Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-Salon interviews the late Adam Smith
-What Jane Jacobs Can Teach Us About the Economy
-Welcome to 2025
-Carolyn Baker reviews Daniel Elgin’s “The Living Universe”
-Bill Moyers: How Can the U.S. Be an Empire and a Democracy at the Same Time?
“We need to break up the big banks. We need banks that understand good farming practices, soil stewardship … and look at the long-term picture for the good of the environment and not just short-term profits.”
Deconstructing Dinner is excited to share with our listeners an amazing new agriculture program for new farmers being offered at Fleming College in Lindsay, Ontario…The Sustainable Agriculture program appears like an ideal way for any unexperienced and interested new farmers to be introduced to many of the critical pieces necessary to launch a profitable and sustainable farm business…Between October 15-18, 2009, a fleet of 11 sailboats made their way from the city of Nelson to the Creston Valley of British Columbia to once again pick up a cargo of locally grown grains and transport it back to Nelson.
Jenny Pell’s infectious enthusiasm will sweep you up into creating a future that’s beyond sustainable — to one that’s “additive.” This lively permaculturist suggests that you belong where you live and get (re)connected to your “chain of inputs and outputs”. She invites us to to regain skills, especially in food production, and to participate in creating abundance, which is “the only way forward, the only way for the human family to survive.”
“Peak oil can be a very tricky topic, the way I talk about it and deal with it at the end of the day is: We need to revolutionize the way we consume and produce energy… We need to really be the leaders in saying: the future for our children and our grandchildren as far as energy consumption and as far as production, it looks like this” with those words Colorado Governor Bill Ritter started his closing speech at the ASPO conference in Denver that took place from 10 to 12 October 2009.
Much passionate concern is flying around regarding the United Nations meeting on climate this December in Copenhagen. We hear it from honest activists and from politicians who sound trustworthy on this most crucial matter. An example is Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Great Britain, who deserves a prize for eloquence in warning us of climate change.
The scene in the White House these days must be a sort of Opera Bouffe, in which an earnest and rather grave young man moves from one roomful of lesser officials to another in which all agree to pretend that they have prevented the nation from falling into something they call “the abyss.” At the end of Act I, a young deputy FDIC commissioner in the Little Mary Sunshine mold gets down on one knee, belts out a show-stopper about the glories of a bright and shining “tomorrow,” and the audience goes out for intermission to discover that the city has been burning down around the theater all night.
Our industry is at a crossroads. In the past few years, oil supply has struggled to keep pace with demand. But the financial crisis has reduced demand by 2 million barrels per day, creating excess inventories and lower prices. But once economic growth recovers, it is likely we will return to the market conditions of one year ago. The price of $140 per barrel oil was not an aberration; it was a warning.
Today, October 24, is Climate Action Day. Tomorrow, we must not sit down, but keep to our feet, and press forward.
When I worry about climate change, I often think first about human consequences. But the line between human losses and nature’s losses is pretty fine – literally a tree falling in the forest question. That is, if the sugar maples that turn my region into a blaze of red, the hemlocks that overshadow my creek disappear, who loses me or nature? The only answer is “yes.”
-When Black and White Aren’t Black and White
-Vatican thumbs up for Karl Marx after Galileo, Darwin and Oscar Wilde
-Honey and Salt
-How to deal with climate change grief
The American economy has reached a dangerous new phase. We are now in the “recovery” period, but what kind of rebound will we have? In No L, Professor James Hamilton (along with Paul Krugman) takes note of some positive news from the Fed.
