Citizen-led retrofitting – how the poor relation of climate policy is becoming its secret weapon
Citizen-led retrofitting, long the poor relation of climate policy, could now be its secret weapon in accelerating rapid transition.
building resilient communities
Glasgow communities showing COP leaders the way
Plugging in to a wider network of other groups also developing grassroots climate responses can help our local ideas and projects to flourish, help us learn and share with others that have the vision of more sustainable and equal communities where we have control over our day to day lives.
Hacking at the root
So how do we hack at the root? I don’t really have an answer but I think a few useful things might include: working continuously to break through corporate control of the narrative, to educate our fellow citizens; fighting to block whatever insanity is pushing through in our own locales; and working to set up ourselves, our families and our communities to get through the coming collapse with as much integrity as possible.
Appropriate Technology, Traditional Cultures and Degrowth
Traditional/original AT, based on communal social arrangements, hand-crafted from local, natural materials that cultures have used since centuries mostly for subsistence purposes, satisfies practically all of the principles of deep sustainability.
Notes on Community
Maybe we are just Irish monks in a new dark age emerging, copying texts for a future generation to decipher. Yet involvement in where we live is the tapestry of who we are.
In Praise of Laziness
I firmly believe in the virtues of laziness. I would see a return to economic un-productivity. Happily, I also doubt wage-work will survive as we are forced to focus on meeting our own needs using less transport and fewer resources.
The IMAJINE Project
How can dreaming up futures which might never happen help communities to build resilience and address the challenges of a changing world?
What Could Possibly Go Right?: Episode 60 Vicki Robin
In another solo episode, our host Vicki Robin shares her recent reflections on themes emerging from the “What Could Possibly Go Right?” inquiry.
Fighting for food justice in a Texas food desert
The Dallas Food Justice Coalition provides a simple but powerful model. By bringing together community advocates from different areas of food justice, they’ve begun cultivating a grassroots solution to our broken food system that focuses on empowering and educating the community rather than simply providing aid.
Our Self-Imposed Scarcity of Nice Places
Where we’ve allowed cheaper-to-build, cheaper-to-maintain, quality-of-life-enhancing things to become luxuries, that is on us. That is our failure, and it’s a failure brought about to a large extent by bad policy that tells us we can’t have nice things, because nice things are for the rich.
Act Global, Think Local
Some thrive at the local, others the global, others at the regional, and others, still, do great bouncing from one to the other to the other. But I think there is value in considering this honestly, and better understanding at what level you want to enact change, and then focusing there.
Indigenous and feminine wisdom: an interview with Ella Noah Bancroft
Going local is remembering the old ways, the ways in which all our ancestors used to live. Going local is about reconnecting to place, people and self. It is the ultimate reconnection our planet is calling for. A slower pace and more gentle way of being on this planet.