Food & agriculture – Oct 24
Michael Pollan Interview
The Local Grain Revolution II (audio)
Soil health ‘threatens farming’ (text & audio)
Chinese Farms A Growing Challenge
Resource Depletion
Environment – Oct 24
UK’s ancient woodland being lost ‘faster than Amazon’
Migrating Alaskan pollock are creating the potential for a new dispute with Russia
Rising water in Florida’s Everglades threatens wildlife
Earth as a magic pudding
Cornucopians – those who believe the Earth’s resources are boundless – have a clever mental trick to avoid acknowledging that the planet is finite. It is commonly called the “resource pyramid”. … As resources begin to become scarce their price rises. The higher price now makes it economically viable to extract the substance from a less accessible and/or less concentrated source. Amazingly, the total amount of the substance present in this lower-grade resource is greater than in the original, most concentrated resource. … The resource pyramid idea contains a hidden assumption – that energy is cheap and abundant. In fact, it is the price of energy that ultimately determines the base of the resource pyramid.
Waste – Oct 22
Unnatural resources – (mining landfills)
Better packaging, better benefits
Uncle Sam wants you: cardboard sculptures carry serious message about recycling
Why we can’t pump faster
Can we actually pump faster? Upping the extraction rate under a limited supply makes the downslope that much more pronounced (the Gompertz curve). First, the good news: oil production does not follow the Gompertz curve as of yet and we may not ever reach that potential given the relative difficulty of extracting oil at high rates. The fact that we have such a high dispersion in oil discoveries also means that the decline becomes mitigated by new discoveries. As for the bad news: easily extractable phosphate may have hit The Overshoot Point (TOP). And we have no new conventional sources. And phosphate essentially feeds the world.
Food & agriculture – Oct 21
Oregon farmers are loving biosolids
(Re)discovering (s)oil
Agriculture: Unsustainable Resource Depletion Began 10,000 Years Ago
Food & agriculture – Oct 17
Organic Agriculture Is Better Than Industrial Agriculture
Food: does diversity matter? (audio)
Iceland can avoid shortages, needs funds-importers
Food crisis billions failing to arrive, warn reports
A food crisis is heading our way
Climate & environment – Oct 14
Nature loss ‘dwarfs bank crisis’
Climate author goes political
Global fund ‘could pay owners to keep rainforests safe’
Food & agriculture – Oct 10
U.S. city dwellers flock to raising chickens
The war over GM is back. Is the truth any clearer?
Is a food bank answer to the crisis?
Supermarkets urged to reduce choice and meat sales
Peak phosphorus: Quoted reserves vs. production history
Deep Thought – Oct 8
All distant problems are not created equally
The Age of Unbridled Consumption Just Ended
Herman Daly on the Credit Crisis, Financial Assets, and Real Wealth
Fall of the technological world
Solutions & sustainability – Oct 8
The futureproofers
Rural communities best equipped to cope with climate change: UN report
World Resources 2008: Roots of Resilience – Growing the Wealth of the Poor
Natural healing
Peak textiles – Oct 7
Make Your Own Homemade Natural Dyes
Woody Harrelson’s view of hemp farming: strong fibres, and cuts pesticides
From Recycled Scraps To Museum-Quality Quilts
