flavor to Cody’s frugal, homemade approaches that speaks to me.
– Growing Protest Repels Troops in Cairo
– Mellower Occupy Movement Grows in the Suburbs
– How is Occupy Wall Street “like” an API / Tim Pool acting as eyes and ears for thousands
– Occupy Maine and decentralization
– An Uprising With Plenty of Potential (Tea Party strategist, professors, Cornell West)
– Here’s what attempted co-option of OWS looks like (Glenn Greenwald)
– Lobbying Firm’s Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine OWS
– Should the Occupiers Stay or Go?
– Awesome (lightshow on Verizon Building in NYC)
– Occupy and anarchism’s gift of democracy
– Occupiers: We’re Already Changing Politics
– OWS-inspired activism
– Corporate change of heart: “The Brotherhood of Man” (video)
– The Keystone Victory
– NYT: Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census
– Zoobombing in Portland, Oregon (video of off-beat bicycle event)
– NassimTaleb: End Bonuses for Bankers
Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley at The Cob Cottage Company, in Coquille, Oregon, have created probably the most complete permaculture site in the country. Permaculture sites, including our own, generally emphasize plants, animals and earthworks and ignore building your own home. I am beginning to see that one cannot have permaculture without building your own comfortable dwelling from the materials onsite.
Although the Canadian Gas Association calls methane a versatile, abundant and safe fuel, its unconventional cousin, shale gas, has been shaking the ground all the way from Lancashire, England to Dallas, Texas.
Today I’m writing a post in solidarity with my fellow Transitioners at GrowHeathrow, who are going to court tomorrow to defend their home. For people who don’t know about this key Transition initiative, do visit their website and look at everything they have been engaged in in the last two years. I visited everyone there last month (Joe Rake in their communications crew is one of our Social Reporters) and it is really a dynamic and friendly place….If you wanted a vision of how the future could be, the kind of future Transitioners frequently talk about or imagine might be possible, you need to look no further. Everyone is welcome.
