Solutions & sustainability – Mar 4

Japan: The slow life – Tune in, drop out, grow rice /
18 months in a retro-Amish-Mennonite community (Eric Brende interview) /
Oops, we helped ruin the planet:
Guide owners join to discourage ‘casual flying’ /
All the organic broccoli in the world won’t be enough to save the planet /
I’m lovin’ it: Falling sales force closure of 25 UK McDonald’s branches

“The Unplugged” – a speculative fiction

If you are willing to live as an Unplugger does, your cost to buy out is only around three months of wages for a factory worker, the price of a used car. You never need to “work” again, although there are plenty of life support activities to keep you busy, and a lot of basic research and science to do. Unplugging is not an off-the-shelf solution, it’s a research career!

Whale juicer

It is an unseasonably warm day, in a small town just south of Portland. A grove of beachfront orange trees planted in 2010 fill the air with their fragrant bouquet. But today a new scent is on the wind: blubber. The first whale juicing plant on the West Coast has opened, capable of producing up to 100 barrels of oil a day.