Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We have a natural desire to find a way that we and our loved ones can be “safe” in the midst of the upcoming Peak Oil, Economic Collapse, and Climate Change cataclysms. This leads us to think of Arks or Fortresses, which simply won’t work. What then is a model for the coming times? The only model that can work is the decidedly unsafe and generous City of Light.
NASA research scientist Benjamin Cook explains how the Dust Bowl years of the American Midwest were not entirely a “natural disaster” and how lessons learned then prevented a sequel.
Christopher Alexander, architect, thinker, designer, author of the seminal ‘A Pattern Language’ and of the more recent extraordinary ‘The Nature of Order’ series of books, has long been someone whose work I have admired greatly.
“… I finally realised that every one of these cultures had essentially a system of rules – though ‘rules’ is too strong a word because they were not binding. They weren’t being forced down somebody’s throat, but they were rules that everyone understood and which had to be used to get a good result.”
The current American food system can be expected to unravel as the limits to growth begin closing in. Somewhere between the gourmet notions that dominate too much of today’s “slow food” and the mass-produced product that passes for fast food, a new incarnation of traditional working class cuisine is waiting to be born.
Consuming less doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice freedom or walk around in grey smocks and eat gruel, as many free marketeers would have us believe. Capitalism can foster innovation, but as the dearth of truly ecologically sane consumer choices reveals, capitalism also hinders innovation when it’s not profitable enough.
“Latent conditions in technology and organisation can exist for a significant time, waiting for circumstances to line up that create a calamitous accident. … A systemic perspective is essential to shed light on the complex interplay of actions and how the loss might have been prevented.”
Christmas comes but once a year and its excesses pack a crippling punch. Then there’s all those “so what’s new in your world” conversations. Bringing up peak oil feels tricky. How to cope? Let me count the ways…
In the spirit of keeping things light-hearted, I thought it would be interesting to compose a top-ten list of songs with a steady state theme.
Fewer and fewer children get to explore the outdoor world and experience the thrill of watching birds or finding a turtle on the other side of a rotting log. Fewer children know about weeding a garden, let alone the special feeling of coming home a bit scratched up and sunburned after a long afternoon of exploring a local creek. Getting your feet wet and hands dirty is fun. There is something ineffably joyous about interacting with the natural world, but, more and more, that bliss is generationally bound, a gift today’s children won’t receive.
Post-Carbon and Heinberg are telling a critical story – but the actors they need to engage, all the hands they want on deck are not engaged, because they aren’t part of the tale. That needs to change.
– WikiLeaks cables: Dalai Lama called for focus on climate, not politics, in Tibet
– Desertification is greatest threat to planet, expert warns
– Fox News chief enforced climate change scepticism – leaked email
– Graphics: who’s emitting?
– Climate Clash in Cancún (China vs US)
– Naomi Klein’s TED Talk: On Precaution (and climate change)
Christopher Alexander’s masterwork of environmental design, written with several other architects and academics over eight years, lays out a practical and imaginal map for human dwellings and settlements. It’s a peculiarly European response to North America (Alexander is Austrian, educated in England, worked in Berkeley, California). A sudden release from an old cluttered history into a new unexplored world. The feeling you can start all over again with the best of everything you left behind.
