Solutions & sustainability – Jan 22

-Pick-your-own vegetables to replace flowers in high street
-Permaculture Design is for Disaster Relief, Not Just for Gardens
-Sharon, the bounty!: A review of Astyk’s “Independence Days”
-Oilrigs should be used for homes in areas at risk of flooding, report says
-Growing Home—Urban Agriculture in Chicago
-Towns Rush to Make Low-Carbon Transition

Community in Time and Space

It is true that people worked long hours in the past – but the pattern of those hours was radically different. Community thrived when more people lived and worked embedded in their community. Now most Americans spend a third of their waking hours in a workplace community, often completely unconnected from the community proximate to their home…Instead of belonging to connected social institutions, if they are members of community organizations, they are probably members of completely different ones.

Peak Moment 160: A Young Couple Find Freedom in Simple Living

Rather than follow the customary American dream, Tammy and Logan sold their home and car, and moved to a bikeable/walkable neighborhood in Sacramento, California. After reading Derrick Jensen’s writings, this couple used Your Money or Your Life as a means to get out of debt and, they feel, regain their lives and their future. While they recount the psychological challenges of facing a future of declining resources, the catalyst that continues to move them forward is a dream of living in an affordable tiny house within a supportive community).

So You Want to Cut Your Resource Usage?

A friend of mine, Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man) once observed that cutting your energy usage should be as easy as rolling off a log – that as long as it is always easier to use more resources, and the path of least resistance heads towards taking the car or turning up the heat, we’re destined to struggle. And he’s right.

Glaciergate, EPA regs showdown, and it just goes on – Jan 21

-UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning
-The New Storm Brewing On the Climate Front
-U.N. Panel’s Glacier Warning Is Criticized as Exaggerated
-“Glacier gate” – how the Murdoch press have got it wrong on the Himalayan big melt
-Hanging EPA regulations around Democrats’ necks
-Murkowski to call on Congress to block federal greenhouse gas regulation
-Emissions targets set for delay
-UN drops deadline for countries to state climate change targets

Real People, Real Preparation, Part 6 With Faith Carr and Carolyn Baker

Faith Carr, after working hunched over a desk for 35 years, ended up disabled. Exhausted after even more years of progressive political activism with no success, she turned her hand to her own backyard.  The 25 square-foot herb garden turned into a homestead. Come the revolution, she’ll bring the eats.

Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank

During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood. Wood gas cars (also known as producer gas cars) are a not-so-elegant but surprisingly efficient and ecological alternative to their petrol (gasoline) cousins, whilst their range is comparable to that of electric cars.