Food & agriculture – Feb 17
-Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning in France
-The Corn Ethanol Lobby’s Land Grab
-Ohio could get specialized middle, high schools on farming
-Composting For Kids Is More Fun With Wrigglers
Media & Communications
Peak Oil and the Importance of EROI (review of Fleeing Vesuvius, Part 2)
Obviously getting by without fossil fuels (owing to impending shortages of oil, natural gas and coal) will be an incredibly rude shock for all of us. Our current telecommunication, transportation and retail infrastructure, as well as our current system of industrial agriculture, are based on the abundant availability of cheap fossil fuels. On the plus side, Fleeing Vesuvius is full of a number of specific strategies, currently being tried in Ireland and elsewhere, for building resilient communities to withstand this transition to a non-fossil energy society.
Anthropocentrism versus biocentrism – Murray Bookchin discusses a false dichotomy
“We have no need for “biocentrism,” “anthropocentrism,” or for that matter any “centrism,” nor for any ideology that diverts popular attention from the social sources of the ecological crisis.”
Economics as a public art
Last week I sat next to a tutor in Political Geography at dinner at an Oxford college. He told me that when his students first come to him, they all believe that human behaviour is simply that of individualistic profit-maximisers. If this is the belief of young geography students, what hope is there that young economists will think otherwise?
David Graeber: anthropologist, anarchist, financial analyst
After all, no one needs to understand why US firms are shedding jobs, or take a sober look at the current financial regime in the light of the 5,000-year history of debt. Students should just put their heads down and do the sorts of degrees that will give them technical jobs. Pay no attention to The Man behind the curtain!
The EU & Greece: A capitalism that has persuaded the world that capitalism is the world
The behaviour of the EU states towards Greece is inexplicable in the terms in which the EU defines itself. It is, first and foremost, a failure of solidarity.
‘Breathing new life into the concept of resilience’: the notes from my ‘Four Thought’ talk
I wondered whether in seeing resilience just as something we do in order to be prepared for a crisis, we were missing a trick: that we might instead see it as an opportunity. How might our settlements look if we began to think in terms of resilient food, resilient energy, resilient economies? Might this shift in thinking actually contain the potential for an economic and cultural renaissance for the places we live? It felt to me to be a powerful question.
On the road back to Rio, green direction has been lost
Twenty years ago, an historic environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro produced groundbreaking treaties and high hopes that pressing issues would be addressed. But as organizers prepare for the Rio+20 conference in June, there is little on the agenda to suggest any substantive action will be taken.
The imperial way: American decline in perspective, Part 2
While the principles of imperial domination have undergone little change, the capacity to implement them has markedly declined as power has become more broadly distributed in a diversifying world. Consequences are many. It is, however, very important to bear in mind that — unfortunately — none lifts the two dark clouds that hover over all consideration of global order: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, both literally threatening the decent survival of the species.
5 ways to make your dollars make sense
Americans’ long-term savings in stocks, bonds, pension, life insurance, and mutual funds total about $30 trillion. But not even 1 percent of these savings touches local small businesses, the source of half the economy’s jobs and output. Is it possible to beat Wall Street’s 5 percent long-term performance by investing in your community? The answer is a resounding yes!
It’s the February podcast – the Bristol Pound, resilience surveys and a Transition newspaper!
This month’s Transition podcast takes a deeper look at some of the best stories from last month’s roundup of what’s happening in Transition, at the latest developments with the Bristol Pound which grabbed the headlines this week, ahead of its formal launch at the end of May, at the work of Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition in the US who recently carried out a “resilience survey” among the local community, and catches up on the recent developments with Transition Network’s “Social Reporters” project, and their plans to create the first Transition Newspaper!
Design in the light of dark energy
When the new Italian Prime Minister, Mr. Mario Monti, gave his acceptance speech to the Italian Senate before Christmas, he used the word “growth” 28 times and the word “energy” – well, zero times. Why would this supposed technocrat neglect even to mention the biophysical basis of the world’s economy? Energy, after all, is at the heart of industrial growth society: industrial production, our cities, our transport systems, our buildings and infrastructure, food and water flows, the internet – they all critically depend on oil and gas.
