Culture & Behavior

Crossing the line as civilization implodes: Heartland Institute, Peter Gleick and Andrew Revkin

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This is such a colossally immoral and unethical act — collectively and in many cases individually — that most people, including the overwhelming majority of the so-called intelligentsia, simply choose to ignore it on a daily basis. That won’t save a livable climate, however, nor it will stop future generations from cursing our names.

And so it is not surprising that many immoral and unethical acts that regularly occur on a far less grand scale are condoned or winked at or simply ignored.

A conversation with Herman Daly

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We chatted with Herman Daly on a range of topics from ecology to economics, policy to politics, relocalization to religion. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, pioneered work on Steady-State and Ecological Economics, and has received more accolades and written more books than we can mention.

Why do political and economic leaders deny Peak Oil and Climate Change?

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Until a miracle happens, scientists and some enlightened policy makers are trying to extend the age of oil, reduce greenhouse gases, and so on. But with the downside of Hubbert’s curve so close, and the financial system liable to crash again soon given the debt and lack of reforms, I don’t know how long anyone can stretch things out.

The art of producing sustainable consumer goods: basketry

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We tend to think of technology as rock and metal – from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, from pyramids and statues to Viking swords and pirate cannons. We think of the things that survive to be placed in museums, in other words, and tend to neglect the early and important inventions that ordinary people used every day but whose materials did not survive centuries of exposure.

Social movements call for a Permanent Peoples’ Assembly, Rio 2012

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We, organizations, networks and social movements, involved in the building of the Peoples’ Summit for social and environmental justice, against the commodification of life and nature in defence (Río+20), call for the mobilization and coordination of struggles across the planet. To ensure fulfillment of the rights of all peoples, especially those most vulnerable, to have access to water, food, energy, land, seeds, territories, and decent livelihoods, and to demand the rights of Mother Earth.

How is the Sharing economy different from the Anarchy economy?

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The Sharing economy is quickly becoming a diluted term, just like ‘sustainable” and ‘all natural”. If “sharing” means “make some side cash”, let’s call it what it really is. It is a way to raise cash using owned assets (a room, a car, a wheelbarrow, etc.) that boomerang back to the rightful owner at some point.

Oil executive son’s powerful testimony at Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline joint review panel (includes transcript)

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Lee Brain, son of an oil man, receives a standing ovation and brings a crowd to tears after delivering powerful & inspirational testimony in front of the Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel in Prince Rupert on February 18, 2012.

The Structure of Empires

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The challenge of making sense of empires in general, and thus of the impending decline and fall of America’s empire, is made a good deal more challenging than it has to be by the haze of doubletalk and of simplistic us-vs.-them analyses. One way to clarify the way that empires work is to pay attention to who benefits from them–a matter that turns out to be considerably more complex than a casual glance might suggest.

Soil: From Dirt to Lifeline

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Fred Kirschenmann has been involved in sustainable agriculture and food issues for most of his life. He currently serves as both a Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and as President of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York. He is the author of a book of essays which track the development of his thought over the past 30 years; Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays by a Farmer Philosopher, published by the University of Kentucky Press. In this TedX talk given at the Glynwood Institute for Sustainable Food and Farming, he tells us what good soil has to do with producing good food.

Cultivating a sustainable community: The cycle of collaboration

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In order to survive peak oil, climate change, economic failure, and ecological collapse we must make fundamental shifts in our collective way of life. Individual change is necessary but not enough because our means of survival are embedded in complex social and economic systems. On the other hand, direct change of the massive business and government institutions we now depend upon is unrealistic because the nature of all large institutions is self-perpetuation, not transformation. The practical domain in which we can effectively create a sustainable way of life is our local community.

Mad, passionate love — and violence: Occupy heads into the spring

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When you fall in love, it’s all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them — or if all goes well, struggle, learn, and bond more strongly because of, rather than despite, them. The Occupy movement had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, liberal and radical, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter.

Until they did.