Megan Bachman

The outcome of the exercise of crafting a sense of place is not just for me, it’s also for the benefit of the larger ecosystem. Or maybe there is no distinction. Considering Gaian wholeness, what is the lake if not an extension of myself?

At some point personal behavior changes aren’t enough. To become sustainable, we need large-scale investments, which require capital. How can we get access to the financial tools necessary to build a sustainable world? The answer may be through public banking, and one state, North Dakota, points the way.

In the late 1800s northwestern Ohio was at the center of an oil boom as the state became the nation’s largest crude producer. Today Ohio is at the center of another fossil fuel boom, where a new drilling method — hydraulic fracturing (fracking) combined with modern horizontal drilling — is releasing natural gas from deep underground shale, leading to a rush of new leases. Is drilling safe or are contamination concerns unfounded?

Gas prices are on the rise again, which means the “man on the street” will complain to local news reporters about greedy oil companies and foreign cartels, and energy-illiterate pundits and politicians will cry for domestic drilling with wild abandon. But is gasoline, now approaching $4 per gallon in Ohio, really expensive?

If an alien species were to visit our school cafeterias at lunchtime, it might conclude that we don’t value the health and well-being of the most vulnerable members of our society—our developing children. Not only are our youth daily served low-quality processed products, they are inculcated, at a young age, to the factory-farm model at the heart of our worst environmental problems, namely water pollution, soil erosion, global climate change and fossil fuel depletion.

If there is one unshakable belief in America today it’s that the U.S. economy can and must continue to grow. That’s why the messages delivered in November in Washington D.C. at a gathering of oil geologists, scientists, economists and others challenging that core belief went largely unheeded in the nation’s capital. The approximately 300 people who attended the 7th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil–USA (ASPO-USA) in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol were told that economic growth is no longer possible as oil production flattens and declines, that U.S. energy independence is impossible and that domestic shale gas will fall far short of fueling American prosperity even while polluting the nation’s vital aquifers.