Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Our ancestors experienced the myriad relationships involved in food production on a small, local scale. Until recently, we had lost that sense of relationship-an awareness, however fleeting, that the most heartfelt food chain is not the biological one, but the one that connects us with the community of life on earth.
What is the nature of “independence”? We talk about it like it can actually be achieved and that it’s a good thing. What if neither is true?
Darrin Nordahl, the author of Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture, has chronicled the growing movement to put edible plants in public spaces–like Vermont’s vegetable garden on its State House lawn. Also, Ray Shadis, a consultant to the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, will respond to the question: “Can the state of Vermont regulate Vermont Yankee without falling foul of federal preemption law?”
“There are enough people talking about growing food, but not enough growers.” Suddenly, my mostly sedentary Brooklyn life was filled with kale planting, chicken feeding, delivering produce to restaurants via bicycle, and picking up buckets of coffee grounds from local cafes for composting.
John and I take a trip out to visit Woody and Zoe at nearby Cuckoo Farm to see their gorgeous straw bale house, which has been plastered to meet health and safety regulations, and which now looks like an ancient thatched cottage. Over cups of tea I hear about anaerobic digesters and how simple a system they are.
– a Look at the Example of Detroit
-Lessons From a Low-Impact Week
-Free Geek – Computers for the Community
To some people, planting a tree is the epitome of the environmental cliche. Planting a tree seems so simple, so easy, so… low-technology.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Economic recovery?
-Taxes, regulations and moratoria
-Brazil in the news
-Briefs
We have had a period of unprecedented stability in the last decades – mostly declining food and energy costs have allowed us to live as we have. That’s changed. Now the one thing we know is that we’ll never know.
The sort of conundrums which the barter market produced helped us unmask some of the hidden dynamics of markets, in particular how we measure value.
If you want to know which way the global wind is blowing (or the sun shining or the coal burning), watch China. That’s the news for our energy future and for the future of great-power politics on planet Earth. Washington is already watching — with anxiety.
-Do Not Pity the Democrats
-Are dying languages worth saving?
-The environmentalist’s paradox: we do better while the earth does worse
