Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The major part of creating an economy based on ecological complexity, and the heart of what I mean by an ecology of home, consists of embracing these seasonal rhythms, and the landscape and native ecology they create, rather than relying on massive inputs of energy and complex technologies to impose an artificial order on the landscape and to wall ourselves off from the wild green world.
The Urban Homestead is the essential handbook for a fast-growing new movement: urbanites are becoming gardeners and farmers. Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities.
– Green Urbanism: Learning from the world
– Tearing down urban freeways to make room for a new bicycle economy
– Urban Bikeway Design Guide
– The New American Pessimism
– Kunstler interview: The old American dream is a nightmare
– Krugman: Degrees and Dollars
– New poll shows independents warming to the role of government
– How one New York bike lane could affect the future of cycling worldwide
– New level of anti-bike mania in NYC (a classic takedown of a “New Yorker” screed)
– Bicycle master plan is expected to be approved by the L.A. City Council
– Bike spike expected as motoring costs increase
– Urban Bikeway Design Guide introduced (NEW)
Radio and television host and author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight Thom Hartmann talks about ways we can all help combat global warming. Speaking from the grounds of Wisconsin’s 2010 Fight Bob Fest, Hartmann insists that Americans need to change the way we live if we are going to save the planet, and the first step has to be getting active in the political process.
Half hidden among the roar of recent news, a pair of stories point toward the uncomfortable reality that the current economic order is coming apart around us. As that process accelerates, pragmatic steps to cut costs and save energy — such as this week’s example, insulated window coverings — will take on an unexpected importance.
There is another way to reduce energy consumption for space heating that does not have any of these disadvantages: lowering the thermostat and putting on more clothes.
-Glimpses of a new ecology of money
-Edible Plant Project
-From Salvaged Tree Trunks Come Very Cool Tables
One of the questions I encounter most frequently is how the vision for a sustainable society we are developing in the market town of Stroud might be applied to the cities where most of the world’s population now live. This is a troublesome question for me, because I have never enjoyed the city, with its concrete and anonymity, but from an ecological perspective no question is more important.
Current discussions of renewable energy resources often fixate on finding replacements for the highly concentrated fossil fuels and abundant electricity that plays so large a role in contemporary lifestyles in the industrial world. The forms of energy that are actually required to maintain a comfortable human life, by contrast, are food and relatively diffuse heat for cooking, water heating and space heating, and these latter are much easier for individuals to provide for themselves using renewable resources. Moving away from dependence on concentrated energy, however, requires certain adjustments — one of which involves facility with a caulk gun.
The permablitz is a short but intense transfer of beneficial energy where members of the community come together to implement a project or landscape installation designed to provide more resources or energy than it consumes, commonly a permaculture design. Operating on a give-help-and-then-be-helped basis, these fun-filled and informative events overcome many of the pronounced barriers facing individuals for implementing regenerative designs and structures.
