Building Community

Review: Songs of Petroleum by Jan Lundberg and Diamonds in my Pocket by Amanda Kovattana

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At first glance, Jan Lundberg and Amanda Kovattana seem like unlikely kindred spirits. He’s a former oil analyst turned whistleblower and rock musician, while she’s a British-educated Thai émigré who makes her living helping people become organized. Yet their similarities run deep, beginning with a profound concern for the planet and a flair for writing. Indeed, both are indispensable contributors to one of the top news sites on energy and the environment, Energy Bulletin. Both also happen to be accomplished memoirists, and their memoirs offer rare insights into family relationships, the vicissitudes of wealth and the quandary of being an environmentalist in an environmentally apathetic age.

Urban planning and food

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With more than half the world’s population living in cities we have been told that cites are where humanities future lies. At the same time, awareness of the future challenges humanity faces are growing…The cry has gone out for “sustainable cities” and urban planners the world over are responding. In most people’s (and urban planners) minds cities primarily consist of people to accommodate and methods to transport them…The problem with answering this question is that urban planners have forgotten the fundamental reason thing that allows cities to exist and that will determine their existence in future.

Occupy Wall Street: No demand is big enough

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We protest not only at our exclusion from the American Dream; we protest at its bleakness. If it cannot include everyone on earth, every ecosystem and bioregion, every people and culture in its richness; if the wealth of one must be the debt of another; if it entails sweatshops and underclasses and fracking and all the rest of the ugliness our system has created, then we want none of it.

The importance of the Occupiers and of non-occupying supporters

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Occupy Wall Street will not bring about the changes that are wanted by themsleves, but it can be a force to bring about a shift from a defensive to an offensive posture, to push from radical reform rather than only amelioration at the edges.

Supportive non-occupiers can play a major role in moving in this direction. They can develop the details occupiers are accused if ignoring, organize around individual the individual concrete issues contributing to the deep discontent with the direction in which society is moving. Linking the broadly-targeting aroused occupiers to the multiple existing groups and organization already struggling for change might provide strength and energy all around.

Eyewitness to the Occupation

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We must now broaden the questions beyond, “How can we make sure we all get our fair share in this system,” to include: “How do we make sure we all get our fair share in the new system–a lower-carbon system–and how do we handle this transition?” Also, “What economic change can we create, and what default changes must we learn to accept?”

Ten ways to turn from a consumer to a producer

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Growing up in America, my generation was taught that any and every need could be met by a particular product or service, all of which were just waiting to be purchased. To afford these purchases as part of a “lifestyle,” the proper career path for middle class people was to attend college, learn an intricately detailed specialization in order to make a salary, and buy whatever we might need or desire, from childcare to lawn services to fast food to psychiatric services. While specialization can certainly make economic sense, the pendulum swung too far. We grew up to be thoroughly knowledgeable in a very narrow field, yet helpless and unempowered in every other walk of life, at the mercy of a cheap-energy growth economy supported by underpaid or slave labor and ongoing environmental destruction.

Report on Rebellious media conference 8th/9th October London

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Peace News wanted to celebrate its 75th anniversary by holding a radical media conference. However, unbelievably Radical Media, a corporate advertising company, have trademarked the expression “radical media” and threatened to sue if their name was used. After considering the potential costs the organisers decided on Rebellious Media instead. Says it all, really …

Pretend jobs

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It says here in the paper that it takes 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. No wonder we have so many people holding down unnecessary jobs. There aren’t enough real jobs to go around and besides, we are replacing people with machines as fast as we can to do the real jobs. Rather than trying to eliminate pretend jobs for the sake of efficiency as is now being proposed (lots of pretension in that too), we should be thinking up better quality pretend jobs — imaginative new positions in useless work that are more beneficial to society than the usual run of useless work.

Announcing a revolutionary leap forward in the Transition model…

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Today sees the launch of three exciting new developments and outputs from Transition Network, the results of many months of work, that finally emerge blinking into the daylight. We are sure that they will greatly deepen your understanding of Transition, bring depth and richness to your work, re-inspire and energise you. They represent a radical shift in how Transition is understood and communicated.