Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Sometimes conversations get competitive and unpleasant. Everyone is trying to prove they’re right — that they’re smarter than everyone else. This drains our spirit, and we lose our energy to work for change. So we need to remember, in any kind of conversation, that it’s not a contest. Think of it as a barn-raising: You’re helping each other build something.
The proverbial elephant in the room (and perhaps the ACA’s fatal flaw) from my in-the-trenches standpoint is the sustainability question, How on earth is this health care system going to survive? The question has two components: First, the billions of dollars required to implement and sustain the ACA. Second, and most important, I’m talking about the viability of a system that is inextricably dependent on a ready supply of resources that are being consumed faster than they can be replaced.
Kunstler has succinctly summed up the big picture for American healthcare. We are slapping bandaids on empire’s heart attack. I am revisiting healthcare reform for two reasons. First, healthcare’s complexity creates a good exercise in broadening our scale of view. Secondly, now that healthcare reform is law, the question is, what does this new law mean for individuals at the small scale, and for the country at the larger national scale?
During the 20th century an indispensible yet unrecognized factor allowed the health sciences to attain dizzying levels of organizational complexity and achieve countless life saving and prolonging breakthroughs. The health professions drew upon ever-increasing amounts of human and natural resources, particularly energy…Therefore, the complexity of modern health systems and their accomplishments are an epiphenomenon of economic expansion made possible first and foremost by natural resources; only secondarily are they reflections of capital and labor expressed through human intelligence, drive and ingenuity. The era of cheap and plentiful energy is over and this has profound implications for the health sciences and modern world.
A report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), “Grade A Choice? Solutions for Deforestation-Free Meat,” found that if Americans shifted their diets toward less beef and more poultry or pork, they would protect their health, protect forests, and protect the planet by reducing carbon emissions. “Because of the way it is produced, the more beef we eat, the worse global warming gets.”
While I recover from a nasty case of food poisoning, I thought in honor of the SCOTUS decision, it would be worth re-running this piece from 2009. For all that this is not the national health care system the US needs, it is, in the end, a small step in the right direction.
– Peak planet: Are we starting to consume less?
– Cuba, A Society In Motion (update on post-peak agriculture)
– Death by suburban sprawl: better urban planning will combat sedentary lifestyles
– Why are British children so unhappy?
A generous memoir full of intriguing cases of healing by a doctor who discovers slow medicine. Sustenance for the caretaker. Make that a life raft. I was sorry when I got to the end.
The modern end-of-the-world imagination often seeks out great Hollywood-style cataclysms: an asteroid collision, all-out nuclear war, a solar flare that wipes out the electrical grid, even a worldwide epidemic that leaves few alive. Less compelling is the possibility of relentlessly rising death rates that finally overwhelm birth rates and quietly set worldwide population on a downward path.
– Why our food is making us fat
– Greece’s ‘potato movement’ grows in power
– Australia’s two biggest supermarket chains are reshaping the nation’s agriculture
– Food, Farmers and a Free Trade Agreement (New Zealand)
The organic and fair-trade industries are booming, Farmers Markets are the new norm, the word “locavore” was added to the Oxford Dictionary, and Michelle Obama even planted a White House garden. But agribusiness continues to consolidate power and profit, small farmers worldwide are being dispossessed in an unprecedented global land grab, over a billion people are going hungry, and agriculture’s contributions to climate change are increasing. It’s not just that change is slow, but we actually seem to be moving in the opposite direction than alternative food movements are trying to take us.
A year ago I asked, “How to understand health care’s inability to recognize that modern society has reached the limits to growth?” Since then I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to write on the urgent and bedeviling question, “What are the nuts and bolts of organizing a “small is beautiful” health system?” Here I want to lay the ground for exploring this second question while weaving in final comments on the first question.
