Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
More than a billion people worldwide lack access to electricity. The best way to bring it to them — while reducing greenhouse gas emissions — is to launch a global initiative to provide solar panels and other forms of distributed renewable power to poor villages and neighborhoods.
-2012: The Year to Stop Playing Nice
-New Farmer School
-A Punch to the Mouth: Food Price Volatility Hits the World
-China’s Growing Urban Population Sprouts Urban Farms
-Students Say “Occupy Your Plate”, Plan to Converge at Retreat to Grow Food Cooperatives
-Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals
-Digging Into Potash Stocks
“…Are we on a slippery slope now? Can human-made global warming cause ice sheet melting measured in meters of sea level rise, not centimeters, and can this occur in centuries, not millennia? Can the very inertia of the ice sheets, which protects us from rapid sea level change now, become our bete noire as portions of the ice sheet begin to accelerate, making it practically impossible to avoid disaster for coastal regions?”
…In the forest where the passionflower grows, where its leaves have been used as a poultice for thousands of years, the Maya sit in small straw huts and weave patterns of extraordinary complexity, the most beautiful fabrics of the world in all the colours of the quetzal bird. In their imaginations and in their hearts they hold calendars of equal complexity, that rotate at different speeds like the stars around the sun. They have held these complex patterns inside them for thousands of years – patterns of time, of colour, of beauty. They held them before the cities came and after they fell into ruin. The temples did not hold them. The temples never do…
The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) describes itself as “the UK’s leading planning body….” It recently released a 59-page discussion paper on Peak Oil, partly in preparation for a forum on this issue which is scheduled for January 17th in London.
Last year ASPO-USA brought together a host of leading thinkers and their predictions for what to expect in 2011. While not all the predictions were on target, last year’s thinkers and leaders on energy issues were remarkably prescient, accurately anticipating among other things Arab Spring, the flow of energy prices, the re-emergent world food crisis, and the next step in the Transition movement. While foreseeing the future is a delicate exercise, there are real trends that are evident to eyes prepared to see. Here are their thoughts about the coming year. A Hopeful New Year to all from ASPO-USA!
Where the rubber hits the road for the Occupy Movement, I believe, is whether they can turn this incredible mobilization, and with all of its symbolic importance, into a force of social power.
Occupy needs to pull people together, but then to encourage people to organize themselves into affinity groups, of between, say, 5-12 people. This sized group is small enough where people can build personal connections and make decisions that all can abide by, and yet be big enough for folks to engage in collective activities.
I’d be surprised if many readers of this blog work for the fracking industry. Those charming people spend a lot on lobbying and public relations, sure – but their main aim in life is to remain obscure. But food and drink? The branding, the packaging, the communications, the stores, the promotions, the trade shows, the hotels, the restaurants? Would I be wrong to guess that 75% of us have worked for a global food enterprise, directly or indirectly, at some point? I know I have: an industry talk here, a futures workshop there, a couple of healthcare events…But two new publications this week have left me sick to the stomach. I just don’t think it’s defensible any more to turn a blind eye to the social and ecological crimes Big Food is committing, in other parts of the world, so that you and I can eat what we damn well feel like.
1. Americans rediscover their political self-respect.
2. Economic myths get debunked.
3. Divisions among people are coming down.
4. Alternatives are blossoming.
5. Popular pressure halted the Keystone KL Pipeline — for the moment.
6. Climate responses move forward despite federal inaction. …
– Advice from Politico: Five Ways to Re-Occupy in 2012
– Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99%
– Ron Paul Praises Occupy Wall Street
– Occupy Our Food
– Occupations in winter – planning what’s next
– Medea Benjamin: Ten Good Things About a (Not So) Bad Year
– The Economist: How Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of Sigmund Freud, revolutionised marketing
– Corporate monopolies ‘may dominate green economy’
– Ugo Bardi: The invisible toothpaste: overselling science
– The Arctic Will Burn
A great many of those who insist that we can afford to ignore the head-on collision between industrial civilization and the limits of a finite planet justify that claim by talking about hope. As millions of people turn their eyes heavenward, waiting for the end of the Mayan calendar or some other prophesied event to bail humanity out from the consequences of three centuries of our own mistakes, it’s arguably time to ask whether everything that gets labeled “hope” deserves the name.
