Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
One of the pleasures of blogging is that the dialogue which it sometimes provokes, and my recent post reflecting on the health care vote and the apparent breakdown of ‘normal’ political processes produced a couple of thoughtful responses which seemed to me to take the discussion on.
– Kellogg’s six-hour day
– Why are there no young people in the room?
– Political strategy, macro and micro
– First Transition Town in Pennsylviania
It was with some fear and trepidation that Alexis Rowell, a Camden Borough councillor and the author of the upcoming Transition Guide to Local Authorities (LA), and I arrived in a deeply conservative part of the country, Norfolk, to do a day with them on peak oil, climate change and the Transition town model and practice.
We first learned about Gaviotas, the legendary sustainable Colombian village, in 2004, while working in our home state, New Mexico. The two of us helped found a group called La Mesita, “the small table,” composed of three educators, a renewable energy scientist, a water-rights attorney, and a community organizer. We decided to start a project that would involve teenagers in organic agriculture and renewable energy in Ribera, a rural village in the north of the state. We believed that reviving northern New Mexico’s agricultural and cultural traditions could help the region confront both its environmental crises, like unsustainable water use, and its deepening social problems, such as rural drug abuse and teen pregnancy.
A weekly round-up including:
– Prices and production
– Venezuela’s Power Crisis
-The Tree That Changed the World
-Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’?
-America’s Potemkin Village
-How slums can save the planet
The December fiasco in Copenhagen has posed a major challenge to the left, indeed to everyone who wants to defend our world and humanity.
The passage of health care reform legislation in the House of Representatives last weekend was met with such a crescendo of hyperbole and vitriol on both sides of the political aisle that even William Shatner thought, "Jeez, tone down the theatrics.” … If Koch and others are feeding fear to protect the profits of health insurers, just imagine the kind of fomenting we’ll see when the stakes are even higher—when the energy and climate crises come front and center in the national debate.
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.
DARK OPTIMISM How do we handle Peak Oil AND climate change? Shaun Chamberlin from UK Transition Towns, energy writer Kurt Cobb, plus Richard Heinberg on renewable hope, with Lester Brown.
-Is this the Birth of a Nation?
-‘Even War Is Good for Economic Growth’
-Is It Time for a Green Tea Party?
-The Broken Society
Alaska — and the so-called Sarah Palin pipeline — are in the crosshairs of the abrupt surge of natural gas supplies in the continental United States. Leading the charge against a much-promoted pipeline to ship Alaskan natural gas into the currently glutted Lower 48 is former Sen. Ted Stevens. The locally influential Republican says the gas should be rerouted to Asia, and that if Alaska doesn’t move fast, this fuel — the equivalent of 6 billion barrels of oil — could end up effectively stranded at home.
