Media & Communications

Climate & environment – Mar 29

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-California: climate change law won’t hurt economy
-Forest loss slows, as China plants and Brazil preserves
-Exclusive Excerpt: Hack the Planet
-Breaking the Growth Habit: A Q&A with Bill McKibben
-How the Conservatives dodged the climate bullet
-NASA: It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be sent in 2010
-The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region
-The Big Melt
-A Pioneering Biologist Discusses The Keys to Forest Conservation

A Perspective on Ag 2.0 Silicon Valley

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I attended the Agriculture 2.0 Silicon Valley conference co-hosted by New Seed Advisors, U.S. Venture Partners and Spin Farming…The agenda was much larger and diverse than in New York, and given the level of interest I expect more events are being planned. The following are some notes and thoughts that reflect the highlights of the day for me.

Peak Moment 169: The Sacred Demise of Industrial Civilization (transcript added)

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As a historian, Carolyn Baker has a keen eye for current events that are indicators of the collapse we’re seeing all around us. But she’s also a psychologist concerned about how we personally navigate the turbulence and find meaning within it. The author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, she describes the old story that isn’t working anymore (humans are separate from nature), and the new story we must live by for real sustainability.

The collapse of journalism / The journalism of collapse

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The first step in crafting a new narrative for journalists is to reject technological fundamentalism and deal with a harsh reality: In the future we will have to make due with far less energy, which means less high-technology and a need for more creative ways of coping. Journalists have to tell stories about what that kind of creativity looks like. They have to reject the gee-whizzery of much of the contemporary science and technology reporting and emphasize the activities of those with a deeper ecological worldview.

Stake Your Acre Challenge

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I’m calling it the “stake your acre” challenge. And the sum of it is this – I want everyone who can to find an acre of land and tend it. There are so many profound pressures on the land and people around us – our places need us to take more responsibility for them, for keeping them safe, clean, humane, wild.

An Interview with Neil Adger: resilience, adaptability, localisation and Transition

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Professor Neil Adger is a lecturer and researcher at University of East Anglia. He is a researcher and teacher who specialises in social vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to environmental change; on justice and equity in decision-making; and the application of economics to global environmental change. He is a member of the Resilience Alliance, and is involved in a range of climate change research projects, including the IPCC and work for the Tyndall Centre.

Why are we propping up corn production, again?

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News flash: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a lousy product. As Tom Laskawy reported here Tuesday, a recent study by Princeton researchers found that rats fed chow laced with HFCS gained more weight than rats fed equal calories of table sugar. All processed sweeteners add empty calories to food; but calorie for calorie, HFCS appears to be even worse than white sugar. Although the two sweeteners have roughly the same fructose/glucose ratio, we mammals seem to metabolize the HFCS differently than we do cane sugar.