Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed one of the most progressive pieces of legislation for urban agriculture in the nation. The new legislation has amended the zoning code to allow agricultural activities in all parts of the city, as well as defining the parameters by which urban agriculturists can sell their products.
Local initiatives like the Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan aren’t enough to tackle the climate crisis. We need national and international regulations requiring deep, scientifically grounded emission reductions, and we need strict systems of enforcement. But before that can happen, people need to see that getting off fossil fuels isn’t a dour punishment. Done right, it can be a kind of gift. Oakland, once again, is leading the way.
A new law expected to pass in Bolivia mandates a fundamental ecological reorientation of the nation’s economy and society.
– Is the Tide Turning Against Arab Freedom?
– Lester Brown: This will be the Arab world’s next battle (water and population)
– Iraqi Oil: What is hidden inside the Oil Contracts from the 1st and 2nd Bid Rounds?
President Obama’s to-do list:
– Increase domestic production of oil.
– Root out fraud and manipulation in oil markets.
– End $4 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies.
– Invest in renewable energy.
– NYT: Nation’s Mood at Lowest Level in Two Years, Poll Shows
– Economists and the ‘Inside Job’ Effect
– American Exceptionalism – it takes money to project power around the world
Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.
Among the sources of the pervasive cynicism of contemporary America, especially but not only displayed around energy issues, is the belief that the United States is a sham democracy controlled by a malign elite. It’s hard to think of a bit of conventional wisdom more widely held, on all sides of the political continuum, but like a great deal of today’s American credos, it deserves a hard second look, for there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Let me make it clear at the outset. I too believe in American exceptionalism, although I don’t think God has anything to do with it. But I suspect my perspective will find little favor among Republicans in general and Tea Party members in particular. For I believe that America is exceptional in the advantages we’ve had over other nations, not what we’ve done with those advantages.
“Very, very few people can ever say that they are in the single most important place they could possibly be, doing the single most important thing they could possibly be doing — that’s you, here, now. You are the movement that we need if we are going to win in the few years that we have.”
Whatever carbon-management system the world adopts, farming methods will need to change, and the efforts of hundreds of millions of people will be necessary to get the carbon out of the air. We, the residents of the world’s industrialized countries, should not expect our lives to continue in much the same way.
Activists and radicals are prone to dismiss mainstream politicians as cynical and self-serving, but this comes from a distorted view of what politics are and can do. We may live in offices and eat processed food, our social behavior is still rooted in our evolutionary history as pack hunters and primates.
