Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I have had the great pleasure over the past few months to work with Susana Martinez and Emilio Mula to create a new short film about oral history and Transition. It emerged from the oral histories we did in preparing the Totnes EDAP, interviewing some of those people in more depth. The resultant film, premiered on Thursday night in Totnes, is one I very much hope you enjoy.
Imagine our cities filled with fruit trees and I don’t mean fruit trees planted by the side of the road dropping fruit on your car once they’re overripe. I mean fruit trees planted in civic spaces—schools, hospitals, parks, businesses, houses of worship, and more.
Believed to be a gift from Pachamama, the sacred earth mother, alpaca have been present during the rise and fall of many human civilizations from the point of their domestication 6,000 years ago. As the lives of the alpaca and humans became increasingly and intricately woven within ancient South American culture, they became revered and honored for their integral place in pre-Colombian society. The people of the Andes developed an exquisite language of gratitude for the animals who became a vital source of food, fiber, fuel and skins.
In the several years or so since peak oil began generating significant literature and debate, it has attracted a diverse array of thinkers. To name a few, there are insiders like Colin Campbell and Ken Deffeyes who sounded the first warnings; a clinical psychologist in the field of “peak oil blues,” Kathy McMahon; an archdruid practiced in nature’s less readily perceptible energies, John Michael Greer; and a couple of highly engaging social critics, Jim Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov. Richard Heinberg’s distinction is that he’s hands-down the most prolific peak oil author, now having written half a dozen books on the subject and a few others touching on it tangentially. His latest, The End of Growth, is yet another grand performance.
Embarrassed by her middle class affluence after a visit to Guatemala, Dee Williams grabbed her hammer, built a tiny house on wheels, downsized to less than 400 possessions, and parked her house in a friend’s yard. Her living arrangement then blossomed into a multi-generational family/community. Dee shows us her warm and comfy 7 x 12 foot house, how she meets city codes, and some unusual ways this life has affected her. Her advice to wannabe tiny home builders: Take on the experiment. Just do it!
As most of the country slowly roasts in one of the worst heat waves so far, I thought it was worth reminding people that one can stay safe in the heat, even without air conditioning. This is important now for the millions of people who don’t own air conditioners, who don’t want the environmental impact of an air conditioner, or who find themselves for various reasons, without power in the hot weather. As we all know, this is peak season for brown and blackouts.
Checkout what went on at our latest web chat with Bill McKibben, David Hughes and Kate Sheppard.
Today, for those seeking out an alternative vision of urban success, with new and innovative ideas about what the city of tomorrow should be, it’s Detroit, not New York, that offers the ultimate arena in which to prove yourself.
Okay, so we all know it’s going to hell in a handbasket. We just don’t know when. And so the question becomes what we do in the meantime – how do we live now, clinging as we all are to the fraying edges of a ‘civilisation’ that is so cut off from anything real that, if it were an individual, it would be diagnosed as clinically insane? To me, in some ways, it’s the only question that matters: the urgent one, the one that requires us to find an answer now, while we’re still living, while we still can. Some people choose to look for the answers in philosophy books or meditation classes; David (my husband) and I look for it in the land, and our relationship to the land. More specifically, we look for it – and find it – in crofting, a very special way of living on the land that is unique to Scotland.
The streets are commons that belong to everyone. So imagine diverting traffic from a major street in your neighborhood, then welcoming families on bikes, families on foot, babies in strollers, people in wheelchairs, toddlers on training wheels, grade schoolers on skateboards, teenagers on single-speeds, hipsters on fixed gears, grandparents on recumbents, couples arm-in-arm and even yoga classes in the middle of the road. What would happen? If your neighborhood is anything like mine—which I am sure it is—get ready for a massive outbreak of smiles.
For many years the thesis of this blog has been: Our civilization is in its final century, and there is nothing we can do to prevent its collapse. When I began writing this, I was largely dismissed as a defeatist and a depressed “doomer” (or worse). As awareness has grown about the now-inevitable end of (a) cheap energy, (b) stable climate and (c) the growth economy, there is a growing acknowledgement that the collapse scenario I have written about is at least conceivable.
People come to permaculture for all different reasons, but all through some shared understanding that we live in a world full of disconnects. Many of us feel disconnected from the sources of our food, water and energy, and equally as disconnected from our neighbors, our communities, and our government. We know about the problems and we think there must be solutions. But what draws people to permaculture (as opposed to other approaches) is that its solutions fit together. In a world full of disconnects, permaculture shows us how to make connections.
