Deep thought – Feb 21
– Gene Logsdon: Are cities becoming as obsolete as farms?
– Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution
– Hans Noelder: I am scared
– The price of environmental destruction? There is none
Food
Food fight
Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic Monthly objects to school garden programs because they take time away from the academic subjects. However, gardens can integrate academics with knowledge about food, reading & writing, entrepreneurship, and health.
Is there enough food out there for nine billion people ?
Science has a paper on the changes to the current global food system required to support the expanded global population we’ll see in a couple of decades time, noting that radical changes to agriculture will be required to support 9 billion people.
ODAC Newsletter – Feb 19
The mood amongst oil company executives meeting in London this week for the Petroleum Week conference was largely bullish, with global oil demand expected to recover this year as the world economy crawls out of recession. But the production side of the equation is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive…
Biofuels – Feb 18
-Controversy mounts in EU over fall-out from biofuel
-British Airways to fly jets on green fuel made from London’s rubbish by 2014
-BA’s biofuels plans mean a lot of garbage: the problem of “peak waste”
Food & agriculture – Feb 18
-Michael Pollan: Forget Nutrition Charts, Eat What Grandma Said Is Good for You
-Green Eyes On: Is Bees’ Thirst Leading to Their Demise?
-‘Old environmentalists’ are challenging an obsession with land productivity
-More biofuel waste for cows, plus a California beef packer pulls a Toyota
-Perennial Plants from Seed
-Omaha World-Herald: Kenyan farmers persevere despite cultivation challenges
Responses & Resilience – Feb 18
-Getting Your Family On Board With Food Storage
-The community-owned, timber-framed, self-heating village shop
-Nitrogen for Free
What is collapse, anyway?
With any reasonably successful blog, you have a conversation going on, often between an author and commenters who have a long history and background, and people coming into the conversation for the first time…Balancing the degree to which you write for the regulars and to those new to you is always an interesting exercise.
Agroinnovations #77: CREAR with Mark Feedman
Mark Feedman is the founder of CREAR, the Regional Center for the Study of Rural Alternatives, a small agricultural school located in the northern mountains of the Dominican Republic, near the Haitian border. Feedman has been an tireless advocate of sustainable agriculture for 40 years, and in this interview he recounts his struggle to create an educational center in the remote forests of Hispaniola. Topics include rural education, the future of Haiti, and the subject of hope.
Peaking resources and possible responses – Feb 16
The Story of P(ee)
-Forest Carbon Scheme Gains Support, Faces Hurdles
-Warming Water Spurs U.S. to Consider ESA Protection for 82 Coral Species
-Rewilding’ the World: A Bright Spot for Biodiversity
Responses & resilience – Feb 16
-War at Home: The Local Eco-Warriors Making a Big Noise
-Brock Dolman on water: “Basins of relations: reverential rehydration revolution”
-Pathways to Re-Localisation with Joel Salatin
-Die Transition Towns-Bewegung – Städte und Menschen im Wandel
-Environmentalists launch low-carbon ‘churches in transition’
-Could chicken manure help curb climate change?
Viral collapse
At this juncture in the industrial age, we have two tired, one-armed lifeguards and a handful of victims. All eyes are on Greece — fittingly, the birthplace of western civilization — but Greece, which naturally turned to Goldman Sachs to try to hide its debt, is one tiny canary in a coal mine the size of Earth.
