Building Community

Starting down the permaculture path: Thoughts from a PDC student

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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.

How to liberate America

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A newly released report of the New Economy Working Group, coordinated by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, goes beyond the current debate to call for a deep restructuring of the institutions to which we as a society give the power to create and allocate money. How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule spells out the steps required to rebuild a system of community-based and accountable institutions devoted to financing productive activities that create good jobs for Americans and generate real community wealth.

Don’t alienate conservatives, says Rob Hopkins

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“Transition is much more powerful for not being explicitly political,” Rob Hopkins told a conference call of American Transitioners yesterday. “It’s better when Transition avoids associating itself with either the left or the right.” But in the US, where climate denial has become an article of faith for the right wing, can a movement committed to cutting greenhouse pollution community by community hope to stay under the political radar for long?

Rich little poor girl

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I am a happy poor person. There are many things I have had to give up and get adjusted to, going from a comfortably middle-class, corporate-suburban existence to living a lifestyle far below the poverty line. But make no mistake: I’m happy. Extraordinarily so. More than I have ever been. I’m not sure I talk about that enough. It’s time to rhapsodize.

A conversation with Rob Hopkins (and hosted by Richard Heinberg)

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Richard Heinberg hosts a conversation with Rob Hopkins on New Thinking in Transition. The podcast begins with Rob giving an update on what is going on in the Transition movement and introducing the upcoming Transition handbook, and is followed by a Q and A.

Japanese agricultural heritage systems recognized

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Today there is widespread awareness of the food challenges posed by a growing global population and exacerbated by ecological problems resulting from the industrialization of the world’s food system and the changing climate. But academics and policymakers are increasingly finding hope in local knowledge, looking to ingenious agricultural systems that reflect a profound relationship with nature and have played a role in the evolution of humankind.

Uncivilisation 2011 – Looking for hope in the dark

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Ever since Paul Kingsnorth and I published Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, two years ago this month, I’ve found myself struggling to explain exactly what Dark Mountain is about. There was never a slogan or an action plan – by contrast, the Transition movement does a brilliant job of distilling important messages into simple suggestions that people can put into practice. And yet I have come to see the difficulty of summing up Dark Mountain as part of what it has to offer: an invitation to slow down, to step out of the rush of answers and actions for a while, and dwell with the puzzle of living in these strange times.

Energy and peace: the dangers of our slow energy transition

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Resource scarcity and climate change should be driving forward our transition to the energy systems of the future. Though this transition has started in important ways in several locations, change is not being undertaken at either the scale or speed required.

WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) on the chopping block

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Over the years I’ve written a great deal about SNAP/Food Stamps and other hunger alleviation programs, but I’ve never written anything specifically about WIC, which I have tended to lump in with other food programs. I’ve been thinking, however, a lot about WIC lately, because it has come on the budget chopping block in the US – along with other food security programs including the CSFP which serves low income seniors and the emergency food program that provides commodities to emergency food pantries.

Why do humans congregate in big cities?

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One of life’s mysteries for me is why country people have inevitably migrated to the cities in every civilization that I have studied. In the United States, where there has been little of the kind of violent upheavals that send third world countries into instability, the reasons for migration to cities seem especially specious to me.