Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
But self-sufficiency, I realize, is a misnomer. What I am aiming for is local sufficiency. While I am marginally better at providing for myself, my gradually accumulating “locafficiency” is very much dependent upon people I see day-by-day.
About a billion people or 1/6th of humanity goes to sleep hungry each day. Most assume it is because not enough food is there to go around. Though this may become true in future unless we have an urgent course correction, at the moment this abomination is the result of lack of access to food, not its absence.
What are we for? What do we desire? While I acknowledge my own distasteful and ill-designed dependence on fossil fuels, I can heartily say I’m for community gardens, walkable and bikable cities, local economies that are (shockingly!) based on a currency besides money, and for vacant land and homes being available to those who need them or will make use of them.
Sheep, pigs and cows do not belong to massive agribusiness factories here; they often belong to smallholders, and you will see them in the space of a backyard.
A new study identifies a number of important gaps in public knowledge and common misconceptions about climate change. We found that 63 percent of Americans believe that global warming is happening, but many do not understand why. In this assessment, only 8 percent of Americans have knowledge equivalent to an A or B, 40 percent would receive a C or D, and 52 percent would get an F.
– America’s dish detergent wars
– Can the Right Spin the Chilean Miners Story?
– A Peak Oil Lament
– The Money Fix – documentary now online
– Tim Jackson’s Economic Reality Check
– Currency wars are necessary if all else fails
One reason that we may abandon a technology is that the costs outweigh the benefits. Thus the fridge has been abandoned because the cost of maintaining it outweighs the benefit of keeping lunch cold. Other reasons might be that the technology is no longer supportable (for example, if you cannot access fuel, your car is not going anywhere) or another technology appears/reappears to replace it. In this post, I would like to propose a theory by which some, or potentially many, modern technologies could be abandoned. This is an important issue because of its implications for government policy, business investment and of course society as a whole.
In an age when wealth and power present a more diffuse and benign face to the world, the soft authority of knowledge is ever more important as a force for social change. The politics of knowledge – how ideas are created, used and disseminated – represents a key issue for the social change community.
The witch of Hebron, herself a prostitute, is a beautiful, charming, intelligent caricature, overly-idealized by Kunstler who argues that in a post-collapse world, the rights of women and minorities, so dramatically achieved in the twentieth century, will become virtually extinct in a “world made by hand”.
Political debates and party platforms rarely talk about public transportation, but it’s one of the most basic and important things governments can do to make life better, both in the USA and in any country where officials are cutting back such services.
By all means understand and utilise all the power inherent in your messaging, but be explicit about the values you are trying to promote, and explain why.
