Agriculture – Apr 19
A drought in Australia, a global shortage of rice
Potash the new crude
Sulphur: From waste byproduct to billion-dollar commodity
Culture & Behavior
Review: Reinventing Collapse by Dmitry Orlov
In comparing the responses of the US and the Soviet Union to collapse, Orlov takes on the task of breaking it to American readers that the very successes that made them so rich (a few anyway) and so great, will help not at all.
Why don’t we …. Apr 18
Wall Street and Washington are failing spectacularly – where do we go? (Howard Dean advisor)
The Commons revisited: The tragedy continues (solution: Unitax)
Mother Jones: Our new energy crisis
Home remedies – Apr 17
Pakistan: Ban wedding meals, lighting?
Bread expert: we need to bake our own
NYT on kitchen gardens, survivor gardens
Change our diet to resolve the food crisis?
International agriculture report calls for paradigm shift
Sixty countries backed by the World Bank and most UN bodies yesterday called for radical changes in world farming to avert increasing regional food shortages, escalating prices and growing environmental problems.
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2,500-page International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)
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– Change in farming can feed world
– UNESCO calls for move away from fossil fuels in agriculture
– ‘Increase agricultural productivity, reduce footprint’ (project director)
Food crisis – Apr 17
BBC: Feeding the world
UN fears tragedy over N. Korean food shortage
The fury of the poor
Global South view of crisis (IPS)
Deep thought – Apr 16
Wendell Berry on peak oil: Faustian economics
Economist Sachs believes we can save world
Callenbach’s Ecotopia and Kunstler’s World Made by Hand
Housing & urban design – Apr 15
An Atlas of Radical Cartography
The incredible shrinking city: Youngstown, Ohio
Creating sustainable cities
Food & agriculture – Apr 15
Struggling Egypt where bread means life
WSJ: Food inflation, riots spark worries for world leaders
Monbiot: Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat
How to drink beer and save the world
The specialization trap
One of the lessons of history is that the advantages of economic specialization and centralization are paid for by drastic risks when a society enters the downslope of its history. Our society, more specialized and centralized than any before it, faces more extreme risks — but there are steps that can be taken to counter those risks, if we choose to take them.
Dysfunction – Apr 14
Is Earth Day the new Christmas?
Chile power crunch may cut copper output
Cement – a dirty business
What Emancipation didn’t stop after all (slavery)
Crisis & response – Apr 14
World finance ministers emphasize food crisis over credit crisis
Energy and food problems need global solutions, says Jeffrey Sachs
Bill McKibben: Where have all the joiners gone?
New York Times on the New Survivalism
